The political science program at UC Merced is distinct in two important ways. First, our program is organized in a unique manner. We divide the field into two complementary tracks – Political Economy and Political Institutions and Political Behavior and Cognition. This organization facilitates greater intra- and inter-disciplinary collaboration. Our faculty regularly coauthor with scholars in other fields and publish in general science, interdisciplinary, and other-discipline journals, and our graduate students receive uniquely interdisciplinary training. Second, our faculty has established a rate of publication in our field’s top journals and book presses comparable to or surpassing the best programs in the country; we are the top ranked program in terms of article publication rate. In this document, we outline the resources necessary to establish our program as one of the best in the country by 2020. This includes a substantial increase in faculty and a modest increase in physical space.