Political and Psychological Characteristics of Russian Governors in the Domestic Political Science: Review of Scientific Research

The article reviews the works of Russian researchers devoted to personal characteristics of Russian governors in terms of political and psychological approach. Drawing on the method of historical retrospection, the author distinguishes the transformation stages of the governorship institution since the 2000s, which required the revelation of different personal features in order for a governor to be successful. Theses transformation stages also led to changes in scientific approaches to the research of a governors psychological qualities. As a result, the author comes to the conclusion that current Russian political science fails to reflect the political and psychological portrait of modern Russian regional elite, including governors. The author notes that the personal characteristics of Russian governors are empirical indicators through which political scientists can evaluate the personality of a politician in the psychological sense, and, moreover, compare it with others, which proves the importance of this topic.

Piled Modifiers, Buried Verbs, and Other Turgid Prose in the American Political Science Review

ABSTRACT Academic writing is notoriously difficult to read. Can political science do better? To assess the state of prose in political science, we examined a recent issue of the American Political Science Review. We evaluated the articles according to the basic principles of style endorsed by writing experts. We find that the writing suffers most from heavy noun phrases in forms such as noun noun noun and adjective adjective noun noun. Further, we describe five contributors that swell noun phrases: piled modifiers, needless words, nebulous nouns, missing prepositions, and buried verbs. We document more than a thousand examples and demonstrate how to revise each one with principles of style. We also draw on research in cognitive science to explain why these constructions confuse, mislead, and distract readers.