Ranking Departments in Political Science: Reputation, Productivity, and Citations

Departmental rankings have been of sustained interest to political scientists. To be sure, there are various methods to rank departments, all of which provide a different perspective on the elite departments in the profession. These methods can be generally classified into two types: subjective and objective. Subjective measures rely on perceptions of reputation while objective measures have largely focused on departments' cumulative scholarly production.

Reputational rankings have the longest standing tradition in political science. Early studies such as Kenniston (1957), Cartter (1966), and Somit and Tanenhaus (1967) all relied on surveys of either department chairs or APSA members to measure the reputations of departments. Somit and Tanenhaus (1964, 28) posit “there is no infallible method of objectively quantifying the actual quality of schools. But where one deals with qualitative assessments, the relationship of fact to reality is often less important than the existence of the belief and the behavior that results from its acceptance.” Contemporary studies conducted by both the National Research Council (1995) and U.S News and World Report (2005) also in whole or part base their rankings on reputation.

Increasingly, scholars are using more objective measures of quality, particularly in terms of publication output or citation data. Most objective studies such as Robey (1979), Morgan and Fitzgerald (1977), McCormick and Bernick (1982), Ballard and Mitchell (1998), and McCormick and Rice (2001) focus on cumulative article publications of departmental faculty. These studies try to control for quality by limiting their count to articles published in top journals such as the APSR and in regional journals. Rice, McCormick, and Bergmann (2002) also ranked departments by their faculty's cumulative book production and find that the type of publication makes a difference in the rankings. Finally, studies such as Klingemann (1986), Klingemann, Grofman, and Campagna (1989), and Miller, Tien, and Peebler (1996) have used cumulative departmental faculty citation counts as another method to objectively rank departments.

A number of studies also examine the relationship between subjective and objective indicators of prestige. Studies such as Lowry and Silver (1996) and Katz and Eagles (1996) examine how structural features such as departmental size and funding influence reputation rankings. These studies suggest that there are other possible factors that can influence departments' reputations. However, studies conducted by Jackman and Silver (1996) and Garand and Grady (1999), which compare the relationship between cumulative publications and reputation, find that the two do not highly correlate.

Using Citation Counts to Rank Departments

We show in Table 1 (similar to Table 3 in Klingemann, Grofman, and Campagna 1989) the ranking of the top departments in each of six periods (before 1950, 1950–1959, 1960–1969, 1970–1979, 1980–1989, 1990–1999) based on how many members of the current Political Science 400 they produced during that time period. We included a department in the table if it was among the top 20 departments in any of these time periods.

When we compare Table 1 with Table 3 in Klingemann, Grofman, and Campagna (1989), which covers the four decades of the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s based on the 1980–1985 Political Science 400 list, we see that the departments at Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Michigan, Berkeley, Princeton, and Columbia continue to be among the top producers overall of the most highly cited political scientists, and that those at Stanford and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill have moved up in ranking. Comparing across the seven decades sees more evidence of change. Generally the departments at the top 10 schools maintain their high status over the seven periods, but we do see a dip for Columbia's. Current gains by the departments at Cal Tech, MIT, Rochester, Washington University-St Louis, UC San Diego, and Duke are also worth noting since, especially in the last several decades, each has produced a number of scholars who make it to the top of the profession, and thus each would rise drastically in rankings based on production of recent Ph.D.s who have gone on to distinction.

Because it might be thought more likely that a department that produces a large number of Ph.D.s will produce a large number of highly cited Ph.D.s, for the cumulative citation counts Table 2 (paralleling Table 4 in Klingemann, Grofman, and Campagna 1989) normalizes Table 1's data by dividing through by the total number of Ph.D.s produced by that department over the period 1966–2001 (we also refer to the Schmidt and Chingos [2007] in this edition of PS).²

For simplicity, and to avoid problems with ratios based on small numbers, we limit ourselves to overall rankings. There are a number of significant changes when we consider success in turning out stars of the profession relative to a department's total Ph.D. production. With the exception of Yale and Stanford's departments, all schools' departments which were at the very top move downward when we normalize the rankings, and some schools' departments significantly so. For example, Columbia's, which ranked seven in Table 1, drops to 25 in the normalized ranking. It is apparent from Table 2 that some smaller departments, such as those at Cal Tech, Rochester, and Washington University-St Louis, are better at producing high-quality Ph.D.s. relative to their total production of Ph.D.s than are some departments with larger Ph.D. production and more highly regarded Ph.D. programs.

While Table 2 ranks departments based on a measure of the quality of their Ph.D. graduates, Table 3 ranks departments based on their faculty's total cumulative citations over the period 1960–2005 to their present (circa 2002) faculty (paralleling Table 2 in Klingemann 1986, 656), and Table 4 ranks departments by the number of their faculty (circa 2002) that are among the Political Science 400. For these tables we have not bothered to disaggregate by cohort or decade. But it appears to us that the set of emeriti who are still listed on mastheads, especially at more prestigious institutions, are those who are among the more famous in the discipline. Thus, which emeriti count can affect department ratings.³

Comparing the listing of top-ranked departments in these tables to each other and to the departmental rankings based on the production of highly cited Ph.D.s (Table 1), we see that the expected departments (e.g., those at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc.) consistently rank in the top 10 regardless of whether we consider the production of present faculty in the Political Science 400, total faculty citations, or production of Ph.D.s who go on to become members of the Political Science 400. However, perhaps the most striking feature of Table 3, when we look at total cumulative citations, is not the high ranking of the usual suspects as found by Klingemann, Grofman, and Campagna (1989), but the prominence of the departments at UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UC San Diego, as well as the high rankings of departments such as those at Duke, Cornell, and Indiana. While again most of the usual suspects are highly ranked in Table 4, we also see the same remarkable prominence of departments at University of California institutions, now in terms of total faculty who are in the Political Science 400.⁴

For this table, we also call attention to the high rankings of the departments at Ohio State, MIT, the University of Washington, and Duke.

But, of course, ceteris paribus, we might expect to see large departments ranking higher in total citation counts and in numbers of highly cited faculty than those with fewer political science faculty. To correct for this, we have also provided in Tables 3 and 4 rankings normalized by departmental size in a way similar to what we have done in Table 2 to control for size of Ph.D. production. When we normalize the citation numbers to account for size of department, the rankings in Tables 3 and 4 can shift considerably. For example, once we account for the size of the faculty by looking at per capita citation rates, we see in Table 3 that faculty at smaller departments such as Cornell, UC San Diego, and UC Irvine's all have higher mean citation rates than do their colleagues in departments at larger schools, such as those at UC Berkeley and Princeton. In Table 2 we found that departments with smaller Ph.D. programs, such as Cal Tech and Rochester, are proportionally more effective at producing top scholars. In Table 4 we see that, if we control for faculty size, Cal Tech's department may have the greatest proportion of highly cited faculty in political science, and that other smaller departments, like MIT, UC San Diego, SUNY Stony Brook, and the New School's, also have a very high proportion of highly cited faculty—higher in per capita terms than that of a number of more “famous” departments.

Another way to rank departments is according to the subfield where they might have concentrations of highly cited scholars. Klingemann's ranking (1986) of the top 20 scholars in each field in the period 1980–1985 named Yale's as the premier department in political theory, Michigan's nonpareil in American politics, and Harvard and Columbia's first in international relations, while Harvard and Wisconsin ranked highest in the combined areas of public policy, public administration, and public law. In comparative politics, no department emerged as the clear leader. We have replicated Klingemann's analysis. As of 2002, we find Stanford's to be the top department in American government, with four of the top 20 most-cited scholars. Michigan, Northwestern, and Rochester's rank next highest: each has two of the top 20 most-cited scholars. For comparative politics, Harvard's is now overwhelmingly the leader with six of the top 20 scholars on its faculty. Columbia, Cornell, and Yale's are the next top-ranked in this subfield. For international relations, Stanford's is the top department, while in methodology, four departments, those at Harvard, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio State, tie as the top-ranked. Yale's continues to be the premier department in political theory, with Columbia and UC Irvine's tied as the next highest ranked judged in terms of members of the Political Science 200 on their faculty. Finally, for public policy, public administration, and public law, Harvard, Indiana, and Michigan's departments each have two of the top 20 most-cited scholars.⁵

Predicting Departmental Prestige, 1960–2005

Somit and Tanenhaus (1963; 1964; 1967) look at four different departmental prestige rankings taken in 1925, 1957, 1963, and 1964. They find that Ph.D. production is a key determinant of prestige in the discipline's early period.⁶

When correlating Somit and Tanenhaus' 1963 rankings with total Ph.D.s produced between 1948–1958, we find a bivariate correlation of −0.634 (an adjusted r² of 0.38). If we correlate a contemporary measure of reputation, the 2005 U.S. News and World Report graduate program rankings, with total Ph.D.s produced between 1966–2001, we find a bivariate correlation of −0.572 (an adjusted r² of 0.33). When we use the logged value of the U.S. News and World Report rankings as our dependent variable,⁷ we get an r value of −0.611 (with an adjusted r² of 0.37).

There are other indicators besides Ph.D. production which might predict departmental prestige. Somit and Tanenhaus (1964, 36) note that “a necessary if not a sufficient condition of success is that the aspiring department be a component of a university which is itself prestigious.” Klingemann (1986) looked at the relationship between departmental prestige and 1980 departmental citation counts. Reanalyzing his data we find a bivariate correlation of −0.712 (an adjusted r² of 0.494) between the ratings in a 1981 survey of departmental reputational prestige (Rudder 1983) and total citation counts of departmental faculty.⁸

If we correlate a contemporary measure of reputation, the 2005 U.S. News and World Report graduate program rankings, with citation counts of current departmental faculty circa 2002, we find a bivariate correlation of −0.719 (an adjusted r² of 0.51). When we use the logged value of the U.S. News and World Report rankings as our dependent variable, we get an r value of −0.846 (with an adjusted r² of 0.713). Other citation and placement variables also correlate with the (logged) U.S. News and World Report rankings in the expected way in a statistically significant fashion, as shown in Table 5.

For predictions of departmental prestige rankings circa 2005 as provided by U.S. News and World Report, we have generated various multivariate regressions with both input variables such as the total citation counts of departmental faculty, per capita citation counts, the number of faculty in a department who are among the Political Science 400, and the number and proportion of departmental faculty whose Ph.D.s are from top departments (here those at Berkeley, Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, Michigan, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale),⁹

and output variables such as Ph.D. production, and success in placing one's Ph.D. students at other graduate departments and at the most elite graduate departments. The most sensible model we arrived at, shown in Table 6, includes three variables: proportion of departmental Ph.D. graduates placed at Ph.D.-granting institutions, number of current faculty in the Political Science 400, and the number of Ph.D.s produced that are in the Political Science 400. Since we are looking at rankings, negative values indicate a positive relationship between the independent variable and departmental reputational prestige.

The equation in Table 6 has an adjusted r² of 0.85, and all variables have the correct sign, with one (number of faculty in the Political Science 400) statistically significant at the .001 level, one at the .01 level (total number of Ph.D.s produced in the Political Science 400), and one (proportion of departmental Ph.D. graduates placed at other Ph.D.-granting departments) significant at the .02 level.