Our prior editorial note offered some thoughts to authors about what kind of manuscripts are great fits for Perspectives: work on any topic that transcends narrow niches of knowledge and links to broad questions about politics or political science as a discipline. In this note, we would like to continue our message to authors with some more description of our review process. We do this in the spirit of transparency and especially to make more explicit what some call the “hidden curriculum” of unstated norms and practices about academic publishing.
After authors submit a manuscript, Perspectives managing editor Jennifer Boylan checks that the submitted files follow our general guidelines, including that the manuscript file does not include author names. She then assigns internal review of the anonymous manuscript to two members of our editorial team: one coeditor-in-chief and one editorial assistant who specializes in the appropriate subfield. The two team members each carefully read and discuss the anonymized manuscript in a weekly meeting. The norm is to read all manuscripts assigned within a weekly period such that a decision is reached within approximately 10 days of initial submission.
Perspectives’ special charge as a unique American Political Science Association journal aiming to embody a “political science public sphere” is to feature work that speaks to a large and general cross-subfield disciplinary audience. While we take this into account in determining the fit of a manuscript, our most important criterion in judging any submitted work is its quality. When we judge that a manuscript does not fit the scope and aims of Perspectives, we are thinking chiefly in terms of the work’s empirical, theoretical, or conceptual innovation and contribution, as well as its methodological rigor and care. Based on this evaluation, we decide whether to send the paper out for external review. In the case of research articles that we judge would be better reworked as a more focused and concise intervention, we might also reach a third decision, and invite the authors to revise and resubmit the paper as a reflection essay.
As we mentioned in our last editorial note, we want Perspectives to be a positive part of submitting authors’ intellectual trajectories, whether or not they publish in the journal. To that end, when we communicate to authors that we have decided not to send a manuscript out for review, we do not simply focus on the article’s general fit for the journal’s aims and scope. Rather, our goal is to craft letters that offer substantive feedback and suggestions for improvement. In this way, we hope that authors will benefit from comments from two critical and engaged readers as they continue to develop their work.
We learn authors’ identities only after we have decided whether to send a manuscript out for external review, and reveal those names only for the purposes of selecting reviewers who have no conflicts of interest with any of the paper’s authors. If either coeditor recognizes a conflict of interest—for instance, if the article was submitted by a friend, university affiliate, or coauthor—we transfer the anonymized manuscript to the other coeditor for handling. If both editors have a conflict of interest, we ask a member of our editorial board to make the initial decision on whether to send the manuscript out for review. If the manuscript proceeds to external review, the same board member remains involved throughout all subsequent stages of the review process.
There is no algorithm to pinpoint the fit of a given manuscript, whether in terms of topic, contribution, or quality. However, building on the procedures established by previous Perspectives editors, we are diligent in adhering to rules aimed at evaluating every submitted manuscript with care and minimizing potential bias in our decision making. At the same time, we know that our process is just one facet of a much larger picture; who chooses to submit their work to Perspectives and how reviewers assess manuscripts also play crucial roles in determining what ultimately gets published. Engaging in ongoing conversations with members of our profession, we are actively exploring ways to enhance every aspect of the publication process, including improving diversity and inclusion. We look forward to sharing insights from these discussions in future editorial notes.
Women, Representation and Politics
This issue’s first special section shines a spotlight on a topic deserving of more disciplinary attention: the intersection of gender and politics in general, and of women and politics in particular. The special section’s five articles take on some of the most important topics in political science, such as political institutions, representation, law, partisanship, violence, and communication, and examine how they shape women’s lives, rights, and political possibilities. In doing so, they apply a range of concepts, theories, and methods to illuminate questions related to women and also use women’s experiences as cases to test and develop concepts, theories, and methods in novel ways.
Opening the section, Mikael Persson, Wouter Schakel, and Anders Sundell take on a question that is as simple as it is essential: are women’s policy preferences underrepresented compared to those of men? Analyzing an original dataset covering four decades and 43 countries, they answer in the affirmative. Their findings suggest that much of women’s representation is “accidental” insofar as it is a byproduct of the high correlation between men’s and women’s preferences. When they diverge, policy typically aligns with the preferences of men. At the same time, underrepresentation is mitigated by high levels of female labor-market participation and of descriptive representation. The mitigating effect of these contextual factors has significant policy implications insofar as it highlights avenues that polities can pursue to achieve more equal representation.
Anna Gunderson and Laura Huber also explore questions of representation but apply them to another sphere of governance: policing. Using periodic data on 9,500 law enforcement agencies between 1987 and 2016, they find that increasing women’s representation in the police is associated with increases in rape report rates, confirming expectations that female victims perceive female officers as more sympathetic, trustworthy, and likely to take them seriously. At the same time, there is no relationship between increased women’s representation in the police and rape arrest rates, suggesting that the masculine, hierarchical, and complex nature of police investigations impede translating reports into actual punishment of these crimes. Study of this justice gap provides insights into how descriptive female representation may be limited by institutional culture, practices, and procedures, as well as legal, political, and budgetary factors that are beyond female officers’ immediate control.
A key factor mediating citizens and representation in democratic contexts is political parties, and Mirya R. Holman and Nathan P. Kalmoe use the critical case of the #MeToo movement to shed light on partisan dynamics. Connecting insights into issue ownership, issue evolution, and conflict extension, they find that rapid shifts in partisanship can occur when elites signal stark differences on a political issue and citizens update their views based on those signals. The authors show that the 2016 presidential election and subsequent events produced persistent partisan differences in prioritization of sexual misconduct, leading to a cascade of changes in the views of party followers, partisan affect, and party loyalty and switching. #MeToo thus sheds light on both slow-moving and rapid shifts in partisan realignment, as well as the key role of elite messaging and conduct in party reputations on this issue.
Sexual misconduct, like the question of rape reporting examined by Gunderson and Huber, highlights the political significance of violence against women. Kaitlin N. Sidorsky and Wendy J. Schiller note that Native American women are more at risk of domestic violence than any other demographic in the United States. Moreover, Native American women are uniquely lacking in government protection because tribal nations have been functionally prohibited from prosecuting non-Native offenders, who comprise the bulk of domestic violence abusers on their lands. The 2013 Violence Against Women Act created Special Domestic Violence Criminal Jurisdictions to rectify this inequity, but fewer than 10% of eligible tribal nations have adopted the program. Assessing an original dataset, the authors attribute varied rates in adoption of these courts to factors related to population, fiscal capacity, grant support, and self-governance arrangements. While new federal policies thus offer a tool to protect women’s human security, the authors elucidate how lack of implementation continues to leave many vulnerable to abuse.
Another way that violence against women affects politics is when violence is directed against politicians, specifically. While previous studies have focused primarily on the effect of violence in making women leave politics, Sandra Håkansson crafts a more expansive theoretical framework to gauge the gendered costs of violence for three forms of political representation: descriptive, substantive, and symbolic. Testing this framework with interview and survey data on Swedish women and men politicians, she finds that violence has some impact on gender diversity by depressing women’s political ambition. In addition, violence foments masculine coded ideals for candidates, requiring women to do more to prove their suitability for elected office. Violence also imposes barriers to policy influence as women politicians, more than men, divert time and energy away from their policymaking tasks in order to take measures against violence and also select out of policy debates for fear of violence. This research demonstrates how violence harms women’s political representation even when women are not directly and personally targeted, encouraging continued investigation of these nuanced effects with varied research strategies and data sources.
These rich and varied works reveal how women affect and are affected by different kinds of politics. They deepen understanding about how political structures and practices impact women in specific ways while also expanding understanding about how these structures and practices function for all populations, regardless of gender. Engaging with a range of literatures, these studies thus contribute to multiple research programs in political science and simultaneously advance an agenda for further work on the crucial yet neglected field of women’s political lives.
Democracy in an Era of Democratic Erosion
The second special section of this issue brings together a set of papers that explore the contemporary functioning of democracy from diverse perspectives and at multiple levels of analysis. These studies investigate individuals’ views and behaviors, from their very understanding of democracy to their political tolerance and support for free speech and democratic norms. They also examine how major societal changes, such as immigration or aging populations, impact these crucial aspects of political behavior. Tackling questions about other pillars of democracy, the section also investigates the views of public servants and the evolution of democratic institutions.
In the context of global concern over democratic recession, accurate measurement of individuals’ support for democracy is crucial. Hannah S. Chapman, Margaret C. Hanson, Valery Dzutsati, and Paul DeBell explore the meaning of democracy in the eyes of ordinary citizens and its impact on their expressed support for democratic systems. Using cross-national survey data, the study reveals significant variation in how individuals understand democracy both across and within countries. Moreover, the authors find that distinct understandings of the term “democracy” are associated with varying levels of support for democratic systems. The study raises important questions about conventional measures of democratic attitudes and paves the way for further research into both the sources and consequences of varied understandings of democracy.
Taking on another concern with democratic values, Andrew J. Bloeser, Tarah Williams, Candaisy Crawford, and Brian M. Harward turn to the United States. Relying on a national representative survey, the authors consider when Americans express a preference for unelected political experts who do not engage in debates or compromise. They find that this choice is not necessarily motivated solely by desire to avoid discomfort with political disagreement or a preference for expedite political processes. Another important impetus is support for strong leaders willing to defend their population group or way of life—even at the expense of democratic norms. These results raise concerns about citizens’ desire for expedient governance and call for more research on its origins.
Further exploring Americans’ values, a study by Dennis Chong, Jack Citrin, and Morris Levy investigates how support for free speech has changed in recent decades. Relying on various data sources, the authors find that tolerance for offensive speech about social identities such as race, gender, and religious groups has decreased since the 1970s. Furthermore, they find that the relationship between tolerance, on the one hand, and ideology, education, and age, on the other, has changed. The authors argue that at the core of these shifts lies a clash between the values of equality and freedom. The study concludes that these evolving patterns of political tolerance have profound implications for the scope of permissible debate in contemporary American politics.
Christopher Claassen spotlights other questions related to identity in a challenge to a prevailing narrative that associates immigration with the erosion of democratic values. Based on analysis of longitudinal data on 30 European countries, Claassen finds that immigration does not undermine trust in national political institutions, satisfaction with one’s democracy, or support for democracy in the long run. Under certain circumstances, immigration may even increase support for democracy. These results hold when considering various measures of democratic values and immigration. By suggesting that immigration does not turn national political cultures against democracy, the study has implications for several bodies of work that typically argue that diversity has a detrimental impact on democratic values by increasing the likelihood of conflict, eroding social capital, decreasing trust in political institutions, or spurring conservative backlash that translates into higher support for far-right and populist parties.
In their reflection piece, Yosuke Buchmeier and Gabriele Vogt turn to the effect of a different kind of demographic change in liberal democracies: older populations. Focusing on a case study of Japan, the authors analyze three types of effects of aging on democratic systems: higher participation of aging voters and the marginalization of younger voters, overrepresentation of the aging population given the dominance of elderly lawmakers, and adoption of policies that favor the aging majority. In addition to assessing these three effects of aging on democracy, the study discusses some of their normative implications for intergenerational equality and representation. The authors call for more debate on these questions, as well as their impact on social sustainability.
Chappell Lawson’s reflection delves into another concern about democratic erosion: political targeting, which entails the misuse of the state apparatus against political opponents. Lawson identifies several factors that make civil servants more likely to carry out the improper, and often illegal, orders of political leaders. These factors include bureaucrats’ views on their obligation to uphold the rule of law, the perceived professional risk of refusing improper orders, and their attitudes toward political leaders. The author also discusses the conditions under which political targeting may lead to democratic breakdown. Lawson emphasizes the critical role of term limits, constrained appointment powers, robust legislative oversight of the executive branch, and formalized bureaucratic procedures in mitigating this threat.
Shifting from public servants to political parties, Fernando Casal Bértoa, Zsolt Enyedi, and Martin Mölder study the relationship between party institutionalization (PI) and party system institutionalization (PSI). Although these two concepts are clearly distinct in theoretical studies, empirical research tends to conflate them. The authors argue that PI and PSI should be measured separately and develop new indicators to do so. Leveraging an extensive dataset of European countries, the study describes temporal trends in both phenomena, revealing a more pronounced trend of deinstitutionalization at the party level compared to the system level. The authors also show that PI tends to precede PSI, challenging the traditional view that PSI is the primary driver of PI. The study’s findings carry significant policy implications, suggesting that fostering robust parties is essential to promoting institutionalization and democracy.
Gideon Rahat further examines political parties by addressing their evolving character in democracies in an age of personalized politics. Rahat proposes a new classification of political parties that accounts for the changing power balance between individual politicians and party entities. This typology, including personalized-decentralized, collegial, and personalized-centralized party types, offers a nuanced vocabulary to describe and analyze contemporary political parties. The article opens new avenues for research on the connections between party types and factors such as ideology, age, or size, as well as the consequences of different party types on both politicians and voter behavior. It also encourages ongoing examination of the relationship between party dynamics and political phenomena such as personalization, populism, and democratic backsliding.
Closing this section, Till Weber sheds light on another critical democratic institution: midterm elections. Weber proposes two mechanisms through which voters can influence federal policy: by supporting the out-party to counteract the president’s policies (“balancing”) and by using their votes to signal dissatisfaction to the president (“voice”). Relying on micro and macro data for all House elections from 1956 through 2018, the study shows how both mechanisms can shape individual voting and electoral outcomes. The study has implications for our understanding of congressional elections, public polling, and for research on policy-oriented voting more broadly, both in the United States and elsewhere.
Taken together, these papers propose new concepts, craft novel arguments, and provide new data to enhance our understanding of how democracies function and how individuals’ democratic values and behaviors have changed over time. In so doing, each paper also contributes unique insights to the broader conversation about the challenges that democracies face in the contemporary world.
Other Articles
This issue’s remaining articles feature cutting-edge data, methods, and theory to generate insights on a range of questions important for politics and political science today. Keena Lipsitz, Grigore Pop-Eleches, and Graeme B. Robertson contribute to and complicate research on political party polarization and the COVID-19 pandemic. They show that local norms mattered at least as much as partisanship in shaping Americans’ attitudes and behaviors toward public health measures such as mask wearing. A combination of survey and experimental data demonstrates that Republicans and independents exposed to information about increased mask usage in their state report a stronger intention to wear masks than those not exposed to such information. Analysis of Google mobility data confirms that respondents’ perceptions of local norms are indeed shaped by what happens around them and not merely by partisanship itself. Their findings demonstrate that, while place-specific social pressures have larger effects on independents than on strong partisans, partisanship does not lead people to ignore their social contexts. Neglecting the importance of such contextual factors can lead to oversimplified understandings of citizens’ choices and poor public policy.
Félix Krawatzek and George Soroka also examine norms, but in a very different empirical and theoretical context. Studying the case of Russians’ beliefs about the USSR’s involvement in World War II, the authors examine mass-level perception of historical narratives and when they tolerate or instead favor punishing violations of a historical norm. Fielding two vignette experiments, the authors find that discursive context is important for assessing reactions to transgressive historical statements. In addition, states’ legitimacy affects whether mnemonic legislation is obeyed. Although foreigners’ criticism of a historical norm only increases support for that norm, the populace does not accept norms unthinkingly. In the Russian case, for example, people vary in both how they perceive the past and on whether they believe that dissenting views deserve to be heard.
Norms and state interests also come to the fore in Dong Jung Kim’s study of the United States’ economic engagement with China from 1994 to 2015 as a case with which to rethink conventional interpretations of international relations theory. Some realists, criticizing US policy as liberal folly that facilitated China’s ascendence, have argued that the United States should instead have prioritized slowing China’s growth. Against this view, Kim levies two arguments. First, to the degree that liberalism encouraged economic relations with China, it represented only one strand of the liberal tradition; democratic peace liberalism, by contrast, would oppose economic engagement with an oppressive, human-rights violating regime. Second, structural realism can also be understood to favor engagement with a strategic competitor when nonengagement would cause relative losses in material power. Kim’s reasoning showcases how different paradigms can offer similar prescriptions based on distinct rationales, and hence be fruitfully combined to explain puzzles in the interstate realm.
Finally, Dongwook Kim and Paul Nolette note that in 1947, only one advanced capitalist and one developing country had specialized courts for constitutional review. By 2019, 82 countries around the world had adopted that institution, nearly half of them in Europe. What explains the global, yet Eurocentric, spread of these constitutional review mechanisms? Event history analysis of 172 countries over 72 years reveals that common law countries are less likely to establish constitutional courts than their civil law counterparts. In addition, the Council of Europe’s European Commission for Democracy through Law has catalyzed the spread of constitutional courts, especially in Europe. While existing literature has thus far concentrated on electoral politics or world culture, these findings thus demonstrate how domestic and international legal institutions critically shape the global “judicialization of politics.”
