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chapter 26
Inventing Perspectives on Politics
Jennifer Hochschild

The invention of Perspectives on Politics provides a small but tidy example of
John Kingdon’s classic model of the politics of change in Agendas, Alternatives,
and Public Policies: problem, policy, and political streams came together in a
brief window of opportunity, helped along by some savvy policy entrepreneurs
and political brokers. As a result, an organizationally dense institution
broke with its usual practice of incremental change and moved in a new direction.
We do not yet know if a second classic model, Frank Baumgartner and
Bryan Jones’s theory of punctuated equilibria, will obtain in this case. If it
does, the journal has begun a process that is developing a momentum, institution,
constituency, and equilibrium of its own that will change the discipline
of political science.1

Origins of Perspectives
In the three years after 1998, a vague dissatisfaction about the APSA that had
been bubbling among its members under the surface for a while came sharply
into view. An array of actors understood the problem in different terms and
initially proposed different solutions to it. However, one policy proposal that
had seemed infeasible—that a new APSA journal be created—suddenly
became a realistic option, and it was soon discovered to respond to many of
the particular forms of the general dissatisfaction. None of this was automatic;
matching the problem and the policy solution required a string of actors both
in official positions of responsibility in the association and in unofficial positions
of considerable influence. But it happened, and the APSA has a new
journal, Perspectives on Politics. It remains to be seen whether the journal will in
fact resolve the dissatisfaction, in all of its disparate and even contradictory
versions, or whether the cycle must eventually begin again. But in the meantime,
the old equilibrium has been broken, and a new one is being formed and
consolidated.
The APSA office first officially noted frustration in analyzing the results of
a survey of members and former members that was conducted in July 1998.

Although response rates were very low, so the validity of the results could be
(and was) questioned, the survey revealed important concerns. Over two-fifths
of the current members who responded, and half of the former members who
responded, expressed displeasure with the American Political Science Review
(APSR); it headed the list of APSA activities and endeavors with which respondents
were unhappy.2 In the open-ended section of the survey, respondents
criticized the APSR for being “too narrow, too specialized and methodological,
and too removed from politics,” in the words of the report of the results.3
People wrote that it “‘covers one small corner of the discipline,’” that it is “‘virtually
useless for my teaching preparations and research specializations,’” and
that it is not “‘reflective of the range of research methods and approaches in
the discipline.’” (Others were more positive about the APSR, noting its increasing
methodological and substantive diversity and praising the book review
section.)
The report on the survey raised questions for the association to address.
With regard to “each ... publication: ... could it operate more effectively,
could it encompass a broader array of intellectual interests that fall under the
purview of political science? ... We should also ask what is missing that ought
appropriately to be offered by APSA. . . . In particular, we might ask ourselves
whether ... the Association ... is too narrow in its intellectual orientations.”
The report concluded that “one function of a scholarly society is to set and
sustain intellectual standards—a task of particular relevance to the leading
journal of the profession.”
Despite these suggestions, not much happened with regard to the APSA
publications portfolio during 1998 and early 1999. The issue came up several
times during the presidencies of Kent Jennings (September 1997 through
August 1998) and Matthew Holden (September 1998 through August 1999), and
the Administrative Committee and other groups discussed several models for
a new journal.4 But the association was facing budgetary problems and the
prospect of a much larger crisis if membership (and thus revenue from dues)
declined and costs continued to rise, so no one thought it feasible to consider
the expensive undertaking of starting a new journal.
But suddenly the latent dissatisfactions surfaced more urgently. Sven
Steinmo of the University of Colorado at Boulder had started a small e-mail
campaign in 1998, calling on political scientists to “take back the APSR”; he
was elected to the APSA Council in 1999 on that platform. On the Council he
found, to his surprise, “enormous diversity [and] lots of sympathy for my
idea,” including that of the new president, Robert Keohane.5 In September
1999, Keohane appointed a Strategic Planning Committee (SPC), to be chaired
by Paul Beck of Ohio State University. The committee was guided by a “Draft
Design for a Strategic Planning Process,” which had been written earlier by the
APSA’s executive director at that time, Cathy Rudder. Rudder justified a strategic
planning process in terms of the dissatisfaction and lack of knowledge
revealed by the 1998 survey, the worrisome budget trajectory, and large
changes in society. As she wrote: “Longer-term trends of generational change,
the changing environment in higher education, the possibilities offered by
the Internet, and globalization of political science ... present challenges but
also offer exciting opportunities for our future.”6 Keohane explained his support
similarly: “This proposal was motivated in part by dissatisfaction with
APSA’s publications, as well as by a general view that any organization needs,
periodically, to examine itself in a long-term perspective.”7
The SPC was asked, among other things, “to make recommendations on
the most pressing issues and critical choices that must be made, including those
pertaining to ... publications.” It worked throughout the year, frequently publicizing
its developing arguments and seeking responses from APSA members.
As PS reported, “There has been a remarkable level of member participation in
strategic planning in focus group ... , Hyde Park sessions ... , in print and
email submissions to the relevant committees, in email discussion groups,
and even the public press.”8 Its report to the Council in August 2000, “Planning
Our Future,” did not recommend creation of a new journal.9 The SPC did,
however, find “problems with the APSR that ... are sufficiently worrisome
as to suggest corrective actions be taken at this time.” These included lack of
theoretical and methodological breadth, research that is “so highly specialized
that it is inaccessible and unappealing to the general disciplinary readership,”
and the fact that it is “falling behind” technologically, especially with regard
to electronic publishing.
The SPC made several recommendations to address these problems, mainly
urging “more space for the publication of papers” through electronic publication
of articles, as well as giving readers access to peripherals such as data and
archives. It also urged the association to “provide a venue for high quality peerreviewed
essays that function to integrate cutting edge research for a broad
readership.” It considered starting a separate journal to include book reviews,
review essays, and integrative articles, but rejected the idea on the grounds of
expense and its preference for moving toward electronic publication.
Nevertheless, at least some members of the SPC “liked the idea” of a new
journal that was about to be proposed by the Publications Committee. Later
Paul Beck presented the SPC report to the APSA Council. “I voiced support for
the idea of a new journal,” he said, “feeling that I was fairly representing what
the SPC’s sentiments would be in this new situation.”10 As a participant now
recalls the situation, “The impetus [for a new journal] came from the SPC and
they were responding to the widespread feeling that the discipline was suffering
from the effects of over-specialization.”[AQ1]

Inventing Perspectives
While the SPC was considering whether an electronic APSR would solve the
problems now recognized by most of the people involved, the Publications
Committee was moving in a different direction. Chaired by Bert Rockman
of Ohio State University, it proposed at the same August 2000 Council meeting
that the APSA start a new journal. After much discussion of the focus, fea-
sibility, and timing of this endeavor, the Council unanimously approved a
motion reading:
The APSA will publish expanded book reviews and more integrative essays
no later than January 2003 in a form—electronic and/or print, in an existing
or new publication—to be decided. An ad hoc Publications Implementation
Committee, appointed by the President and approved by the Council
will be established to recommend to the Council plans to carry out this
resolution. The committee will report to the Council at its next meeting,
April 21, 2001, and will have a completed plan in place for Council approval
in time for its August 29, 2001 meeting.
The minutes recording this motion gloss it immediately with this: “By ‘integrative
essays’ the Council has in mind both essays that review the literature in
an area and articles that are less specialized than our normal research and span
larger parts of the discipline. The latter might also involve the application of
political science to questions of public policy.”11
The minutes of the Council meeting at which this action took place are
informative (and thoroughly daunting to a new editor!) about the array of
views on what the new journal should, and should not, do. Setting aside financial
and technological questions, members wanted a new journal to give sufficient
attention to policy concerns, debated whether the association’s journals
should be set in competition with one another by giving APSA members an
option on subscriptions, sought to ensure that the new journal would expand
the number of book reviews and review essays offered, encouraged broad integrative
essays, looked for ways to expand readership beyond APSA members
(or even political scientists), searched for ways to make the new journal attractive
to teachers and practitioners, queried the effects of the new journal on PS,
and raised the specter of unintended consequences for the APSR. The whole
issue was then passed to the Publications Implementation Committee (PIC),
to be chaired by Helen Milner of Columbia University.
By this point, the problem, policy, and political streams were converging,
with the assistance of some entrepreneurs and brokers. The general problem—
disaffection from the APSA and dissatisfaction with the APSR—was widely
recognized. Few people, at least among the vocal actors who have left a record,
disagreed that the problem was real and legitimate and both needed and
deserved a serious response. The 1998 survey and Steinmo’s unofficial e-mail
campaign had brought the problem to the surface, but they were catalysts
more than causes; something else would probably have generated the same
activity had they not existed.
Possibilities within the policy stream were also converging on some sort
of new journal as a critical element of the solution to the problem. As one
central figure wrote, “The big debate in 2000 was not whether to have such a
journal—there was almost unanimity on this—but whether it should be allelectronic.”
12 Some uncertainty persisted; views on the record about what was
needed ranged from “a movement ... to disestablish the APSR journal from
the Association”13 to adding pages to the APSR. But the Council’s resolution
did demonstrate a big step toward consolidating a policy response.
The political stream that made this response possible included several elements:
pressure from increasingly restive (and dues-paying!) members, intimations
of a way to finance publication of a new print journal without unduly
straining the APSA budget, willingness to consider using additional funds
from the endowment or the Trust and Development Fund if needed, a shared
perception of the need to take and to be seen taking decisive action, genuine
excitement about the intellectual possibilities of a new journal, and skillful
leadership by committee chairs, association staff, and a string of presidents.
The political stream received a big surge from the emergence soon after the
2000 Council meeting of the Perestroika movement. An anonymous “Mr. Perestroika”
sent a “manifesto” to a small number of political scientists, and it
spread rapidly through the profession. The New York Times wrote about “these
Internet guerillas who have been fomenting revolt. . . . Their target? The leaders
of their professional organization ... and its journal.”14 Rogers Smith, then of
Yale University, wrote an “Open Letter” that had collected over 225 signatories
(including myself) by the time it was published in PS in December 2000. It
urged various changes in the APSR to make it more responsive to an array of
methods or epistemological frameworks and more attentive to “the great, substantive
political questions that actually intrigue many APSA members, as well
as broader intellectual audiences.” It also called for “pursuing the suggestions
both for an electronic APSR and a separate ‘book reviews’ journal” but pointed
out that “we, the undersigned, do not represent ... any consensus on just what
should be done.”15 Sven Steinmo published a commentary in December 2000
pointing to the same problems but noting that “while there is a great deal of
agreement about the problem, there is little agreement about what to do about
this problem.” He suggested several solutions, adding that he was “not enthusiastic”
about “a separate book review journal” for fear that it “might simply be
seen as ‘second tier,’ ... [and] could allow the APSR to become even narrower.”
He continued, however, that “in defense of the proposal, taking the book
reviews out of the APSR could allow for more space and thereby longer, and
more different, articles.”16
By the fall of 2000, there was a new, energetic, and voluble list serve for
people interested in the concerns motivating Perestroika. Rogers Smith wrote
in September 2000 (on a different list serve) about the difficulty of “get[ting]
non-quantitative empirical work ... published in some top political science
journals” and the fact that “some departments value publications in those
places almost to the exclusion of all else.”17 A few months later, a participant
on the Perestroika-Glasnost list serve reported that she had accepted a nomination
as vice president of the APSA and would “keep pushing for more
democratization and change in both the major journals and in the national
association.”18 Within a single week in February 2001, a range of suggestions
for APSA journals were proffered and debated on the Perestroika list serve.
They included the following:
• “a two-journal format, one stressing work advancing formal/
quantitative technical rigor, one stressing work of substantive
interest to a wide audience”;
• “choice of journals. . . . If APSA members are permitted to vote with
their subscriptions, the results will change the universe of journals
very dramatically”;
• “subject ... the APSR ... to a quota system during a given length
of time ... after which we would hope ht at it had ‘leanred’ nondiscriminatory
practices”;
• “put the book reviews in PS”;
• “breakup by creating multiple APSR flavors ... into an APSR A, B,
C, D, etc. [which would create a] more thematically-focused and
reader-responsive mix of journals”;
• “split it in half by subfield: APSR-A for American, Theory, and
Methods ... ; and APSR-B for IR [international relations] and
Comparative”;
• “each quarterly issue could have two parts, one devoted to general
political science as is the case now but with more diversity and
openness, the other to one of the four sub-fields”; and
• “more pluralism in the selection of the editor [of the APSR] and
the editorial board.”19
And there were others. Although some endorsed the idea of a new journal,
several Perestroikans expressed skepticism. Joe Carens of the University of
Toronto summarized these concerns: “I worry about the idea of a second journal
devoted to overview and public relevance articles. . . . It may be more interesting
to read. . . . But will articles in it matter professionally in the way APSR
articles do? If an article appears in the APSR, it is harder ... to treat it as second
class. That’s why I’m for keeping a single journal and changing it.”20
While all of this was transpiring, the PIC (now operating under APSA President
Robert Jervis) developed plans to implement the Council resolution of
August 2000. Its members decided that the association’s financial situation
permitted them to recommend a new stand-alone, printed journal of the same
magnitude as the APSR. “The big breakthrough was that Cathy Rudder learned
from consultants that she was using on another project that we could increase
the price we charged to libraries if we added an additional (& valued) journal
in the package. Before then we didn’t see how we’d be able to finance it &
thought we’d have to make do with adding issues or pages to the Review, at
least at the start.”21 Substantively, the PIC agreed that the journal “would
include integrative essays, state of the discipline type essays, book reviews,
reviews of literature in other disciplines with relevance to political science,
conceptual and methodological essays, as well as a policy forum for debates on
current policy issues among other new materials.”22 The journal might also
provide “forums for debate [and] articles similar to those found in Science magazine.”
Articles would be solicited but subsequently reviewed, after extensive
consultation between authors and the journal’s editor(s). The journal would
also encourage proposals, the most likely of which would follow the same
process of editing and review as articles.
The PIC added other missions for the new journal to pursue beyond those
already canvassed in the August 2000 Council meeting. It “might increase the
visibility of the profession externally and possibly attract new members,” as
well as enable political scientists to “connect with and contribute to public
policy debates. . . . The committee stressed that it should publish a very wide
range of scholarship” while “remain[ing] distinct from the APSR” (whose new
editor, Lee Sigelman of George Washington University, was simultaneously
extending the range and accessibility of APSR articles).23
The PIC formalized those views into recommendations, which the Council
debated and accepted in principle in April 2001.24 Sixteen members agreed,
and two dissented. Soon after that, President Jervis appointed a committee,
chaired by M. Kent Jennings of the University of California–Santa Barbara, to
search for an editor or editorial team. The committee put out a call for applications
and nominations,25 and recommended candidates to the president of
the association (by then Robert Putnam) in January 2002. I was appointed editor
in March 2002 with Council approval, and the Council further approved
five associate editors in June 2002.

The Context of Perspectives
Any confluence of problem, policy, and political streams occurs within a context,
and it helps greatly if forces in that context are all tending in the same
direction. That was the case with Perspectives. Most generally, several key actors
pointed out that comparable professional associations offer their members an
array of journals that serve slightly different purposes. As the PIC noted, “All
... other social science associations ... publish more than two journals.
Although History ... publishes only two main journals, Economics offers its
members choice among zero to three journals out of the three it publishes.
At the other extreme, Sociology offers its members choice of 2 among about
8 journals that it manages.”26 Political scientists with ties to other disciplines,
especially but not only economics, found that those disciplines were greatly
strengthened internally by having several flagship journals with distinct profiles.
In addition, political scientists pointed out that they are much more
likely to use ideas and literatures from other disciplines when those disciplines
offer integrative literature reviews and articles written to be accessible to people
outside particular subfields; presumably influence could move in the
opposite direction if we, too, published articles of interest to and accessible to
people outside political science.
More particularly, several disciplines are seeking to balance journals focused
on technical reports of individual research with journals or magazines reaching
out to a wider audience. Economists pioneered this effort many years ago
with the Journal of Economic Literature and the Journal of Economic Perspectives;
those journals clearly were (and remain) models for Perspectives on Politics.27
The American Sociological Association more recently began Contexts, which
seeks to “get ... the meat and potatoes research out to the public,” in the words
of its founding editor, Claude Fischer.28 Faculty at Yale Law School have started
a nonprofit journal, Legal Affairs, which calls itself (on its home page) “the
magazine at the intersection of law and life.”29 Neither the people who created
Perspectives nor the original editorial team aimed at a predominantly nonacademic
audience, but political science is clearly joining a trend of seeking to
make scholarly research more accessible and influential beyond the academy.
Another contextual factor connects more directly with Perestroika. The
Guardian of London put it this way: “No one expected an argument about the
use of mathematical modeling and ‘rational choice theory’ in politics and economics
research journals to blow up into an academic uprising which has
spread from France to the rest of continental Europe, Britain, and north America.”
It described the emergence in France in June 2000 of the “post-autistic
economics” movement, which rejects the dominance of neoclassical economics
in favor of “a plurality of approaches adapted to the complexity of the
object studied.” And it said that after moving to Spain and Great Britain, “in
the United States the movement ignited in political science.”30 The Guardian
has many specific facts wrong in this article, but the overall point is important:
there is a broad impulse, across continents as well as disciplines, to move at
least some research in the social sciences away from the focus on “science” and
more toward a focus on “social,” variously defined in particular contexts.
But a dichotomy between would-be scientists and would-be humanists or
policy actors is too simple, even misleading intellectually as well as politically.
Helen Milner, chair of the PIC, points out:
There was a general senseh tat ... journals that reviewed and assessed hte
progress of the field in less technical terms, brought high-level theory to
bear on policy questions, and evaluated the results of a large number of
empirical papers on a single topic were much needed in political science. . . .
Indeed, the research areas most in need of such journals are often the most
technical ones, where ‘normal science’ leads to very specialized research.
Progress requires the periodic review of small, cumulative findings. I think
that many non-Perestroika scholars (and everyone on the PIC) would be
very disappointed if the new journal did not serve their needs as well.31
More pointedly, “No one in authority believed the Review ... should be ‘hard
science’ and the new journal ‘soft.’”32

Perestroika and Perspectives
So the various problem streams merged into one policy solution, and political
entrepreneurs and brokers enabled that solution to break through the old
equilibrium and jolt us into a new one. Journalists have made a direct causal
link between the emergence of Perestroika and this breakthrough. In the
words of one writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education: “Since the association
received the letter of complaint in November [2000], it has announced that
it will start a new journal.”33
That simple causal story is mistaken; the crucial decision to support publication
of “expanded book reviews and more integrative essays” was taken in
August 2000, and the PIC was well into its work of implementing that mandate
before Perestroika emerged. But a more complex and subtle causal story
is persuasive. For instance, “Criticisms of our situation in [1998 and] 1999 . . .
were crucial in moving the process forward; so in a sense some of the energy
that fueled the Perestroika movement surely was part of the whole process.” Or
“The complaints in the open letter I drafted and on the e-list ... probably
added some sense of urgency to get the new journal.” Or “Perestroika’s timing
was superb in that the movement publicized a range of views (especially on
APSA’s publications) that had already become widely (indeed, almost universally)
shared among political scientists or at least within the APSA ‘establishment.’”
34 Many streams merged to force open this window of opportunity, to
mix metaphors in a way that no editor should permit.
Some Perestroikans (like some other political scientists) remain uncertain
about how much the new journal can open up the discipline of political science
to new (or very old) epistemologies, methods, and questions, and can
bring together the scattered and even antagonistic components of our fragmented
discipline. There remains concern also that the APSR will remain the
flagship journal, and that Perspectives will occupy an honorable second place.
Those of us working on Perspectives are all too aware of the grounds for skepticism;
we can only strive to overcome them while recognizing that the journal’s
constituencies and purposes are multiple, probably overambitious, and certainly
contradictory. There is plenty of room for a first-class APSR focused on
reports of a wide array of particular empirical and philosophical endeavors,
and for a first-class Perspectives on Politics focused on broad, integrative essays
that cut across subfields or disciplinary boundaries and that bring politics and
policies back into the center of political science. The proof is in the pudding,
and settled convictions about the impact of Perspectives will necessarily be a
long time in coming.
However, I cannot resist pointing out that the new journal is publishing
excellent articles on the applicability of just war theory to the new war on
terrorism, the role of neuroscience in understanding political leadership, the
role of power in equilibrium-seeking models of rational choice, the creation of
democratic space through popular protest, and more. It publishes articles by
untenured assistant professors and occupants of named chairs, by scholars in
small liberal arts colleges and large universities, by people seeking better syllabi
and people seeking new research paradigms, by charter members of Perestroika
and opponents of it, by political scientists and the rest of the world. The
associate editors and I have solicited articles and symposia, commissioned
essays by public officials and journalists, and responded to an unending
stream of unsolicited manuscripts and proposals. Articles from Perspectives are
now being cited in more recent scholarly articles, taught in classes, and discussed
in seminars. The new journal seems to be working; how well it will fulfill
its many purposes over the long run, of course, is not for the first set of editors
to determine.
Whether Perspectives succeeds or fails depends in the end on whether political
scientists and others continue to generate excellent and exciting proposals,
papers, and responses to solicitations. As Steven Walt of Harvard University
put it in the Chronicle article on Perestroika, “You can’t fight something with
nothing. You can’t plead for tolerance without having something good to put
forward.” The editors await your best manuscripts!

Notes
1. John Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (Glenview, IL: Scott,
Foresman, 1984); Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones, Agendas and Instability in
American Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
2. That may be because it was one of the few APSA activities and endeavors
about which many respondents had an opinion; the survey showed that a lot of
people were simply unaware of most APSA services, activities, and publications.
3. “How Are We Doing? Assessments of APSA Programs by Members and Former
Members” (no author or date).
4. The most explicit proposal that I know of at that point was for a journal modeled
after Science, in which cutting-edge research would be presented to a broad
readership in ways that showed its importance while making it accessible to nonspecialists.
5. Sven Steinmo, conversation with the author, January 21, 2003.
6. Cathy Rudder, “Draft Design for a Strategic Planning Process,” www
.apsanet.org/PS/sept00/rudder.cfm.
7. Robert Keohane, e-mail to the author, August 12, 2002.
8. Robert Hauck, “Editor’s Note,” PS, December 2000, 735.
9. APSA Strategic Planning Committee, “Planning Our Future,” www.apsanet
.org/new/planning/finalreport.cfm.
10. Paul Beck, e-mail to the author, August 13, 2002.
11. “Draft Minutes, APSA Council Meeting [of August 30, 2000],” PS, December
2000, 973.
12. E-mail to the author, August 12, 2002, from a writer who wishes to remain
anonymous.
13. E-mail to author, August 17, 2002, from a writer who wishes to remain
anonymous.
14. Emily Eakin, “Think Tank: Political Scientists Leading a Revolt, Not Studying
One,” New York Times, November 4, 2000, B11.
15. “An Open Letter to the APSA Leadership and Members,” PS, December
2000, 735–37.
16. Sven Steinmo, “Perestroika/Glasnost and ‘Taking Back the APSR,’”
www.apsanet.org/new/planning/steinmo.cfm. Debates over the APSR itself are not
relevant to this chapter. To pursue that issue, see Ada Finifter, “APSR Editor
Responds,” www.apsanet.org/new/planning/apsreditor.cfm; letters by Robert
Jervis and Gregory Kasza in PS, December 2000, 737–41; Lee Sigelman, “Notes from
the (New) Editor,” American Political Science Review 96 (March 2002): viii–xvi.
17. Rogers Smith, e-mail message headed “Law and Society and Law and Courts
Post,” to Law and Courts Discussion List lawcourts-l@usc.edu, September 27, 2000.
18. Rita May Kelly, e-mail message headed “David Pion-Berlin on Theda’s Selection,”
to perestroika_glasnost_warmhome@yahoogroups.com, February 3, 2001.
19. In order, Rogers Smith, Anne Norton, Margaret Keck (two bulleted suggestions),
Timothy Luke, and Stuart Kaufman, all February 5, 2001; Lloyd Rudolph,
February 6, 2001; David Mason, February 7, 2001.
20. Joe Carens, e-mail message headed “Joseph Carens Again, ... Supports
Lloyd Rudolph Reform Agenda from Lloyd Rudolph,” to perestroika_glasnost
_warmhome@yahoogroups.com February 7, 2001.
21. E-mail to the author, August 14, 2002, from a writer who wishes to remain
anonymous.
22. APSA Publications Implementation Committee, “Discussion and Resolution
of the Publications Implementation Committee,” www.apsanet.org/new/
planning/picrecommendations.cfm.
23. Ibid.
24. “Final Minutes, APSA Council Meeting ... , April 21, 2001,” in PS, December
2001, 924. Members of the Publications Committee concurred with the PIC, but
worried that a journal of the requisite quality could not appear as early as winter
2003. The Publications Committee recommended that the journal begin no later
than winter 2005.
25. www.apsanet.org/new/planning/newjournal.cfm.
26. APSA Publications Implementation Committee, “Discussion and Resolution
of the Publications Implementation Committee,” www.apsanet.org/new/planning/
picrecommendations.cfm.
27. The PIC said that the new journal “would combine the features of the Journal
of Economic Literature with those of the Journal of Economic Perspectives” (minutes
of the Publications Committee, February 16, 2001). It also proposed that the
new journal be called the Journal of Political Science Literature, which was the name
under which the Council approved the PIC’s recommendations in April 2001.
Luckily, wiser heads intervened at some point and changed the name to Perspectives
on Politics.
28. Claude Fischer, conversation with the author, May 23, 2002, www.sfgate
.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/07/30/DD197569.DTL.
More formally, “Contexts brings the best of sociological research to the general
public in a concise, accessible, and engaging way. Contexts tells teachers, journalists,
civil servants, and policymakers about important developments in social
research” (Claude Fischer, “From the Editor,” Contexts 1 [Spring 2002]: iii).
29. www.legalaffairs.org. More formally, “Law and lawyers matter deeply in the
United States and around the world, and that literate, probing, wonderful writing
about the law is found too rarely in even the best general newspapers and magazines.
Our goal is to present this kind of writing regularly and to stir a challenging,
vibrant conversation about the law—broadly defined to include everything from
the increasingly political nature of state courts ... to the role of adoption in settling
disputes in Micronesia.” Lincoln Caplan, “Legal Affairs,” Legal Affairs, May–June
2002, http://www.legalaffairs.org/aboutus/aboutus_fromeditor.html.
30. Kurt Jacobsen, “Education: Higher: Unreal, Man: Political Scientists Have
Turned Guerillas in an Attempt to Shake Off the Stranglehold of the Dogmatic,
Unworldly Theory That Dominates Their Discipline,” Guardian, April 3, 2001, 12.
31. Helen Milner, e-mail to the author, August 18, 2002.
32. E-mail to the author, August 14, 2002.
33. D. W. Miller, “Storming the Palace in Political Science,” Chronicle of Higher
Education, September 21, 2001, 16
34. E-mail to the author, August 11, 2002; Rogers Smith, e-mail to the author,
August 15, 2002; e-mail to the author, August 12 2002. The authors of the first and
third e-mail messages quoted here wish to remain anonymous.