We present, at the end of this section, the first thorough revision of our “Instructions to Contributors” in some years. The old version had accumulated archeological layers of revision that led to unclarity of meaning and infelicity of style; and it had come to terms in only a marginal way with the changed realities of online submission and digital files. Both problems, we hope, are now substantially corrected. We also include new language on replicability and verifiability, which many readers have urged upon for some time and which, in our view, comports well with the ongoing efforts of the American Political Science Association task force (co-chaired by Arthur Lupia and Colin Elman) on these matters. We have also tried to attune our language, to the extent possible, to that already in place at such journals as the American Journal of Political Science and the Quarterly Journal of Political Science. We welcome comments and criticism, and we of course reserve the right to make further emendations in light of feedback and experience.
IN THIS ISSUE
Four of this issue's articles examine how political distance and communication affect institutions, loyalties, and outcomes. Three more advance research on partisanship, issues, and voting. Two study how representation affects patterns of public spending. Our final two take up the crucial question of what enhances or diminishes democratic citizenship.
Political distance and communication. The initial articles in this issue look at what furthers or impedes political communication and why it matters. In our lead article, “When Distance Mattered: Geographic Scale and the Development of European Representative Assemblies,” David Stasavage argues that—in an age of slow and costly communication over long distances— representative assemblies, despite their manifest advantages for revenue, credit, and economic growth, could be sustained only in geographically compact polities. In short, distance “mattered” for the supply of crucial public goods, even in this period. An original dataset that combines codings of European representative institutions with geographic information systems data on European state boundaries between 1250 and 1750 strongly supports the hypothesis, and Stasavage draws the broader implication that transaction costs severely constrain the benefits that representation can provide.
Distance, of course, need not be geographic, and, in “Economic versus Cultural Differences: Forms of Ethnic Diversity and Public Goods Provision.” Kate Baldwin and John D. Huber find that a new measure of “between-group inequality” better captures our common-sense understanding of ethnic diversity and strongly associates with (diminished) supply of public goods in a way that more conventional measures (ethnolinguistic or cultural fractionalization) do not.
In “Dynamic Public Opinion: Communication Effects over Time,” Dennis Chong and James N. Druckman establish that, in political communication, temporal distance matters. Although it has been widely accepted that contradictory messages neutralize each other, it turns out that discordant messages that arrive sequentially have quite different effects from ones that arrive together. Their experiments reveal that most respondents will credit disproportionately the more recently received of two contradictory messages, even when the interval between them is quite short. Although a few respondents (“deliberative processors”) retain and credit earlier messages, for most of us memory is fleeting: The new message makes us forget the old.
Hardly less evanescent are such seemingly ingrained rituals as funeral orations and public mourning, contends Simon Stow in “Agonistic Homecoming: Frederick Douglass, Joseph Lowery, and the Democratic Value of African American Public Mourning.” A vibrant, mobilizing, and tragic tradition of African American public mourning, established under slavery and intensified in the era of segregation and lynching, has failed to surmount racial or temporal distance. Alien or perturbing to the dominant white culture, these “homecoming” rituals of mourning also lose relevance among middle-class blacks. Echoing other recent articles in this Review, Stow locates the African American tradition in a long line of democratic and agonistic mourning that reaches from the Periclean funeral oration to Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and the Decoration Day speeches and Lincoln eulogies of Frederick Douglass. But the extent of white incomprehension and African American forgetting were manifest, Stow contends, in the brief but bitter controversy over “political” speeches at the funeral of Coretta Scott King.
Issues, partisanship, and voting. Are voters animated chiefly by partisanship, by policy, or by candidates' or parties' strengths? Can reminders of partisanship affect voting?
In multiparty democracies, policy seems to dominate partisanship in the sense that voters correctly anticipate the coalitions that will form and vote strategically to maximize the chance that their desired coalition will form (Raymond M. Duch, Jeff May, and David A. Armstrong II, in “Coalition-directed Voting in Multiparty Democracies”). But, among U.S. voters in Connecticut, a mild reminder of partisan identification in a field experiment sufficed to intensify partisanship, to affect self-reported voting behavior, and to shift preferences among candidates (Alan S. Gerber, Gregory A. Huber, and Ebonya Washington, in “Party Affiliation, Partisanship, and Political Beliefs: A Field Experiment”). In contrast to the Downsian model, neither parties nor candidates always converge on the median voter; instead, they build reputations for competence in specific policy areas (e.g., the Right in national security, the Left in strengthening welfare guarantees). Amending the classic spatial voting model to recognize this yields the insight that, in equilibrium, candidates not only do not converge but usually underplay their perceived strengths. Most voters would prefer that candidates emphasize their capabilities more (Stefan Krasa and Mattias Polborn, in “Competition between Specialized Candidates”).
Executive and legislative control of spending and policy. Although a large literature documents that representatives from single-member districts—at least in the United States—direct “pork” to their constituencies, we know less about how (or even whether) legislators use spending authority to influence larger policy issues. Also, most analyses of spending leave the powerful U.S. presidency out of the story. One powerful tool for constraining policy, it turns out, is “limitation riders,” by which Congress may forbid agencies from spending money for specific purposes. Analyzing a decade's worth of all limitation riders that constrained regulatory agencies, and two decades of variation in the volume of limitation riders, Jason A. MacDonald establishes empirically a greater congressional influence over agencies' decisions and deepens our theoretical understanding of why legislators—or, indeed, principals generally—might embrace such a tool for constraining agents' actions (“Limitation Riders and Congressional Influence over Bureaucratic Policy Decisions”).
But if representatives influence bureaucratic decisions more than we have appreciated, they may also control government outlays less than we have believed. Tracking the geographic distribution of all federal spending on domestic programs in every U.S. county and congressional district over a span of two dozen years, Christopher R. Berry, Barry C. Burden, and William G. Howell (“The President and the Distribution of Federal Spending”) find—much against current wisdom—that neither membership on an influential committee nor even belonging to the congressional majority party clearly increases the flow of outlays to a representative's home district. Instead, federal largess flows disproportionately to a member's district when her party controls the Presidency. This should hardly surprise us, the authors argue cogently, given the President's extensive (if often overlooked) powers to direct federal outlays to specific regions.
Constraining or opening democratic citizenship. Readers of Bertrand Russell's Autobiography will already be familiar with the kind of “depth experience” that Stephen K. White considers in “Fullness and Dearth: Depth Experiences and Democratic Life.” As Russell described his reaction to sitting at the deathbed of Evelyn (Mrs. Alfred North) Whitehead in 1901 while her advancing coronary disease “cut [her] off from everyone and everything by a wall of agony,” he suddenly became aware of “the unendurable loneliness of the human soul” and became “within five minutes .–.–. a completely different person,” abandoning “flippant cleverness” for “a sort of mystic illumination” and a certainty that “only the highest sort of love” could “penetrate to the core of loneliness in each person.” Russell's transformation extended not least to politics: “Having been an Imperialist, I became during those five minutes a pro-Boer and a Pacifist.”Footnote 1 Although Americans associate such experiences with religious conversion, White extends the category well beyond theistic revelation and argues that such depth experiences, far from being alien or inimical to political theory, in fact have a present-day relevance to democratic life and indeed to deliberative democracy as advocated by Jürgen Habermas. The question, for White, is how we can “cultivate” and channel such experiences to expand the role and bearing of democratic citizens.
If experiences of fullness and dearth can liberate citizens, incarceration—by definition—fetters them, but with what results for prisoners' subsequent political views and life? In “Political Consequences of the Carceral State,” Vesla M. Weaver and Amy E. Lerman seek to isolate the effects of America's rising tide of incarceration on former prisoners' citizenship, political capital, and political voice. Disentangling the specific effects of incarceration from those of socioeconomic status or criminal propensity by a careful matching strategy, they find that incarceration—by itself—substantially diminishes trust in government, political participation, and political engagement generally. The punitive efforts of the state, they conclude, must be considered in public policy along with measures that seek to alleviate poverty or isolation.
We again congratulate our authors on their contributions to the study of politics and commend their important research to the attention of our readers.
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).Footnote 2 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.Footnote 3
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
Manuscript Formatting
Manuscripts should be no longer than 50 pages (8.5 × 11 inch paper) or 45 pages (DIN A4), including text, all tables and figures, notes, references, and appendices intended for publication. Font size must be at least 12 point for all parts of the submission, including notes and references, and all body text (including references) should be double-spaced. Include an abstract of no more than 150 words. Explanatory footnotes may be included but should not be used for simple citations. Do not use endnotes. Observe all of the further formatting instructions given on our web site. Doing so lightens the burden on reviewers, copyeditors, and compositors. Submissions that violate our guidelines on formatting or length will be rejected without review.
For submission and review purposes, you may locate tables and figures (on separate pages and only one to a page) approximately where they fall in the text, but with an in-text locator for each, in any case (e.g., [Table 3 about here]).
If your submission is accepted for publication, you may also be asked to submit high resolution digital source files of graphs, charts, or other types of figures. Following acceptance, all elements within any tables submitted (text, numerals, symbols, etc.) should be accessible for editing and reformatting to meet the journal's print specifications (e.g., they should not be included as single images not subject to reformatting). If you have any doubts about how to format the required in-text citations and/or bibliographic reference sections, please consult the latest edition of The Chicago Manual of Style (15th ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003) and review recent issues of the APSR.
Specific Procedures
Please follow these specific procedures for submission:
1. Before submitting any manuscript to the APSR, download a PDF of the Transfer of Copyright Agreement from the Editorial Manager login page at http://www.editorialmanager.com/apsr and be sure its terms and requirements, as well as the permissions granted to authors under its provisions, are acceptable to you. A signed agreement will be required for all work published in this journal.
2. When you submit (at www.editorialmanager.com/apsr), you will be invited to provide a short list of appropriate reviewers of your manuscript. Do not include on this list anyone who has already commented on the research included in your submission. Likewise, exclude any of your current or recent collaborators, institutional colleagues, mentors, students, or close friends. You may also “oppose” potential reviewers by name, as potentially biased or otherwise inappropriate, but you will be expected to provide specific reasons. The editors will refer to these lists in selecting reviewers, though there can be no guarantee that this will influence final reviewer selections.
3. You will also be required to upload a minimum of two separate files.
a) An “anonymous” digital file of your submission, which should not include any information that identifies the authors. Also excluded should be the names of any other collaborators in the work (including research assistants or creators of tables or figures). Likewise do not provide in-text links to any online databases used that are stored on any personal web sites or at institutions with which any of the co-authors are affiliated. Do not otherwise thank colleagues or include institution names, web addresses, or other potentially identifying information.
b) A separate title page should include the full manuscript title, plus names and contact information (mailing address, telephone, fax, and e-mail address) for all credited authors, in the order their names should appear, as well as each author's academic rank and institutional affiliation. You may also include any acknowledgements or other author notes about the development of the research (e.g., previous presentations of it) as part of this separate title page. In the case of multiple authors, indicate which should receive all correspondence from the APSR. You may also choose to include a cover letter.
4. Please make sure the file contains all tables, figures, appendices, and references cited in the manuscript.
5. If your previous publications are cited, please do so in a way that does not make the authorship of the work being submitted to the APSR obvious. This is usually best accomplished by referring to yourself and any co-authors in the third person and including normal references to the work cited within the list of references. Your prior publications should be included in the reference section in their normal alphabetical location. Assuming that in-text references to your previous work are in the third person, you should not redact self-citations and references (possible exceptions being any work that is “forthcoming” in publication, and which may not be generally accessible to others). Manuscripts with potentially compromised anonymity may be returned, potentially delaying the review processes.
Further questions
Do not hesitate, in any cases of doubt, to consult the APSR Editorial Offices with more specific questions by telephone (310–794-1051) or by sending an e-mail to: 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
EXPEDITING REQUESTS FOR COPYING APSR AND PS ARTICLES FOR CLASS USE AND OTHER PURPOSES
Class Use
The Comprehensive Publisher Photocopy Agreement between APSA and the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) permits bookstores and copy centers to receive expedited clearance to copy articles from the APSR and PS in compliance with the Association's policies and applicable fees. The general fee for articles is 75 cents per copy. However, current Association policy levies no fee for the first 10 copies of a printed artide, whether in course packs or on reserve. Smaller classes that rely heavily on articles (i.e., upper-level undergraduate and graduate classes) can take advantage of this provision, and faculty ordering 10 or fewer course packs should bring it to the attention of course pack providers. APSA policy also permits free use of the electronic library reserve, with no limit on the number of students who can access the electronic reserve. Both large and small classes that rely on these articles can take advantage of this provision. The CCC's address, telephone, and fax are 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400 (voice), and (978) 750-4474 (fax). This agreement pertains only to the reproduction and distribution of APSA materials as hard copies (e.g., photocopies, microfilm, and microfiche).
The Association of American Publishers (AAP) has created a standardized form for college faculty to submit to a copy center or bookstore to request copyrighted material for course packs. The form is available through the CCC, which will handle copyright permissions.
APSA also has a separate agreement pertaining to CCC's Academic E-Reserve Service. This agreement allows electronic access for students and instructors of a designated class at a designated institution for a specified article or set of articles in electronic format. Access is by password for the duration of a class.
Please contact your librarian, the CCC, or the APSA Reprints Department for further information.
APSR Authors
If you are the author of an APSR article, you may use your article in course packs or other printed materials without payment of royalty fees and you may post it at personal or institutional web sites as long as the APSA copyright notice is included.
Other Uses of APSA-Copyrighted Materials
For any further copyright issues, please contact the APSA Reprints Department.
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.
Comments
No Comments have been published for this article.