The tragic events of September 11, 2001, affected us all. Certainly they posed unanticipated problems for the APSR's new editorial team. We (a collective consisting of me, Assistant Editor Elizabeth Cook, our Editorial Assistants [John Donaldson, Jason MacDonald, and Tricia Mulligan], our brand-new editorial board [listed elsewhere], and Book Review Co-editors Susan Bickford and Gregory McAvoy and their Editorial Assistants [Elizabeth Markovits, Maria Riemann, and Carisa Showden]) had “hit the ground running” on September 1. Our careful planning and the extraordinary efforts of Ada Finifter and Harriett Posner at Michigan State were paying off in a smooth transition in our Washington, DC, editorial offices, and the Bickford–McAvoy book review operation in Chapel Hill was off to a good start, too, thanks in part to the cooperation of their predecessor, Mark Lichbach. Then September 11 happened. Here in Washington, DC, offices closed, equipment and supplies went undelivered, and services were suspended. Hard on the heels of September 11 came the anthrax-inspired disruption of the mails, which played havoc with our operations. We would go days on end receiving no mail at all and then be deluged, making it difficult to get out of a “scramble” mode and into a normal operating rhythm.
As I compose these notes in the early days of 2002, I am pleased to report that our offices are functioning in a timely, predictable, and appropriate manner. We have come a long way in ashort time under conditions that we could not have imagined a few months ago, and things are now more or less “normal,” though I have already come to appreciate the wisdom of former Editor Charles Jones's remark (as conveyed by Ada Finifter) that the APSR editorship is a great job but there is a little too much of it.
Many of those with whom I talk about the APSR assume that I must feel cursed by a second accident of timing as well: my assumption of the editorship at a time of widespread expressions of discontent among political scientists—discontent directed at, inter alia, intellectual currents in the discipline, the governing institutions of the profession (ranging from individual departments through the American Political Science Association), and, not least, the APSR itself. It is well to bear in mind that, as Robert Salisbury noted in the December 2001 issue of PS, “Complaints about APSR and petitions to change the structure of APSA have been perennial features of life among political scientists.” Even so, in recent years, and particularly with the emergence of the Perestroika movement, these complaints have taken on a special resonance. It thus seems appropriate that in these initial editorial notes, I address some of these concerns and discuss the role I foresee for the APSR in coming years.
I consider myself not at all cursed by this second accident of timing but, rather, blessed by the opportunity to respond constructively to the challenges it poses. In the remarks that follow, I describe some of the elements of this response. (Some of what I say will come as review material for those who during the last year or so have read e-mail messages I have posted, attended meetings at which I have spoken, or talked privately with me.)
SOME NEW PERSPECTIVES AND PROCEDURES
Political science is a strange discipline. Indeed, it is hardly a “discipline” at all. A dictionary definition of “discipline” refers, variously, to “punishment,” or “a set or system of rules,” or “a branch of learning.” I will sidestep the issue of whether political science is a punishment, but I do want to express doubt that it is a set or system of rules. Only someone who takes a narrow, procrustean view of political science would characterize it in that way. And rather than being a distinct branch of learning, political science is a crazy quilt of borrowings from history, philosophy, law, sociology, psychology, economics, public administration, policy studies, area studies, international studies, civics, and a variety of other sources. Any real coherence in political science exists only at the broadest conceptual level, in the form of our widely shared interest in power, the “authoritative allocation of values for society,” “who gets what, when, how,” and the like.
This overriding intellectual diversity endows political science with vibrancy, energy, and openness to new and often challenging perspectives. Even so, I want to register my sense that in many ways we have become less of a discipline over the years. When I entered the profession three decades ago, virtually everyone seemed to be reading and discussing certain contemporary canonical works (Dahl, Easton, Almond and Verba, Downs, and Bachrach and Baratz, among others). I am hard-pressed to think of many equivalents today—perhaps Putnam, but what else? These days it is harder than ever to find a center of intellectual gravity in our discipline. More and more we are a confederation of narrowly defined and loosely connected, or even disconnected, specializations. Our heightened specialization is further fragmenting our already disjointed discipline, to the extent that most of us have little knowledge, understanding, or appreciation of what our colleagues in other subfields are doing.
In recent years, the most widely expressed criticisms of the APSR in particular have been that “It doesn't publish the kind of work that interests me,” “It's biased against my kind of work,” “I have no idea what most of those articles are even about,” and/or “I don't even open it when it arrives.” Defenders have countered that the APSR does a good job of publishing the best papers that are submitted to it, and that the problem, if there is one, is that those who feel aggrieved rarely submit their work to the APSR, thereby creating a vicious circle. A second line of defense has been that there is nothing unique to political science about the fact that those in one subfield neither understand nor appreciate what those in other subfields are doing. As seen from this perspective, this is an inevitable by-product of specialization and other aspects of disciplinary “progress,” not specifically an APSR problem.
Although the contents of the APSR in recent years have been more diverse than critics often acknowledge, I agree that the rich theoretical, methodological, and substantive variety of our discipline has not been reflected nearly as well as it should be in our premier research journal. (And I am well aware that such variety is not well represented in this particular issue, either.) Recognizing that the problem of the vicious circle is real does not mean that we must bow to its inevitability. Moreover, even while granting that increasingly divergent theoretical perspectives and analytical techniques and the proliferation of specialized vocabularies are barriers to communication, we need to recognize that we have not been doing nearly as much as we should to make our ideas accessible to one another.
The APSR should be an important vehicle for overcoming this isolation, for building and sustaining a sense of intellectual community. It should be the showcase for the best research, representing the wide array of theoretical orientations, substantive foci, and methodological approaches that comprise political science. Opening up the APSR when it arrives should give us a sense of invigoration about all the interesting work that our colleagues are doing. My primary goal as Editor of the APSR is to move as far as possible in that direction, by publishing a broad array of the very best work being done throughout political science and by enhancing the likelihood that this work will actually be read.
The obvious question is how to translate this vision into reality. Among the steps we have already taken or will soon take are the following.
- Because much of the most important political science research is published as books, not articles, the APSR's book review section is avidly read, and the book review editorship is a key position in our discipline. With the completion of Mark Lichbach's term as Book Review Editor, one of my first tasks was to fill that position—a position that requires great intellectual breadth and versatility, innovativeness, tolerance for long hours of drudgery, high-level organizational skills, and an eye for detail. To fill this tall order, I recruited a pair of scholars who individually and collectively possess the requisite qualities. With Susan Bickford (a political theorist) and Greg McAvoy (a specialist in American politics and policy) as co-editors, the book review operation is in excellent hands.
- Another early task was to assemble, for approval by the APSA Executive Council, my slate of editorial board nominees. The editorial board must be composed of productive scholars to whom I can confidently turn for wise counsel, and it must reflect the diversity of the discipline. I consulted widely, soliciting suggestions from every APSA organized section and numerous other affiliated committees and formally constituted groups, as well as many informal groups and various individuals, and I received many unsolicited suggestions as well. The result is a brand new board of 44 members, none of whom had previously served on the board. This is an exceptionally accomplished and diverse group, and I am delighted to have the opportunity to work with them. (It is possible that a few more board members will be added as circumstances warrant.)
- By their very presence on the board, these 44 members symbolize, and by their actions they have been asked to carry throughout the discipline, the message that we genuinely want to receive a wider array of submissions than has come to the APSR in the past, and that we are doing our best to conduct a review process that is fair, thorough, and timely. The idea is simple: The greater the variety of papers we receive, the greater the variety of articles we will be able to publish.
- A new editorial board function that will directly involve only a handful of board members is to serve as an advisory/oversight executive committee. This is the group to which I will, other factors being equal, turn first for advice or other forms of assistance on matters involving procedures, policies, and the like. The executive committee will also review my performance as Editor and the operations of the editorial office. The first scheduled review will take place halfway into my three-year term, at which time the committee will assess the fairness, competence, and timeliness of the review process and my decisions, and will offer any recommendations that follow from its assessment. As academicians, we are accustomed to reviewing the performance of students, colleagues, programs, departments, and even colleges and universities. It seems no less appropriate to review our journals as well—especially a journal that receives as much attention as the APSR.
- We have put several modifications of the review process in place in an effort to open it up and make it more transparent. For example, we are trying in several ways to expand the already large pool from which we draw reviewers. (In that spirit, let me add that if you know of anyone, yourself included, who would be a good reviewer but has not previously served in that capacity for the APSR, we would like to hear from you.) Another example is detailed below in the “Specific Procedures” section of the “Instructions to Contributors”: When you submit a paper to the APSR, you are now invited to suggest the names of appropriate reviewers of your paper. Our early experience with this new procedure has been encouraging; authors seem to like it, and their suggestions are bringing to our attention many potential reviewers who might not otherwise have occurred to us. A third example is that when you review a paper for the APSR, you can now expect to receive copies of all the other reviews and my decision letter (all rendered anonymous, of course). The rationale underlying these changes is that increasing the transparency of the review process will boost authors' and reviewers' confidence in the process and their sense of involvement in it. If it turns out that making the process more transparent actually undermines confidence, then we obviously will need to make some major changes to the process.
- I am not necessarily requiring a paper to receive positive recommendations from three reviewers to qualify for publication in the APSR. As I have remarked in several forums, it has sometimes occurred to me that getting a paper accepted by a top journal is something like winning the Olympic gold medal in figure skating. In that competition, what seems to matter most is that one not make a major mistake, so the winning strategy often consists of playing it safe by not doing anything risky. Sometimes a paper that receives two genuinely enthusiastic reviews and one decidedly negative one may be more interesting and important than a competent paper that has nothing seriously “wrong” with it. As Editor, I am trying to diversify the APSR's portfolio by investing in some “speculative” or “growth” stocks along with the normal “blue chips,” i.e., by being open to work that is new, different, and perhaps too controversial or too far outside the mainstream to receive unanimously positive reviews.
- I am also willing to apply our 45-page limit on manuscripts flexibly, thereby making publication in the APSR a more realistic prospect for those who do qualitative, “thick-descriptive,” or case study-based research.
- I am issuing “revise and resubmit” invitations very sparingly, confining them to situations in which I am confident that if the author implements a relatively narrow and specific set of revisions, the revised paper will warrant publication in the APSR. Genuine enthusiasm among most of the reviewers and a manageable set of suggested revisions that can be accomplished within the current framework of the paper are primary indicators pointing toward a “revise and resubmit” invitation. In the absence of these indicators, I am trying to save time, trouble, irritation, and disappointment for all concerned by rejecting papers rather than inviting resubmissions. I especially dislike the idea of piling one “revise and resubmit” invitation on top of an earlier one, and am willing to follow that path only under extremely unusual circumstances.
- My introduction to the new Style Manual for Political Science includes the following statement:
It is the obligation of authors to make their research accessible to prospective readers, not by ‘dumbing it down’ but by effectively conveying what they are trying to find out and why this quest is so worthwhile…. [T]he real key lies in careful editing and rewriting designed to open lines of communication rather than to close them. It is not reasonable to expect researchers who use complex formal or statistical models to conduct tutorials on their methods as a part of reporting their work; or to hold those whose research focuses on a certain nation or a certain political thinker responsible for introducing the rest of us to the most basic aspects of their subject matter before turning to the specific issues of concern; or, more generally, to require researchers to eschew all but plain, simple English. Moreover, it is naive to expect that…those who are untrained in formal or statistical modeling will suddenly become avid and knowledgeable consumers of the technical portions of a statistical or formal presentation, or that those who had previously shown little or no interest in a certain region or thinker will suddenly yearn to master the subtlest nuances thereof. But it is neither unreasonable nor naive to insist at the very least that as political scientists we can and should clearly communicate to a broad range of other political scientists what we are trying to do and why it matters.
In assessing papers, one question I ask myself is whether the authors have done everything they legitimately can to broaden the accessibility and appeal of their work. One way they can do so is by spelling out very clearly at the outset what their basic research question is and why it is so interesting and important that readers who might otherwise ignore an article should instead invest their time in it. To do that, authors must reach out to a broader, more diverse audience than they may be accustomed to addressing—potential readers who cannot be assumed to have any specialized knowledge of their subject matter. Besides broadening the introductory portion of a paper, authors should come back, at the end of the paper, to the questions that motivated the analysis and should clarify what the basic message of their analysis is and why it matters.
- Along the same lines, I will use these Notes from the Editor to provide sneak previews of the articles in each issue, with an eye toward tempting you to take a look at work to which you might not otherwise pay attention. Opening up lines of communication is a two-way street; it requires authors to express their ideas effectively, but also readers to venture outside their well-worn paths.
- It is important to note that some major structural changes are in the works. In the next year or so, the book reviews that currently occupy about a third of the APSR's pages will migrate to the APSA's new journal, Perspectives on Politics. (The new journal will feature integrative essays, survey-critiques of the literature, and analyses of what our discipline has to say about current policy issues, along with book reviews.) Because of these changes, the APSR will be able to publish more articles in a given year, thereby opening up possibilities that are not currently available.
- Finally, a purely symbolic change: I trust you have noticed that the APSR has an attractive new cover. Both the color and the graphic will change from issue to issue, with the graphic being keyed to the issue's lead article. (For several reasons, I am especially pleased to have a peace symbol adorn the cover of the first issue to appear during my editorship.)
I welcome comments on any aspect of these notes, which can be directed to apsr@gwu.edu.
IN THIS ISSUE
With the single exception of the lead article, the articles in this issue were all in advanced stages of the review process when I assumed the editorship in September of 2001. To give credit where it is due, then, I need to acknowledge that responsibility for the contents of this issue belongs more to Ada Finifter than to me. In light of the time lag between the initial submission of a paper and its appearance (almost invariably in revised form) in the APSR, the June 2002 issue, too, will be heavily weighted toward papers that were submitted to, and revised at the invitation of, my predecessor. Thereafter, the balance will shift significantly.
The lead article in this issue, and the immediate occasion for the appearance of a peace symbol on our cover, is “Theories of War in an Era of Leading Power Peace,” Robert Jervis's 2001 APSA presidential address. In this essay, Jervis, a leading scholar of international politics, takes three leading schools of international relations theory (constructivism, liberalism, and realism) to task for their failure to explain why wars do or do not occur among members of a security community—in this case, advanced industrial democracies. Jervis argues that the peace that currently prevails among these nations cannot be explained by a singular focus on shared norms, common institutions, or the presence of nuclear weapons. Instead, he argues for melding elements of each approach with an historical, or path dependent, view of behavior. This essay, then, broadens the analytical base from which political scientists and others can consider the fundamental and enduring issue of war and peace.
In “Dictatorial Peace?” Mark Peceny and Caroline C. Beer, with Shannon Sanchez-Terry, shift away from Jervis's focus, and that of the broader international politics literature, on war and peace among democracies. The key assertions of the “democratic peace” argument are that democracies do not go to war with each other and are far less likely than other nations to go to war at all. But might there be a corresponding “dictatorial peace”? Peceny, Beer, and Sanchez-Terry argue that some of the same factors that help explain the incidence of peace among democracies (domestic institutions, values, war fighting capabilities, and transparency) also produce peace among authoritarian regimes. However, not all authoritarian regimes (personalist, military, and single-party) are created equal in this regard. Using new data and sophisticated data-analytic techniques, the authors raise the intriguing possibility that democracies may not be unique after all.
The issue of similarities and differences in the international behavior of democracies and autocracies recurs in the Forum section of this issue, albeit in the context of international commerce rather than war and peace. (The Forum section is where critiques of, or commentaries on, articles previously published in the APSR appear. As noted in our Instructions to Contributors (below), submissions to the Forum undergo our normal review process. If they are accepted for publication, we solicit a response from the author(s) of the original article and we try to ensure that the two pieces appear in the same issue.) In “Political Regimes and International Trade: The Domestic Difference Revisited,” Xinyuan Dai takes issue with an analysis of the impact of political regimes on trade barriers that appeared in these pages (Edward Mansfield, Helen V. Milner, and B. Peter Rosendorff, “Free to Trade: Democracies, Autocracies, and International Trade,” APSR 94 [June 2000]: 305–321). Recalculating the results after modifying what she considers a problematic component of that analysis, Dai concludes that trade barriers between pairs of democracies are higher than Edward D. Mansfield, Helen V. Milner, and B. Peter Rosendorff predict, and that barriers between democracies are not always lower than barriers between democracies and autocracies. In their response (“Replication, Realism, and Robustness: Analyzing Political Regimes and International Trade”), Mansfield, Milner, and Rosendorff contend that Dai's alteration of their model renders it less realistic and less robust than their original model.
Politics, in Harold Lasswell's formulation, is the process of determining “who gets what, when, how.” One answer to the question of “Who gets what?” has been that, in an effort to secure their existing political base, decision-makers reward their core supporters by allocating resources to them. A very different answer has been that decision-makers, secure in the knowledge that their core supporters have nowhere else to turn, instead use the resource allocation process to try to expand their political base. Capitalizing on a rare opportunity to test these competing interpretations, Matz Dahlberg and Eva Johansson (“On the Vote Purchasing Behavior of Incumbent Governments”) analyze uniquely suitable data from a “natural experiment” involving a temporary grants program in Sweden. Drawing on this evidence, Dahlberg and Johansson challenge widely held assumptions about the benefits of winning elections, and, thus, provide an intriguing answer to Lasswell's question.
Students of political attitudes and electoral behavior will find much of interest in this issue. One potentially major contribution is Eric Plutzer's analysis of the sources of voter turnout (“Becoming a Habitual Voter: Inertia, Resources, and Growth in Young Adulthood”). Plutzer begins with the simple but powerful idea that voting and nonvoting are matters of habit, and he develops this idea by focusing on voter turnout over the life course. Young adults confronting their first opportunity to vote have not yet gotten into the habit of voting. They tend not to vote at the first opportunity, and having begun as nonvoters, they tend to remain nonvoters in subsequent elections. Their habitual nonvoting eventually gives way, though, to habitual voting, the basic question being how quickly the transition from one habit to the other occurs. In analyzing the pace of this transition, Plutzer integrates within his developmental perspective many factors that have previously been shown to promote or discourage turnout, thereby providing students of electoral behavior with a more inclusive framework from which to analyze voting and nonvoting.
Another broadening of focus is accomplished by Paul Allen Beck, Russell J. Dalton, Steven Greene, and Robert Huckfeldt in “The Social Calculus of Voting: Interpersonal, Media, and Organizational Influences on Presidential Choices.” Though with exceptions ranging back to the first survey-based studies of voting in the 1940s, voting has generally been analyzed as if it were the act of an isolated individual, even though it obviously occurs within, and is inevitably shaped by, a complex social context. Employing an imaginative combination of data sources, Beck et al. gauge the impacts on vote choice of interpersonal discussion, media reports and editorials, and involvement in political party activities and other secondary organizations, along with personal traits that are standard predictors of vote choice. The result is a study that melds meticulous data collection with sound data analysis and, returning to a neglected theme in electoral studies, sheds new light on how social intermediaries affect vote choice.
One particular aspect of the social context of mass opinion and political behavior, media content, serves as the centerpiece of Nicholas A. Valentino, Vincent L. Hutchings, and Ismail K. White's “Cues that Matter: How Political Ads Prime Racial Attitudes During Campaigns.” Valentino, Hutchings, and White investigate how subtle racial cues embedded in televised campaign ads influence voters' decision-making processes and lead them to endorse certain candidates. The issue is whether, even though explicitly racist campaign appeals have become rare, campaigners can succeed by “playing the race card” unobtrusively, activating racial attitudes through the use of carefully “coded” communication strategies. The answer that Valentino, Hutchings, and White provide not only does much to clarify the impact of campaign ads, but also speaks to the persistence of what Gunnar Myrdal termed “an American dilemma.”
It is not only the news and editorial matter and the advertisements that the media carry that can shape mass political attitudes and behavior. In the irresistibly titled “Sex, Lies, and War: How Soft News Brings Foreign Policy to the Inattentive Public,” Matthew A. Baum argues that media coverage of foreign policy crises on entertainment-oriented programs such as The Oprah Winfrey Show or on “soft” news-oriented programs such as Dateline is likely to reach segments of the public that do not pay much attention to standard news coverage. Taking coverage of the 1998 U.S. missile strikes against suspected terrorist sites in Afghanistan and Sudan as the case in point, Baum shows that types of coverage that political scientists have ignored can broaden public access to information and thereby enhance public understanding of major policy issues.
Political theorists from John Stuart Mill to Jurgen Habermas have depicted communication among diverse groups as enhancing understanding, mutual tolerance, and even identification and affinity. When communication occurs across social groups, it has the potential to organize disparate groups into “crosscutting” social networks. This notion has informed several influential works, including Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone and Jon Elster's edited volume Deliberative Democracy, which in turn have sparked debates about whether exposure to different viewpoints actually promotes understanding and tolerance. In “Cross-Cutting Social Networks: Testing Democratic Theory in Practice,” Diana Mutz begins to fill this gap by analyzing survey and experimental data. Mutz's findings have direct implications for our understanding of how discourse and communication affect political understanding and toleration.
Although the ability of dissatisfied citizens to turn incumbents out of office is widely seen as critical to the health of representative democracy, do the enormous electoral advantages that incumbent members of Congress enjoy make it possible for them to disregard their constituents' wishes? Analyzing House election outcomes over four decades, Brandice Canes-Wrone, David W. Brady, and John F. Cogan probe the link between members' ideological extremity and their performance in their bids for reelection. The results they report in “Out of Step, Out of Office: Electoral Accountability and House Members' Voting” provide a more solid empirical foundation than has previously been available for understanding the connection between what members of Congress do and how their constituents respond.
The link between incumbents and officeholders also serves as the focus of “Coordination and Policy Moderation at Midterm,” by Walter R. Mebane, Jr., and Jasjeet S. Sekhon. The technical level of this article is sufficiently high that many readers will find it hard going (in a restaurant this menu item would carry a four-chili pepper designation). However, those who persevere will be rewarded with some intriguing new insights. Among its several contributions, Mebane and Sekhon's “strategic coordination” interpretation provides a rather different account of the sources of divided government than can be found in interpretations based on “surge and decline” or “cognitive Madisonianism.”
INSTRUCTIONS TO CONTRIBUTORS
General Considerations
The APSR strives to publish scholarly research of exceptional merit, focusing on important issues and demonstrating the highest standards of excellence in conceptualization, exposition, methodology, and craftsmanship. Because the APSR reaches a diverse audience of scholars and practitioners, authors must demonstrate how their analysis illuminates a significant research problem, or answers an important research question, of general interest in political science. For the same reason, authors must strive for a presentation that will be understandable to as many scholars as possible, consistent with the nature of their material.
The APSR publishes original work. Therefore, authors should not submit articles containing tables, figures, or substantial amounts of text that have already been published or are forthcoming in other places, or that have been included in other manuscripts submitted for review to book publishers or periodicals (including on-line journals). In many such cases, subsequent publication of this material would violate the copyright of the other publisher. The APSR also does not consider papers that are currently under review by other journals or duplicate or overlap with parts of larger manuscripts that have been submitted to other publishers (including publishers of both books and periodicals). Submission of manuscripts substantially similar to those submitted or published elsewhere, or to part of a book or other larger work, is also strongly discouraged. If you have any questions about whether these policies apply in your particular case, you should discuss any such publications related to a submission in a cover letter to the Editor. You should also notify the Editor of any related submissions to other publishers, whether for book or periodical publication, that occur while a manuscript is under review by the APSR and which would fall within the scope of this policy. The Editor may request copies of related publications.
If your manuscript contains quantitative evidence and analysis, you should describe your procedures in sufficient detail to permit reviewers to understand and evaluate what has been done and, in the event that the article is accepted for publication, to permit other scholars to carry out similar analyses on other data sets. For example, for surveys, at the least, sampling procedures, response rates, and question wordings should be given; you should calculate response rates according to one of the standard formulas given by the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Standard Definitions: Final Dispositions of Case Codes and Outcome Rates for RDD Telephone Surveys and In-Person Household Surveys (Ann Arbor, MI: AAPOR, 1998). This document is available on the Internet at http://www.aapor.org/ethics/stddef.html. For experiments, provide full descriptions of experimental protocols, methods of subject recruitment and selection, subject payments and debriefing procedures, and so on. Articles should be self-contained, so you should not simply refer readers to other publications for descriptions of these basic research procedures.
Please indicate variables included in statistical analyses by capitalizing the first word in the variable name and italicizing the entire variable name the first time each is mentioned in the text. You should also use the same names for variables in text and tables and, wherever possible, should avoid the use of acronyms and computer abbreviations when discussing variables in the text. All variables appearing in tables should have been mentioned in the text and the reason for their inclusion discussed.
As part of the review process, you may be asked to submit additional documentation if procedures are not sufficiently clear; the review process works most efficiently if such information is given in the initial submission. If you advise readers that additional information is available, you should submit printed copies of that information with the manuscript. If the amount of this supplementary information is extensive, please inquire about alternate procedures.
The APSR uses a double-blind review process. You should follow the guidelines for preparing anonymous copies in the Specific Procedures section below.
Manuscripts that are largely or entirely critiques or commentaries on previously published articles will be reviewed using the same general procedures as for other manuscripts, with one exception. In addition to the usual number of reviewers, such manuscripts will also be sent to the scholar(s) whose work is being criticized, in the same anonymous form that they are sent to reviewers. Comments from the original author(s) to the Editor will be invited as a supplement to the advice of reviewers. This notice to the original author(s) is intended (1) to encourage review of the details of analyses or research procedures that might escape the notice of disinterested reviewers; (2) to enable prompt publication of critiques by supplying criticized authors with early notice of their existence and, therefore, more adequate time to reply; and (3) as a courtesy to criticized authors. If you submit such a manuscript, you should therefore send as many additional copies of their manuscripts as will be required for this purpose.
Manuscripts being submitted for publication should be sent to Lee Sigelman, Editor, American Political Science Review, Department of Political Science, The George Washington University, 2201 G Street N.W., Room 507, Washington, DC 20052. Correspondence concerning manuscripts under review may be sent to the same address or e-mailed to apsr@gwu.edu.
Manuscript Formatting
Manuscripts should not be longer than 45 pages including text, all tables and figures, notes, references, and appendices. This page size guideline is based on the U.S. standard 8.5 × 11-inch paper; if you are submitting a manuscript printed on longer paper, you must adjust accordingly. The font size must be at least 11 points for all parts of the paper, including notes and references. The entire paper, including notes and references, must be double-spaced, with the sole exception of tables for which double-spacing would require a second page otherwise not needed. All pages should be numbered in one sequence, and text should be formatted using a normal single column no wider than 6.5 inches, as is typical for manuscripts (rather than the double-column format of the published version of the APSR), and printed on one side of the page only. Include an abstract of no more than 150 words. The APSR style of embedded citations should be used, and there must be a separate list of references at the end of the manuscript. Do not use notes for simple citations. These specifications are designed to make it easier for reviewers to read and evaluate papers. Papers not adhering to these guidelines are subject to being rejected without review.
Use endnotes rather than footnotes; again, like all other text, endnotes are to be double-spaced and in 11-point font. Place tables and figures (on separate pages and only one to a page) at the back of the manuscript with standard indications of text placement, e.g., [Table 3 about here]. If your paper is accepted for publication, you will be required to submit camera-ready copy of graphs or other types of figures. Instructions will be provided.
For specific formatting style of citations and references, please refer to articles in the most recent issue of the APSR. For unusual style or formatting issues, you should consult the latest edition of The Chicago Manual of Style. For review purposes, citations and references need not be in specific APSR format, although some generally accepted format should be used, and all citation and reference information should be provided.
Specific Procedures
Please follow these specific procedures for submission:
- You are invited to submit a list of scholars who would be appropriate reviewers of your manuscript. The Editor will refer to this list in selecting reviewers, though there obviously can be no guarantee that those you suggest will actually be chosen. Do not list anyone who has already commented on your paper or an earlier version of it, or any of your current or recent collaborators, institutional colleagues, mentors, students, or close friends.
- Submit five copies of manuscripts and a diskette containing the word-processed version of the manuscript. Please ensure that the paper and diskette versions you submit are identical; the diskette version should be of the fully identified copy (see below). Please review all pages of all copies to make sure that all copies contain all tables, figures, appendices, and bibliography mentioned in the manuscript and that all pages are legible. Label the diskette clearly with the (first) author's name and the title of the manuscript (in abridged form if need be), and identify the word processing program and operating system.
- To comply with the APSR's procedure of double-blind peer reviews, only one of the five copies submitted should be fully identified as to authorship and four should be in anonymous format.
- For anonymous copies, if it is important to the development of the paper that your previous publications be cited, please do this in a way that does not make the authorship of the submitted paper obvious. This is usually most easily accomplished by referring to yourself in the third person and including normal references to the work cited in the list of references. In no circumstances should your prior publications be included in the bibliography in their normal alphabetical location but with your name deleted. Assuming that text references to your previous work are in the third person, you should include full citations as usual in the bibliography. Please discuss the use of other procedures to render manuscripts anonymous with the Editor prior to submission. You should not thank colleagues in notes or elsewhere in the body of the paper or mention institution names, web page addresses, or other potentially identifying information. All acknowledgments must appear on the title page of the identified copy only. Manuscripts that are judged not anonymous will not be reviewed.
- The first page of the four anonymous copies should contain only the title and an abstract of no more than 150 words. The first page of the identified copy should contain (a) the name, academic rank, institutional affiliation, and contact information (mailing address, telephone, fax, e-mail address) for all authors; (b) in the case of multiple authors, an indication of the author who will receive correspondence; (c) any relevant citations to your previous work that have been omitted from the anonymous copies; and (d) acknowledgments, including the names of anyone who has provided comments on the manuscript. If the identified copy contains any unique references or is worded differently in any way, please mark this copy with “Contains author citations” at the top of the first page.
No copies of submitted manuscripts can be returned.
ELECTRONIC ACCESS TO THE APSR
Back issues of the APSR are available in several electronic formats and through several vendors. Except for the last three years (as an annually “moving wall”), back issues of the APSR beginning with Volume 1, Number 1 (November 1906), are available on-line through JSTOR (http://wwwjstor.org/). At present, JSTOR's complete journal collection is available only via institutional subscription, e.g., through many college and university libraries. For APSA members who do not have access to an institutional subscription to JSTOR, individual subscriptions to its APSR content are available. Please contact Member Services at APSA for further information, including annual subscription fees.
Individual members of the American Political Science Association can access recent issues of the APSR and PS through the APSA website (www.apsanet.org) with their username and password. Individual nonmember access to the online edition will also be available, but only through institutions that hold either a print-plus-electronic subscription or an electronic-only subscription, provided the institution has registered and activated its online subscription.
Full text access to current issues of both the APSR and PS is also available on-line by library subscription from a number of database vendors. Currently, these include University Microfilms Inc. (UMI) (via its CD-ROMs General Periodicals Online and Social Science Index and the on-line database ProQuest Direct), Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) (through its on-line database First Search as well as on CD-ROMs and magnetic tape), and the Information Access Company (IAC) (through its products Expanded Academic Index, InfoTrac, and several on-line services [see below]). Others may be added from time to time.
The APSR is also available on databases through six online services: Datastar (Datastar), Business Library (Dow Jones), Cognito (IAC), Encarta Online Library (IAC), IAC Business (Dialog), and Newsearch (Dialog).
The editorial office of the APSR is not involved in the subscription process to either JSTOR for back issues or the other vendors for current issues. Please contact APSA, your reference librarian, or the database vendor for further information about availability.
BOOK REVIEWS
All books for review should be sent directly to the APSR Book Review Editors, Susan Bickford and Greg McAvoy. The address is Susan Bickford and Gregory McAvoy, American Political Science Review Book Review Editors, Department of Political Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB No. 3265, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3265. E-mail: bickford@email.unc.edu; gemcavoy@uncg.edu.
If you are the author of a book you wish to be considered for review, please ask your publisher to send a copy to the APSR Book Review Editors per the mailing instructions above. If you are interested in reviewing books for the APSR, please send your vita to the Book Review Editors; you should not ask to review a specific book.
OTHER CORRESPONDENCE
The American Political Science Association's address, telephone, and fax are 1527 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036, (202) 483-2512 (voice), and (202) 483-2657 (fax). E-mail: apsa@apsanet.org. Please direct correspondence as follows.
- Information, including news and notes, for PS:
- Dr. Robert J-P. Hauck, Editor, PS
- E-mail: rhauck@apsanet.org
Circulation and subscription correspondence (domestic claims for nonreceipt of issues must be made within four months of the month of publication; overseas claims, within eight months):
EXPEDITING REQUESTS FOR COPYING APSR AND PS ARTICLES FOR CLASS USE AND OTHER PURPOSES
Class Use
The Comprehensive Publisher Photocopy Agreement between APSA and the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) permits bookstores and copy centers to receive expedited clearance to copy articles from the APSR and PS in compliance with the Association's policies and applicable fees. The general fee for articles is 75 cents per copy. However, current Association policy levies no fee for the first 10 copies of a printed artide, whether in course packs or on reserve. Smaller classes that rely heavily on articles (i.e., upper-level undergraduate and graduate classes) can take advantage of this provision, and faculty ordering 10 or fewer course packs should bring it to the attention of course pack providers. APSA policy also permits free use of the electronic library reserve, with no limit on the number of students who can access the electronic reserve. Both large and small classes that rely on these articles can take advantage of this provision. The CCC's address, telephone, and fax are 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400 (voice), and (978) 750-4474 (fax). This agreement pertains only to the reproduction and distribution of APSA materials as hard copies (e.g., photocopies, microfilm, and microfiche).
The Association of American Publishers (AAP) has created a standardized form for college faculty to submit to a copy center or bookstore to request copyrighted material for course packs. The form is available through the CCC, which will handle copyright permissions.
APSA also has a separate agreement pertaining to CCC's Academic E-Reserve Service. This agreement allows electronic access for students and instructors of a designated class at a designated institution for a specified article or set of articles in electronic format. Access is by password for the duration of a class.
Please contact your librarian, the CCC, or the APSA Reprints Department for further information.
APSR Authors
If you are the author of an APSR article, you may use your article in course packs or other printed materials without payment of royalty fees and you may post it at personal or institutional web sites as long as the APSA copyright notice is included.
Other Uses of APSA-Copyrighted Materials
For any further copyright issues, please contact the APSA Reprints Department.
INDEXING
Articles appearing in the APSR before June 1953 were indexed in The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. Current issues are indexed in ABC Pol Sci; America, History and Life 1954–; Book Review Index; Current Contents: Social and Behavioral Sciences; EconLit; Energy Information Abstracts; Environmental Abstracts; Historical Abstracts; Index of Economic Articles; Information Service Bulletin; International Index; International Political Science Abstracts; the Journal of Economic Literature; Periodical Abstracts; Public Affairs; Recently Published Articles; Reference Sources; Social Sciences and Humanities Index; Social Sciences Index; Social Work Research and Abstracts; and Writings on American History. Some of these sources may be available in electronic form through local public or educational libraries. Microfilm of the APSR, beginning with Volume 1, and the index of the APSR through 1969 are available through University Microfilms Inc., 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 (www.umi.com). The Cumulative Index to the American Political Science Review, Volumes 63 to 89: 1969–95, is available through the APSA.
