Celebrating 100th Issue of Politeia: on Journal’s Past and Future

This work represents the views of the prominent Russian political scientists about the past and the future of Politeia. O.Gaman-Golutvina identifies several dimensions that together, from her point of view, define the face of Politeia and allow the journal to fulfill the mission of a development institution. A.Melville pays attention to the continuity and dynamics in the development of the journal and outlines a number of promising directions for its future. According to B.Makarenko, the main distinguishing feature of Politeia is that it has always been a community rather than just a journal. M.Ilyin draws attention to the meaning of the word πολιτεία, which became the title of the journal, suggesting that it is this title that turned into a compass that allowed the journal to simultaneously focus on political philosophy and sociology of politics. R.Turovsky views Politeia as a mirror of the contemporary Russian politics and its evolution rather than just one of the leading Political Science journals in Russia. According to A.Akhremenko, the key feature of Politeia that sets it apart from other journals is a sense of balance, an equilibrium at the intersection of methods, problems and meanings. F.Aleskerov talks about Politeia’s platform for publishing works on mathematical modeling in politics as one of the journal’s advantages and delineates several thematic blocks within this area, which, in his opinion, should appear on the pages of the journal. O.Malinova draws attention to Salmin Award, established in 2005 in memory of A.Salmin, the journal’s founder, considering this award one of the traditions that contributes to the development of the Russian professional community of political scientists.

Political Science Scholarship on the Middle East: A View from the Journals

ABSTRACT Based on an original dataset of all articles on the Middle East in major political science journals during the past two decades, we assess trends in publishing on the region to explore whether it remains underrepresented in political science and how the field has evolved. We focus on the evolution of the total share of Middle East and North Africa (MENA)-focused articles, research topics, methods employed, and patterns of authorship by gender. The proportion of MENA-focused articles has increased, particularly after the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, but remains strikingly low. With respect to topics and methods, research on the Middle East is increasingly integrated in mainstream political science, with articles addressing core disciplinary debates and relying increasingly more on statistical and experimental methods. Yet, these shifts may come at the expense of predominantly qualitative research, and primary topics may reflect the priorities of Western researchers while underplaying the major concerns of Middle Eastern publics.

Geographical Coverage in Political Science Research

We describe and analyze patterns in the geographical focus of political science research across more than a century. Using a new database of titles and abstracts from 27,690 publications in eight major political science journals from their inception, we demonstrate that, historically, political scientists concentrated their studies on a limited number of countries situated in North America and Western Europe. While a strong focus on Western countries remains today, we detail how this picture has changed somewhat over recent decades, with political science research becoming increasingly “globalized.” Still, several countries have received almost no attention, and geographical citation patterns differ by subfield. For example, we find indications of a greater focus on the United States and large Western European countries in international relations than in comparative politics publications. We also analyze several correlates of a country being the focus of political science research, including the country’s predominant languages, income, population size, democracy level, and conflict experience, and show systematic variation in the geographical focus of research. This unequal focus, we argue, has important implications regarding the applicability of extant descriptive and causal claims, as well as the development of theories in political science.

Something New on the Western Front: Twenty Years of Interest Group Research (1999–2018)

In a book published in 1998, Baumgartner and Leech argued that interest group research was characterized by “elegant irrelevance.” Ten years later, Beyers and colleagues linked this to a number of conceptual, methodological and disciplinary barriers which render(ed) the accumulation of knowledge in this bulk of literature difficult. Are those same challenges still slowing down the study of interest groups and lobbying? The main aim of this article is to review all interest group scientific articles published in the top 50 political science journals between 1999 and 2018 in order to answer this question. Our results show a growing community focusing on many themes, preferring quantitative approaches, and analyzing more and more case studies. Interest group research has never before been so lively.

Can We Do Better? Replication and Online Appendices in Political Science

Replicability in political science is on the rise, as disciplinary journals have been placing a growing emphasis on data access and research transparency (DA–RT) practices and policies. As a result, nearly every article that is published today in leading political science journals offers an online appendix that includes data, code, and methodological explanations necessary for replication. While these developments are laudable, many appendices still do not enable satisfactory replication because they are inaccessible, compartmentalized, and difficult to understand. In this article and in its accompanying online appendix, we demonstrate this problem and make the case for more accessible and comprehensive appendices whose contribution can fulfill and go beyond mere replicability. We propose several ways in which authors and journals can produce better appendices, namely, by making appendices more intuitive, integrated, and standardized, and by choosing an adequate online platform on which to create and host the appendix.

Revisiting the Presence of Women in Political Science Journal Editorial Positions

ABSTRACTIn 2010, an analysis of the top 50 political science journals showed that women were reasonably well represented as editors, associate editors, and board members compared to their numbers as senior faculty at PhD-granting institutions. As the presence of women in the profession has increased, have women kept up in these editorial positions? Overall, the data from 2018 suggest that they have. Although women are still significantly underrepresented as editors and associate editors at journals with small editorial staffs, they are well represented at those with medium-sized and large staffs. The proportion of women as board members also has kept pace with the proportion of female senior faculty at PhD-granting institutions, especially at the top five journals in the profession. There is still significant variation among journals but little change in their rankings: journals with the highest proportion of women as editors, associate editors, and board members in 2010 continued to lead the way in 2018.

How Many Citations to Women Is “Enough”? Estimates of Gender Representation in Political Science

ABSTRACTRecent studies identified gendered citation gaps in political science journal articles, with male scholars being less likely to cite work by female scholars in comparison to their female peers. Although journal editors, editorial boards, and political scientists are becoming more aware of implicit biases and adopting strategies to remedy them, we know less about the proper baselines for citations in subfields and research areas of political science. Without information about how many women should be cited in a research field, it is difficult to know whether the distribution is biased. Using the gender distribution of membership in professional political science organizations and article authors in 38 political science journals, we provide scholars with suggested minimum baselines for gender representation in citations. We also show that women represent a larger share of organization members than the authors in sponsoring organizations’ journals.