Dear readers and contributors,
Political Science Research and Methods (PSRM) is starting with a new milestone and several changes into its fourth year.
Issue 1 of volume 4 will feature for the first time a special issue and a symposium. The editorial team decided that we will infrequently publish such issues only in case the topics seem timely and mark the frontier in methodological or substantive discussions in political science.
The idea for the special issue arose during a workshop organized by Guy Whitten at Texas A&M University in 2012 on “Spatial Models of Politics.” We realized that spatial approaches to political science, whether econometric or theoretical, have become incredibly important for the study of divers phenomena in Politics and we thus decided to invite the participants of the workshop to submit their manuscripts to PSRM. Let me stress that all articles in this special issue on spatial politics have undergone the exact same rigorous review and replication process as all other manuscripts published in PSRM. We decidedly refrained from relegating the reviewing process to a special editor in order to maintain the same strict quality criteria we apply to all published articles in PSRM. After the review process was completed, we invited Guy Whitten to write an introduction to the special issue on spatial politics, which gives a summary of the articles and leads into the discussion. I would like to thank all authors and especially Guy for their contributions to our first special issue.
The special issue is followed by a debate on the usefulness of valence models in the study of political behavior. Contributors to this debate are Geoff Evans and Kat Chzhen on the one hand and Paul Whiteley, Harold Clarke, David Sanders and Marianne Stuart on the other. The debate was initiated by Evans and Chzhen who submitted a manuscript criticizing valence models and their application in the field of political behavior. This submission opened a great opportunity for PSRM to present a veritable debate between the critics and proponents of valence models for political choice. Again, all contributions were put through the usual PSRM review process. I am very happy that we could recruit Christopher Wlezien to introduce and summarize the debate as well as give a balanced and synthetic account of both sides.
At the 2015 Annual European Political Science Association (EPSA) meeting in Vienna, PSRM awarded two prizes. First, the PSRM 2015 Best Published Paper Award, which was awarded to Elias Dinas, Pedro Riera and Nasos Roussias for their article “Staying in the First League: Parliamentary Representation and the Electoral Success of Small Parties,” published in volume 3, issue 2. The article combines original theoretical argumentation with innovative empirical analysis and thus exemplifies the kind of analytical political sciences PSRM strives to publish.
Second, the PSRM 2015 Best Reviewer Award went to Dominik Hangartner in recognition of the great number of high-quality, short turnaround reviews he has written for PSRM over the last year.
Many congratulations to the prize winners.
Finally, there will be a few changes to the editorial team. First, Cameron Thies, who has been one of the founding Editors-in-Chief (EIC) of PSRM, will complete his term as EIC by the end of 2015 and will serve for another term as an Associate Editor for PSRM. Cameron also has accepted the position of EIC for Foreign Policy Analysis. On behalf of PSRM and the EPSA council I would like to thank Cameron for his service to PSRM. We are extremely grateful to Cameron for all his hard work, dedication, time, support and effort in order to help this new journal off the ground. Cameron has done an invaluable service to the profession by launching a new journal, helping to set up a working replication process, getting high-quality submissions, turning them into publications, designing issues, advertising the journal and dealing with the day-to-day mayhem, that is, journal editing. I cannot emphasize enough what Cameron’s contribution to this enterprise has been (and will be). I am extremely thankful that Cameron will stay on as an Associate Editor for PSRM—and will in this, and I am sure in many other ways support PSRM in the future.
In addition, Francesco Squintani (Warwick) has finished his term as an Associate Editor for positive political theory and political economy. On behalf of the entire team and the EPSA I would like to thank Francesco for his time, hard work and continuing support for PSRM. Francesco will be replaced by Massimo Morelli (Bocconi)—a warm welcome to Massimo.
We hope you enjoy reading the articles of the special spatial issue and the valence symposium, and we also expect to see your own research submitted to PSRM shortly.
I would like to extend a big thank you to all our contributors, reviewers and readers for your continuing support.
On behalf of our entire team,
