In this essay I outline what I see as the challenges, trends and opportunities facing political science after the pandemic. In particular, the essay focuses on the importance of political science education in addressing the challenges to democracy we now face, and the need to rethink political science education at all levels, k-12, undergraduate and graduate education. It ends with a description of the presidential task force on “Rethinking Political Science Education” and the establishment of an APSA standing committee on civic education.

Does a rebel party’s identity change impact its political success after civil wars end? Most work on political parties examines why parties change identities but does not examine the effects of such changes. In this article I examine whether identity change (indicated by party name changes and the official renunciation of violence) affects the political success of rebel parties in terms of seat shares won in the legislature, and inclusion into the executive. Using an original data set on rebel party identity change, I conduct both Prais–Winsten and logit regression analyses and find that although name changes have little impact on political success, renunciation of violence significantly increases the likelihood of both increased seat shares and inclusion in the executive. This finding has important implications regarding the impact of identity change and the transformation of rebel groups into political parties.

How international in scope is publishing in political science? Previous studies have shown that the top journals primarily publish work by scholars from the United States and, to a lesser extent, other global-north countries. However, these studies used published content and could not evaluate the impact of the review process on the relative absence of international scholars in journals. This article evaluates patterns of submission and publication by US and international scholars for the American Political Science Review—one of the most selective peer-reviewed journals in the discipline. We found that scholars from the United States and other global-north countries are published approximately in proportion to submissions but that global-south scholars fare less well. We also found that scholars affiliated with prestigious universities are overrepresented, irrespective of geographic location. The article concludes with observations about the implications of these findings for efforts to internationalize the discipline.

Is the peer-review process at academic journals gendered? The answer to this question has important implications for the advancement of women in the political science profession. However, few studies have had access to data that can evaluate whether the peer-review process is gendered. We investigate this for papers submitted to the American Political Science Review across two editorial teams to identify trends over time. We evaluate overall differences across gender, but we also present more fine-grained data to evaluate gender differences across subfield, methodology, and submitting author’s institutional affiliation and academic rank. Furthermore, we show that prior service as a reviewer is associated with a higher acceptance rate for first-time submitters. We demonstrate that the review process is not gendered. Women’s share of submissions and acceptances has risen but remains lower than their presence in the discipline.

Recently, the importance of research transparency via replication studies has been greatly discussed in most of the social sciences, political science included. Indeed, as Gherghina and Katsanidou (2013) and Freese (2007) note, to some extent, the discussion has been prompted by the tremendous changes in publishing in the past decade or so. With the enormous expansion in data availability and instant publication made possible by the Internet, there now are many opportunities to verify the findings presented in the discipline's major journals. “Replication, replication” has not only become the mantra for political science, but for economics, psychology, and quantitative sociology as well. These developments opened a debate on how to best “guard the high standards or research practice and allow for the maximum use of current knowledge for the further development of science” (Gherghina and Katsanidou 2013, 1; for similar sentiments see King 1995).

We report here the journal's operations during the year from July 1, 2011, to June 30, 2012, (when the Review was headed by the UCLA editorial team) and the period July 1, 2012 to January 1, 2013, or the first six months when the University of North Texas team has been at the helm. In this report, we also summarize the transition process from UCLA to the University of North Texas (UNT).