One of our editorial team’s most important objectives is to increase the substantive, methodological and representational diversity of the journal. When we became editors, we pledged to broaden the range of research topics published in the journal. Our goal continues to be to diversify the subfields, geographic foci, and methodological approaches represented in the APSR. We seek to “increase the diversity of authors, reviewers, and citations along various lines, including race, gender, sexuality, ability, national origin, and scholar’s type of home institution.”

As part of our effort to increase the range of methodological and epistemological approaches in the work we publish, we are keen to increase our qualitative submissions and to see more submissions using non-positivist approaches. Scholars from entire subfields of the discipline have avoided submitting their work to the APSR because they have perceived it as exclusively an outlet for quantitative empirical research. We want to change this perception and actively encourage scholars to send their best and most ambitious work to the APSR regardless of the methods and approaches they use.

Since beginning our editorship, our team has seen a small jump in the proportion of submissions that use qualitative methods and a more substantial increase in the proportion of such manuscripts that are published. In the final two years of the previous team, 11.7% of accepted articles used these methods, which has increased to 21.5% under our team. In this way, we are moving the needle.  This increase in qualitatively-oriented work has not come at the expense of other methodologies since we now have, and fully use, more pages in the journal. But we would like to see this diversity increase further.

Broadening the range of methodological and epistemological approaches would improve the overall impact and excellence of the journal. Qualitative or mixed methods articles can do many things that can be challenging to do with quantitative evidence alone. In addition to advancing novel descriptive inference, confirming or disconfirming causal mechanisms, and contributing to theory development, qualitative or mixed methods evidence can tell a story or a narrative, which can be a very compelling and memorable way of presenting material. They can draw on surprising, interesting, and even amusing examples and deliver arguments with literary flair. They can provide fascinating historical contexts and incorporate the perspectives of ordinary people or elites in ways that are not always possible in quantitative research. In other words, they can bring political realities to life in illuminating and imaginative ways, while at the same time maintaining academic rigor.

Interpretive approaches also enrich our understandings of politics in some unique and important ways. Questions about constitutive problems, deep context, and the meaning and significance of individual and institutional political acts, for example, do not always lend themselves easily to hypothesis testing or formalization. While some concerns about the relationship between culture and politics can be effectively studied through positivist and even quantitative approaches, other questions require close analyses of discourse, mappings of epistemic communities, or direct observation and interpretation of individual and institutional behaviors and interactions.

To further understand what makes qualitative articles successful in our process, we looked at the critical comments made by reviewers of recently rejected manuscripts that used qualitative methods. We emphasize that our team generally selects reviewers who are knowledgeable about these methods or work in the same area substantively. Interestingly, many of these comments are quite similar to those submitted by reviewers evaluating quantitative manuscripts. From these comments, one can glean what constitutes a successful qualitative or multiple-method manuscript.

Among the most consistent reasons reviewers suggest for rejecting qualitative manuscripts has to do with a weakness in the presentation of theory.  In these cases, we find ourselves in agreement with reviewers who point out that the theory may not be sufficiently developed; the contributions of the manuscript may not be clearly delineated from the existing literature; the arguments are not novel or compelling; or the contribution is too technical or incremental to be of broad interest to readers outside the subfields in which the article is situated. In other words, the reviewers find that the manuscript does not sufficiently advance our understanding of important political issues or of issues that are of general interest to the field of political science. This latter point is of particular concern to the APSR, which is a discipline-wide journal that seeks to publish articles that, while they may contribute to subfield debates, make clear why readers not deeply immersed in those debates should nonetheless find great value in the authors’ insights. We encourage both projects and framings with the potential for broad resonance in the field.

Another common critique is that key concepts are not fully explained or are used inconsistently or in uncommon ways throughout the manuscript. Authors should be aware of conventional understandings of key concepts in the literature and justify how they are using them. They should also be clear about where and when they want to redefine or challenge existing concepts in the field. These kinds of contributions can be quite valuable when supported with well-designed and strongly supported interpretive work.

In some cases, the arguments of the manuscript are too generic. For example, reviewers often take issue with arguments that seem to suggest that “state actors were important or administrations were complex and were made up of people with diverse preferences.” The author may fail to identify a compelling analytical problem or provide evidence that advances or deepens existing knowledge.

Milli Lake’s forthcoming “Policing Insecurity” (2022) is a good example of an article that strikes a balance between having specific and novel findings and also speaking to more general concerns. Examining policing in the particular case of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, she shows that enhancing the coercive capacity of the police as part of state-building and security-sector reform can entrench a wartime political order that makes peace more elusive and reinforces institutions of war.

As in every kind of work, authors of qualitative and interpretive work also should take care to engage relevant literatures effectively. In some cases, authors may mischaracterize existing literature and then erroneously critique it. In other instances, the manuscripts do not engage the broader literature, thus creating the false impression that they are advancing a novel theory. Sometimes, an overlooked body of literature includes alternate explanations and arguments that should have been addressed.

We also encourage authors to think carefully and transparently about case selection. The selection of cases may not be adequately justified, especially in circumstances where they are atypical.

While in-depth exploration of a single or a few cases can be very informative, reviewers of qualitative work also pay close attention to questions about generalizability, often raising concerns about whether a manuscript has done enough to establish internal or external validity. In some instances, they wonder whether work is sufficiently theoretical or analytical. And while we encourage the submission of novel descriptive work, it should be executed in a way that speaks to broader theoretical concerns, if only in a heuristic manner. Kerry Goettlich’s “The Colonial Origins of Modern Territoriality: Property Surveying in the Thirteen Colonies” (2021) is exemplary in this regard. It traces the confusion that has emerged between modern territoriality and sovereignty to the European focus of the work in this area. It shows how precise boundaries first emerged in the North American colonies and how these borders, not sovereignty, are constitutive of modern territoriality. It thus makes a significant theoretical contribution to the literature.

We recognize that some approaches do not emphasize generalizability, privileging instead the development of a deep understanding of an important phenomenon. This kind of work, while it may not necessarily “travel,” can nonetheless advance our understanding of timely and timeless questions about politics. Calvin TerBeek’s 2021 analysis of the racial roots of constitutional conservatism addresses the development of ideology among a small subset of legal elites in the United States in a constrained time frame, but in doing so, helps to untangle important constitutional developmental dynamics around race and conservatism.

Another common issue raised by reviewers of qualitative submissions has to with the evidence on which the articles’ claims are based. The conclusions may be weakly supported by evidence. The evidence may not be sufficiently convincing or it may not align with the theoretical arguments that the author is making. Reviewers often raise concerns, for example, when manuscripts do not provide enough interview data when this is their main source of evidence. In the case of interviews, the manuscript needs to explain explicitly to the reader what they are learning from the interview data the authors have collected and feature. Interview evidence must tell the reader something that they did not know before. One good example is a forthcoming 2022 article by Danielle Gilbert (“The Logic of Kidnapping in Civil War: Evidence from Colombia”), which draws on interviews of former combatants in Colombia to explain under what conditions we should see kidnapping in armed conflict. She uses interviews to demonstrate the logic of combatants, showing, first, that kidnapping groups employed a system of taxation; second, that they kidnapped those who did not pay; third, that kidnapping rebels had an infrastructure that enforced their demands; and fourth, that kidnapping influenced future noncompliance.

While most manuscripts discuss the methods and research design that they use, sometimes these are not adequately fleshed out and reviewers need more to be persuaded that the methods are adequate to the theory being advanced. If a paper requires both theoretical reframing and methodological elaboration, it will generally be rejected. An R&R will be issued only if the editors believe the paper is likely to be successful after one revision.

Finally, it is worth bearing in mind that some of the most-cited empirical APSR articles have been ones that use qualitative or mixed methods. These highly successful pieces advance a novel theoretical argument that builds on existing literature, but they demonstrate clearly how it goes beyond existing work. The research design methods are fully elaborated and are appropriate to the research question or hypotheses. Moreover, the evidence is aligned with the theory and it is compelling. They are written with the reader in mind as they convey the arc of a political science story.