In our most recent issue (November 2010), one thing stood out: The list of referees whom we thanked. Not only were their numbers great (some 1500), they were a veritable “who's who” of our profession, were more international and of more varied perspectives than ever before, and—we have to remind ourselves—none of them received a dime for their services. Almost all of them wrote thorough, careful, and helpful reviews and thus served the community of scholars selflessly. We are often drawn into longer correspondence with them, to explore further points they have raised or to discuss disagreement among referees, and we are all repeatedly impressed by their seriousness, dedication, and openness to contrary views. We also hear again and again from authors—yes, even ones whose articles we turn down—how greatly they have been helped by the referees' comments. We all owe these reviewers a large debt of gratitude; their work is at the core of our scholarly and scientific community.

On a less happy note, we continue to experience some very late or ultimately non-responsive referees. We urge those referees who are not sure they can complete the review in time to decline, rather than accept and then run far over deadline—or, if unforeseen circumstances arise, to let us know so that we may assign another referee. And we welcome authors' inquiries about delay, which often spur us (and dilatory referees) into action.

Finally, we want to acquaint our broader readership with an initiative the Lead Coeditor has taken, together with Colin Elman, to try to remedy the continuing dearth of qualitative and interpretive submissions to (and hence appearances in) this Review. In the latest issue of the Newsletter of the Organized Section on Qualitative and Multimethod Research, which Elman heads, a joint invitation went out to scholars in these traditions to submit their best work to the APSR. That they have done so in such small numbers over the past few editorships, including this one, remains a cause for concern in a journal that seeks to further conversation among all students of politics, and indeed among social scientists more broadly. That issue of the Newsletter was distributed also—because of its importance—to other relevant sections, including that on Politics and History. We repeat the invitation here: We want, and would be gratified to receive, a broader variety of submissions than we now do.

IN THIS ISSUE

Four articles in this issue analyze questions of authoritarianism and authoritarian leadership; six address problems in voting, representation, and the “quality” of politicians; and two consider international anarchy and/or global justice.

Authoritarianism, leadership, and resources. Our doubtless controversial lead article, by Stephen Haber and Victor Menaldo, calls into question the now almost universally accepted thesis that a “resource curse” fosters authoritarian rule. Much as others have done with the commonly accepted link between democracy and economic development, Haber and Menaldo try to show, in “Do Natural Resources Fuel Authoritarianism? A Reappraisal of the Resource Curse” that the link between natural resources and authoritarianism holds only in the cross-section, hardly at all (or, indeed, is sometimes reversed) in appropriate time-series analysis with country fixed effects. In other words, at any one time the resource-abundant countries tend to be more authoritarian, but a given country's becoming more resource-abundant does not make it more authoritarian. Their thesis and findings open an important new conversation, which we trust will continue in these pages.

In “The Tragedy of the Nomenklatura: Career Incentives and Political Radicalism during China's Great Leap Famine,” James Kai-sing Kung and Shuo Chen look at the opposite side of the authoritarian coin: How not abundance, but dearth, affects incentives among authoritarian leaders. Examining the excessive provincial grain procurements that precipitated China's catastrophic famine during the failed “Great Leap Forward,” Kung and Chen find that the biggest grain levies fell on those provinces governed by alternate (rather than full) members of the Party's Central Committee. These aspiring candidates for the privileged and prestigious Central Committee, they argue, had strong incentives to prove their ideological fervor by commandeering high quantities of grain, even where doing so inflicted starvation on the home province. This struck some of our readers as an important elaboration on Amartya Sen's famous hypothesis that democratic leaders have strong incentives to avoid famines. Obviously authoritarian ones have weaker incentives to do so, but aspirants to leadership positions within authoritarian systems have (perhaps) the weakest incentives of all.

Are we correct in assuming that not only tyranny, but corruption, is endemic to poorer countries; and, if so, why? In “Bribes, Lobbying, and Development,” Bård Harstad and Jakob Svensson consider two obvious alternative paths for groups that seek to influence regulation in their favor: Lobby for a general change of a law or rule, or induce (i.e., bribe) appropriate officials to bend the existing rule in one's own favor. In a simple dynamic model—they show—the level of bribery will decrease, and that of lobbying increase, as the country becomes richer. At the same time, because extensive bribery inhibits economic development, their model suggests a way in which a “poverty trap” can prevail in poorer countries.

Finally under this rubric, do all governments inevitably revert to authoritarian measures when faced by terrorism, and does more authoritarian government make citizens more secure? Yes and no, argues Tiberiu Dragu in “Is There a Tradeoff between Security and Liberty? Executive Bias, Privacy Protections, and Terrorism Prevention.” Yes, antiterrorist agencies will always seek to limit liberty (in the example explored here, they will want to restrict citizens– rights to privacy); but no, in a carefully specified game between the antiterrorist agency and a stylized terrorist group, restricting privacy will not reduce terrorist attacks. Worse, even if it knows this, the antiterrorist agency will still pursue restrictions on citizens' liberties; and — as and when terrorist attacks do increase—the antiterrorist agency's influence on policy, because of its presumed expertise, will expand. While the age of great-power nuclear terror eventually yielded vitally important game-theoretic insights that transformed nuclear strategy (Kahn, Brodie, Wohlstetter, Schelling—to name only a few), so far the age of high-profile terrorist attacks has elicited few comparable insights from game theorists. Dragu's article begins what, in our view, should be a long line of insightful reasoning on the subject, and thus also opens an important new conversation in our discipline.

Representation, voting, and “quality” of politicians. We have known for some time that more competitive constituencies yield a better supply of public goods, but do they also attract higher-quality politicians? Yes, answer Vincenzo Galasso and Tommaso Nannicini in “Competing on Good Politicians.” Deploying both a theoretical model and convincing empirical evidence, they show: (a) that, when parties must choose between high-quality (expert) candidates and ones who are inexpert but loyal, and when voters care both about ideology and quality, parties wind up allocating the high-quality candidates to the most competitive districts; and (b) that, in Italian parliamentary elections, more competitive constituencies attract better-educated, previously higher-income,¹ and more experienced candidates. Moreover, although parties diverge significantly in their average candidate's quality, in competitive districts they converge on trying to offer the highest-quality candidates. Galasso and Nannicini's article, in our view, sheds important new light on why “vanishing marginal” districts are problematic for democracy: They elicit not only worse policies but (as we may already have suspected) more pliant, amateurish, and ill-educated politicians.

Entirely on point in this context, Lisa Disch inquires, in “Toward a Mobilization Conception of Democratic Representation,” how scholars should respond when they find that empirical research disappoints their expectations about democratic responsiveness—or, more particularly, about citizens' (rather than, as above, politicians') competence. Disch contends that the disappointment stems more from scholars' exaggerated (if often concealed) normative expectations than from citizens' evidently context-dependent preferences—let alone from any deficiencies of mass democratic politics generally. Neatly combining empirical with normative insights, Disch also argues for a more reflexive measure of democratic legitimacy.

One traditional measure of democratic legitimacy is participation—or, in voting, turnout. We have long known that costly voting depresses turnout, but by how much? In “Turning Out to Vote: The Costs of Finding and Getting to the Polling Place,” Henry E. Brady and John E. McNulty take advantage of a natural experiment in Los Angeles County, where for one election in 2003 precincts were consolidated into larger units: Voters had not only to figure out where their new polling place was, but to travel on average a sixth of a mile farther to reach it. Search and transportation effects combined to reduce turnout by about 3 per cent, and Brady and McNulty establish that difficulty in locating the new polling place had by far the larger impact. Democratic turnout was depressed more than Republican, and older voters (who often then chose to vote absentee) were less affected than younger ones. While there was no evidence of partisan manipulation in this case, the possibility certainly arises in others: As V. O. Key had already noticed, conservatives usually find it in their interest to raise barriers to voting.

While students of politics increasingly take clever advantage of natural experiments, field experiments — in which researchers can directly manipulate variables of interest—remain rarer, and perhaps rarest of all in U.S. elections. Nonetheless, in “How Large and Long-lasting Are the Persuasive Effects of Televised Campaign Ads? Results from a Randomized Field Experiment,” Alan S. Gerber and his associates² were able, in the 2006 Texas gubernatorial race, to persuade the incumbent to deploy two million dollars' worth of television advertising in a randomized experiment and to finance follow-on tracking polls that sampled about a thousand voters each day. Consistent with other recent results, and with psychological priming theory, they find strong but short-lived effects of television advertising. The unusual design and extent of the experiment, however, provide much stronger evidence for these effects than we have previously had.

Spatial models of politics, beginning with Black and Downs, have proven notoriously difficult to test, not least because so much depends on identifying the “status quo” against which new policy proposals are pitted. And crisply testing “pivotal” against “party” models of legislative process proves correspondingly daunting. In “Parties, Pivots, and Policies: The Status Quo Test,” Jesse Richman offers an alternative way of identifying the status quo—through a combination of legislators' survey and roll-call responses that can specify the given chamber's median preference, which permits more exact testing. Using this procedure to identify status quo points in both chambers of the 103rd to 110th Congresses, Richman consistently finds greater support for a “party cartel” model, but one in which party leaders pressure pivotal members to block policy changes that the parties oppose. By better identifying the status quo, Richman's article opens new possibilities for the testing of spatial models more generally.

Sometimes, however, the status quo changes, and voters are left to react. That has particularly been true of U.S. workers displaced by imports and offshoring. But do those workers vote differently as a result, and do programs to cushion the blow—by temporary assistance and retraining—have any effect? In “Costly Jobs: Trade-related Layoffs, Government Compensation, and Voting in U.S. Elections,” Yotam Margalit uses plant-level evidence over an eight-year period to show that the answer to both questions is “yes.” Workers are far more likely to vote against incumbents when job losses can be attributed to foreign competition, and particularly so when the losses result from offshoring. That effect on voting decreased, however, when workers were certified to receive transitional government assistance. If sustained by subsequent research, Margalit's findings will have important implications for policy makers, and for our thinking about political resistance to expanding trade.

International anarchy and global justice. The post-Westphalian world is one of sovereign states that co-exist in anarchy. But how then do we regard people who live (or appear to live) outside sovereign states, in a position of “natural freedom”? For Hobbes, Pat Moloney contends in “Hobbes, Savagery, and International Anarchy,” both the ancient Germanic tribes and the native peoples of the Americas, lacked sovereigns and hence were “savages” and “pirates” (i.e., lived by plunder). Indeed, it was to these peoples' seeming anarchy (and not to any inherent intellectual inferiority) that Hobbes attributed their lack of learning and science—arts that could flourish only in the settled conditions of the sovereign state. Hobbes's view, Moloney argues, powerfully influenced subsequent theorists of international law, especially Vattel: On the assumption that only sovereigns were bound by the “law of nations,” states had no duty to respect those rules in their dealings with “savages.” This received picture of “savage anarchy,” and of license for sovereign states in their dealings with peoples outside states, persisted well into the twentieth century.

For Hobbes, the sovereign had unconstrained coercive power, and no subject of one sovereign owed a duty to another. Liberal theorists, by contrast, have sought principles of justice that would both constrain and authorize coercion. They have developed standards of socioeconomic justice that adumbrate our duties to our fellow citizens. (When, for example, may the coercive power of taxation be used to support the least well-off among us?) Liberals, however, have followed Hobbes in denying that principles of socioeconomic justice can be applied globally, or even outside the sovereign state's borders. Rejecting this view, Laura Valentini, in “Coercion and (Global) Justice,” distinguishes systemic from interactional global coercion (the latter occurring only between states) and argues that a theory of global justice must offer principles that apply to both spheres. Any plausible justification of systemic coercion, Valentini proposes, must rest on principles of global socioeconomic justice; and taking this broader view offers also a better account of the applicability of justice generally.

INSTRUCTIONS TO CONTRIBUTORS

The American Political Science Review (APSR) publishes scholarly research of exceptional merit, focusing on important issues and demonstrating the highest standards of excellence in conceptualization, exposition, methodology, and craftsmanship. A significant advance in understanding of politics—whether empirical, interpretive, or theoretical—is the criterion for publication in the Review. Because the APSR reaches a diverse audience, authors must demonstrate how their analysis illuminates or answers an important research question of general interest in political science. For the same reason, authors must strive to be understandable to as many scholars as possible, consistent with the nature of their material.

The APSR publishes original work. Submissions should not include tables, figures, or substantial amounts of text that already have been published or are forthcoming in other places. In many cases, re-publication of such material would violate the copyright of the other publisher. Neither does the APSR consider submissions that are currently under review at other journals or that duplicate or overlap with parts of larger manuscripts submitted to other publishers (whether of books, printed periodicals, or online journals). If you have any questions about whether these policies apply in your case, you should address the issues in a cover letter to the editors or as part of the author comments section during online submission. You should also notify the editors of any related submissions to other publishers, whether for book or periodical publication, during the pendency of your submission's review at the APSR—regardless of whether they have yet been accepted. The editors may request copies of related publications.

The APSR uses a double-blind review process. You should follow the guidelines for preparing an anonymous submission in the “Specific Procedures” section that follows.

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 the article is accepted for publication—to permit other scholars to replicate your results and to carry out similar analyses on other datasets. With surveys, for example, provide sampling procedures, response rates, and question wordings; 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 (Lenexa, KS: AAPOR, 2006).³ For experiments, provide full descriptions of experimental protocols, methods of subject recruitment and selection, payments to subjects, debriefing procedures, and so on. In any case involving human subjects, the editors may require certification of appropriate institutional review and/or conformity with generally accepted norms.⁴

The strength of evidence necessary for publication of quantitative empirical findings cannot be captured by any single criterion, such as the conventional .05 level of statistical significance. The journal's co-editors—following the evolving disciplinary standard among reviewers—will evaluate the strength of findings on a range of criteria beyond statistical significance, including substantive significance, theoretical aptness, the importance of the problem under study, and the feasibility of obtaining additional evidence.

In addition, authors of quantitative or experimental articles are expected to address the issue of data availability. You must normally indicate both where (online) you will deposit the information that is necessary to reproduce the numerical results and when that information will be posted (such as “on publication” or “by [definite date]”). You should be prepared, when posting, to provide not only the data used in the analysis but also the syntax files, specialized software, and any other information necessary to reproduce the numerical results in the manuscript. Where an exception is claimed, you should clearly explain why the data or other critical materials used in the manuscript cannot be shared, or why they must be embargoed for a limited period beyond publication.

Similarly, authors of qualitative, observational, or textual articles, or of articles that combine such methods with quantitative analysis, should indicate their sources fully and clearly enough to permit ready verification by other scholars, including precise page references to any published material cited and clear specification (e.g., file number) of any archival sources. Wherever possible, use of interactive citations is encouraged. Where field or observational research is involved, anonymity of participants will always be respected; but the texts of interviews, group discussions, observers' notes, etc., should be made available on the same basis (and subject to the same exceptions) as with quantitative data.

Articles should be self-contained; you should not simply refer readers to other publications for descriptions of these basic research procedures.

Please indicate variables included in statistical analyses by italicizing the entire name of the variable—the first time it is mentioned in the text—and by capitalizing its first letter in all uses. You should also use the same names for variables in text, tables, and figures. Do not use acronyms or computational abbreviations when discussing variables in the text. All variables that appear in tables or figures should have been mentioned in the text, standard summary statistics (n, mean, median, standard deviation, range, etc.) provided, and the reason for their inclusion discussed. However, tables and figures should also be comprehensible without reference to the text (e.g., in any figures, axes should be clearly labeled). Please bear in mind also that neither the published or online versions of the Review normally can provide figures in color; be sure that a grayscale version will be comprehensible to referees and readers.

You may be asked to submit additional documentation if procedures are not sufficiently clear. If you advise readers that additional information is available on request, you should submit equally anonymous copies of that information with your manuscript as “supplemental materials.” If this additional information is extensive, please inquire about alternate procedures.

Manuscripts that, in the judgment of the co-editors, are largely or entirely critiques of, or commentaries on, articles previously published in the Review will be reviewed for possible inclusion in a forum section, using the same general procedures as for other manuscripts. Well before any publication, however, such manuscripts will also be sent to the scholar(s) whose work is being addressed. The author(s) of the previously published article will be invited to comment to the editors and to submit a rejoinder, which also will be peer-reviewed. We do not publish rejoinders to rejoinders.

The APSR accepts only electronic submissions (at www.editorialmanager.com/apsr). The web site provides detailed information about how to submit, what formatting is required, and what type of digital files may be uploaded. Please direct any questions to the journal's editorial offices at apsr@polisci.ucla.edu

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://www.jstor.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.

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):

• Sean Twombly,

• Director of Member Services

• E-mail: membership@apsanet.org

• Reprint permissions:

• E-mail: Rights@cambridge.org

• Advertising information and rates:

• Advertising Coordinator,

• Cambridge University Press

• E-mail: journals_advertising@cambridge.org

EXPEDITING REQUESTS FOR COPYING APSR AND PS ARTICLES FOR CLASS USE AND OTHER PURPOSES

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 Bibliography of Book Reviews of Scholarly Literature in the Humanities and Social Sciences; International Bibliography of Periodical Literature in the Humanities and Social Sciences; 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.