Political Science Journal Monitor

While we are in the mood of surveying the peer-review process in political science, here is a quick link to the Political Science Journal Monitor. The site itself is blogspot blog converted into a makeshift forum, and activity is low. Nonetheless, this is an interesting an potentially relevant resource for many of us.Technorati-Tags: political science,…

Another War Story from the Blind Review Process

Almost exactly three years ago, a major political science journal asked me to review a manuscript. I recommended to reject the paper on the grounds that a) its scope was extremely limited and b) that it largely ignored the huge body of existing political science literature on its topic. The editors followed my suggestion (presumably,…

The Political Science Peer-Review Survey

If you edit, review or author manuscripts for political science journals, the peer-review process is at the centre of your professional life. Unfortunately, for most of us the process is largely a black box. While everyone has heard (or lived through) tales from the trenches, there is very little hard evidence on how the process…

Does inequality depress turnout (or what you shouldn't do with time-series cross-sectional data)?

The US might face unprecedented levels of turnout in tomorrow’s election, but historically, the non-voters are the biggest camp in American politics. One intriguing explanation for this well-known fact is that low turnout could be a consequence of the very high (by any standard) levels of income inequality: because voters lack experience with universalistic institutions,…

Austrian Extreme Right Leader Jörg Haider dies in car crash

“Colourful” did not even begin to describe him. If Bill Clinton was America’s first rock&roll president, Jörg Haider, who died in a car crash early on Saturday morning, was Austria’s first pop politician. Apt for a future right-winger, Haider was born into a national-socialist family. A gifted public speaker, he was active in right-wing circles…

Does Immigration help or hurt the Front National in France?

In a recent article in the European Journal of Political Research, Kestilä and Söderlund claim (amongst other things) that in the French regional elections of 2004, turnout and district magnitude have significant negative effects on the extreme right vote whereas the effects of the number of party lists and unemployment are positive and significant. Most…

How Nancy Pelosi could become president

Today, the BBC has a rather amusing piece by Larry Sabato (Virginia) on the “The US election nightmare scenario”: an equal split of the “toss-up” state leads to deadlock in the Electoral College. Enter the unit rule, a constitutional provision which stipulates that the House will select the President in a vote where each state…