Editors' Notes

Abstract

This issue completes the 3rd volume since the Policy Studies Journal became the official journal of the Public Policy Section of the American Political Science Association. Over that time, the PSJ has become an increasingly visible outlet for papers published on public policy theory and practice. Currently the PSJ is received by 1,113 personal subscribers, and is available in the libraries of 2,777 institutional subscribers. By standard measures, articles in the PSJ are getting increasing attention. For example, the ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) rating for the PSJ has essentially doubled each year since it became affiliated with the Public Policy Section. That change is shown in the Figure below: While the ISI is simply an indicator of the frequency that articles from the journal are cited in other peer-reviewed journals, we take it as a rough proxy for the success of the PSJ's authors in becoming part of the larger “scholarly conversation” on public policy theory and practice. The reason for the stark rise in the ISI rating is because you—scholars in the field of public policy—send your best papers to your Section's journal. As the editors of the PSJ, we are committed to continuing this trend and assuring that the PSJ is the premier outlet for articles in the filed of public policy. This issue provides an unusually large number of important articles. These include excellent papers on the evolution of institutions (Durant); principal-agent problems as they bear on election administration (Alvarez and Hall); the relationship between agency “business models” and funding sources (O’Hare); evidence on faith-based agency service delivery (Sosin and Smith); and the legislative bases for flexibility and accountability in state charter schools. In addition, Scott Robinson provides a thorough review of recent books on networks in public policy that will prove invaluable to policy scholars. Of particular interest in this issue is a collection of (individually peer-reviewed) papers on the role and effectiveness of public participation in the public process. Seth Tuler and Tom Webler, the editors of the collection, have assembled articles from the leading scholars on public participation in a broad cross-section of policy domains. In sum, this issue of the Policy Studies Journal continues to deliver high quality scholarship on a broad array of issues in public policy theory and practice. We urge you to send us your best papers for inclusion in future issues of the PSJ.