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Notes from the Editors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2011

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Extract

Vigorous scholarly controversy, we think, characterizes a healthy and growing discipline, and certainly we are seeing more of it at the APSR. We have noted an uptick in “forum” submissions, more requests to publish dissents alongside forthcoming articles, and more disagreement on points both of method and substance. More frequently than in the past, referees' reports say, in essence, “This is a great paper, which you should definitely publish, but I think it's wrong and expect that several scholars will want to say so in print.” And, perhaps even more than previous editors, we have published pieces simply with a view to advancing an important scholarly conversation.

Type
From the Editor: In This Issue
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 105 , Issue 2 , May 2011 , pp. iii - x
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2011

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References

1 A useful pop question, to male readers of that generation: Can you remember, correctly and instantaneously, what your draft lottery number was? Everybody we have questioned—admittedly, hardly a representative sample—could do so.

2 Waldron, Jeremy. “The Wisdom of the Multitude: Some Reflections on Book 3, Chapter 11 of Aristotle's Politics.” Political Theory 23 (4): 563–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Meltzer, Allan and Richard, Scott. “A Rational Theory of the Size of Government,” Journal of Political Economy 89: 914–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 To reiterate the hoary illustration: If five people of equal and modest income are standing together in a bar, and one walks out and Bill Gates walks in, the median income in the room has not changed, but surely the (mean) average—and any plausible measure of inequality—has. And, to continue the Meltzer-Richard illustration, if by majority vote we can impose a flat income tax on everybody in the room and distribute the proceeds as an equal lump sum to each individual, the median voter will now favor a much higher tax.

5 Lindert, Peter H., Growing Public: Social Spending and Economic Growth since the Eighteenth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004Google Scholar.

6 To continue our homely bar illustration: If the original group had consisted not of five persons of equal income but of two homeless persons and three millionaires, the substitution of Bill Gates for one of the millionaires would not have led to vastly greater support for redistribution.

7 Muirhead, Russell, In Defense of Party. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, forthcomingGoogle Scholar.

8 See http://www.aapor.org/standards.asp

9 One widely accepted guide to such norms is given by the American Anthropological Association's Code of Ethics, particularly Section III. http://www.aaanet.org/issues/policy-advocacy/upload/AAA-Ethics-Code-2009.pdf