Notes from the Editor

Each year at this time it is my pleasure to acknowledge the contributions that hundreds of reviewers have made to the APSR and, through it, to the profession. The individuals whose names are listed in “APSR External Reviewers 2003–2004” later in this issue served as reviewers—some of several papers—between mid-August, 2003 and mid-August, 2004. They have my sincere gratitude for their service, sine qua non.

It is also my pleasure to acknowledge the contributions of the six Editorial Board members who have served as the APSR's Executive Committee for the past three years: Neta Crawford, Darren Davis, Robert Goodin, Kirstie McClure, James Morrow, and Sven Steinmo. These worthies have taken considerable time away from their own endeavors to serve as the first line of defense when the beleaguered editor needs various forms of help, of which their wise counsel has stood out as much needed and much appreciated. For their generous contributions, I am greatly in their debt. They now return to the ranks of the Editorial Board. As they do so, a new shift, six-strong, replaces them on the Executive Committee. Over the next three years, I look forward to working with Ruth Grant, Edward Mansfield, K.C. Morrison, Thomas Remington, M. Elizabeth Sanders, and Robert Stein in this capacity; each has earned my gratitude for serving on the Editorial Board and now for being willing to serve on the Executive Committee. I am also pleased to announce the appointment of two new Editorial Board members, James Adams and Daniel Treisman, on whose reviewing versatility and prowess I have relied heavily during the past three years—good deeds for which they will now be appropriately punished. Finally, the changing of seasons has also brought a new crop of Editorial Assistants to our operation: Jennifer Deets, Beth Franker, Lee Michael (a recidivist), and Jenny Schulze. Our best wishes and thanks for valuable services rendered go to the departing Todd Andrews and Lan Chu.

IN THIS ISSUE

The first three articles in this issue have little in common temporally, theoretically, or methodologically. They share, however, an underlying interest in spatial distribution, and more particularly in the de jure or de facto borders and boundaries that separate people; hence this issue's cover graphic of apples, oranges, and other produce divided into adjoining bins. In “The Political Salience of Cultural Difference: Why Chewas and Tumbukas are Allies in Zambia and Adversaries in Malawi,” Daniel N. Posner confronts this theme head-on. Posner's point of departure is the international border that splits two African tribes into different countries. His research question is how this imposed barrier shapes ethnic politics in each country. Drawing on his extensive field research, Posner provides new theoretical and empirical perspectives on issues that, though of long standing, remain especially timely in venues far removed from Zambia and Malawi.

Despite their numerous dissimilarities, Claudine Gay's analysis has much in common with Posner's. In Gay's study, the “bins” into which people are divided—neighborhoods rather than nation-states—are smaller and not enshrined in law, but the research question is exactly the same. Prior research on the link between where Americans live and their attitudes concerning racial issues has focused largely on the racial composition of the residential area. American residential life continues to be highly racially segregated, but neighborhoods are becoming more and more diverse economically. This economic diversity is the central element of Gay's analysis of African Americans' attitudes on racial issues. The results presented in “Putting Race in Context: Identifying the Environmental Determinants of Black Racial Attitudes” have potentially far-reaching implications for understanding the impact of shifting residential patterns and the future of political consensus and group-based mobilization among African Americans.

Colin Elman's “Extending Offensive Realism: The Louisiana Purchase and America's Rise to Regional Hegemony” focuses on a vastly different case of borders and boundaries—the transfer of territory from one nation-state to another. The story of the Louisiana Purchase has often been told. Elman revisits it not merely because it was a fascinating and crucial episode in American and world history, but because it constitutes such a promising site for testing a prominent interpretation of international relations. How could the French have failed to foresee America's rise to regional hegemony? If they did foresee it, why did they fail to counter it? Elman contends that instead of responding to a rising hegemon by acting as a balancer, per standard offensive realism accounts, French officials were preoccupied by local concerns, which took priority over any structural incentive to balance. Thus a vast expanse of the North American continent was moved into a different bin and thus, too, Elman argues, a widely held proposition about the conduct of international relations must be modified or extended to account for such situations.

An ongoing debate about the impact of International Monetary Fund programs in Africa echoes Elman's analysis in some respects—particularly by focusing on the interplay between domestic and international considerations. In “The Political Economy of IMF Lending in Africa,” Randall W. Stone investigates the determinants of IMF lending practices. Stone downplays the importance of economic factors and instead invokes interactions among domestic and international political factors, such as the probability of a coup and relations with major powers, to explain both program interruptions and punishment intervals. This analysis provides new perspective on the debate that is currently raging over IMF programs and their effectiveness.

Comparative and international policy economy also provide the context for the next article, Cathie Jo Martin and Duane Swank's “Does the Organization of Capital Matter? Employers and Active Labor Market Policy at the National and Firm Levels.” Since Marx, the prevailing tendency has been to view the interests of big business and big labor as incompatible. Based on a combination of statistical analyses spanning 18 nations and interviews with representatives of firms in two nations, Martin and Swank provide a powerful challenge to conventional wisdom by showing that where businesses are organized along societal corporatist lines, business and labor share an interest in the extension of effective social programs.

As in the Martin-Swank article, business firms occupy center stage in Daniel P. Carpenter's “Protection Without Capture: Product Approval by a Politically Responsive, Learning Regulator.” Political scientists and economists have long held that government regulation favors large, well-established firms because their tremendous political influence enables them to “capture” the market and impede entry by smaller, newer competitors. Carpenter imagines an alternative political world where policymaking is free from political influence. In “Protection Without Capture: Product Approval by a Politically Responsive, Learning Regulator,” he considers whether factors other than “capture,” such as the regulatory agency's reputation among consumers, can account for some of the advantages that large, established firms enjoy.

Rather than regarding stability and change as phenomena that require different modes of explanation, in “A Theory of Endogenous Institutional Change” Avner Greif and David D. Laitin propose a common theoretical framework for analyzing both. The key to this enterprise is the bridge they build between historical institutionalist and game theoretic approaches, which enables them simultaneously to address the questions of how and why institutions change and how and why they persist within changing environments. Greif and Laitin's contextual accounts of formal governing institutions in early modern Europe and of cleavage structures in the contemporary world provide backdrops for their introduction of concepts like “quasi-parameters” and “self-reinforcement.” Collectively, these concepts promise to enrich understandings of institutional dynamics and to push future analyses in new directions.

Humorous faux historical plaques that read “In 1776, nothing happened here” inadvertently raise a methodological issue that is quite serious for many political scientists: how to identify “negative” cases— nonoccurrences—in order to foster theoretically productive comparisons. For analytic purposes, researchers trying to account for, say, the outbreak of war, presumably need to isolate a set of instances in which war did not break out. But that can be an extremely tricky undertaking in the absence of clear guidelines. In “The Possibility Principle: Choosing Negative Cases in Comparative Research,” James Mahoney and Gary Goertz come to the aid of researchers beset by this issue. Whereas existing work on case selection treats the population of pertinent cases as already known, Mahoney and Goertz emphasize that the definition of the population of cases must be settled before issues concerning case selection enter the picture. By sharply differentiating the “possibility principle”—roughly speaking, the idea that the outcome of interest must have been possible for the negative case to be pertinent—from alternative ways of thinking about the issue, they contribute to a systematization of social science methodology that has important implications for researchers engaged in both quantitative and qualitative modes of analysis.

In “Political Preference Formation: Competition, Deliberation, and the (Ir)relevance of Framing Effects,” James N. Druckman brings ideas about two of the trendiest topics in the political behavior subfield—framing and deliberation—to bear on the long-running debate about the rationality of decision making. Research in the Kahneman-Tversky tradition has posed some formidable challenges to those who work in the rational choice-based tradition. By examining conditions under which framing effects do and do not occur, Druckman provides theoretical reasons and experimental grounds for not abandoning rationality as an important component of explaining political behavior. His analysis should attract considerable attention not only from political scientists, but from economists and psychologists as well, and it holds out promise for helping to integrate ideas drawn from diverse theoretical perspectives.

That Americans and citizens of other “advanced” democracies tend to be largely uninformed about political issues is well known. Rather than cursing the darkness of such ignorance, Jason Barabas offers up a potential candle of enlightenment: deliberation. The results that Barabas reports in “How Deliberation Affects Policy Opinions” suggest that people learn from new information and diverse perspectives only when they deliberate on, not merely discuss, the issues. Here, then, is a study that not only speaks to theoretical questions of intense interest to political scientists, but also offers practical applications to improve real-life public discourse.

Dovetailing with Barabas' consideration of public opinion formation, the final article in this issue focuses on another aspect of “textbook” democracy, this time from a vantage point other than the United States. Strong parties are often seen, from a “responsible parties” perspective, as providing voters with distinct and coherent programs that can be readily translated into policy. Whether that perspective is borne out in practice is less clear, however, as Brian F. Crisp, Kristin Kanthak, and Jenny Leijonhufvud establish in their analysis of the behavior of Chilean legislators. In “The Reputations Legislators Build: With Whom Should Representatives Collaborate?,” Crisp and his colleagues provide a new theoretical and methodological contribution to the study of the linkage between electoral rules and legislative decision making. This study's underlying ideas and methods should be applicable in multiple institutional settings, extending the study's significance beyond the immediate case of Chile.

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 as 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 Surveys (Ann Arbor, MI: AAPOR, 2000). This document is available on the Internet at <http://www.aapor.org/default.asp?page=survey_methods/standards_and_ best_practices/standard_definitions>. 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 letter 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 APSR 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, Washington, DC 20052. Correspondence concerning manuscripts under review may be sent to the same address or e-mailed to [email protected].

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.

For submission and review purposes, you may place footnotes at the bottom of the pages instead of using endnotes, and you may locate tables and figures (on separate pages and only one to a page) approximately where they fall in the text. However, manuscripts accepted for publication must be submitted with endnotes, and with tables and figures on separate pages at the back of the manuscript with standard indications of text placement, e.g., [Table 3 about here]. In deciding how to format your initial submission, please consider the necessity of making these changes if your paper is accepted. If your paper is accepted for publication, you will also 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:

1. 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.
2. Submit five copies of manuscripts and a diskette containing a pdf file of the anonymous version of the manuscript. If you cannot save the manuscript as a pdf, just send in the diskette with the word-processed version. Please ensure that the paper and diskette versions you submit are identical; the diskette version should be of the anonymous 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.

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BOOK REVIEWS

The APSR no longer contains book reviews. As of 2003, book reviews have moved to Perspectives on Politics. All books for review should be sent directly to the Perspectives on Politics Book Review Editors, Susan Bickford and Greg McAvoy. The address is Susan Bickford and Gregory McAvoy, Perspectives on Politics Book Review Editors, Department of Political Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB No. 3265, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3265. E-mail: [email protected].

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 Perspectives on Politics Book Review Editors per the mailing instructions above. If you are interested in reviewing books for Perspectives on Politics, please send your vita to the Book Review Editors; you should not ask to review a specific book.

OTHER CORRESPONDENCE

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Information, including news and notes, for PS:

Dr. Robert J-P. Hauck, Editor, PS

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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; Public Affairs Information Service International 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.