Next article FreeEditor's WelcomeEditor's WelcomeCyrus Ernesto ZirakzadehCyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreAs incoming editor, I am honored to welcome both newcomers and long-standing readers to the forty-third volume of Polity. The journal retains many features that have contributed to its unique place within the discipline. As my predecessor, Andrew Polsky, put it: “Polity has never aspired to be like other political science journals …; from the outset, the editors have sought to create something distinctive, a journal with qualities that let it stand apart.”1Polity's TraditionWhat are some of these defining and enduring features? First, Polity adopts an ecumenical approach to the scholarship, and refuses to treat particular methods of collecting and analyzing observations and conceptualizing human affairs as central to the discipline (and thereby demoting other methods and concepts). Deeply committed to intellectual pluralism, every editor before me has bemoaned efforts within the discipline to foster a single correct approach to the study of politics. I share those worries because, like my predecessors, I enjoy the remarkable diversity of outlooks and styles within political science. Fortunately, forces promoting intellectual curiosity and cross-fertilization across subfields and across academic disciplines in general remain strong. During my first two months of editorship, I have come across enough original theses and novel blends of ideas to conclude that a single orthodoxy will not triumph in political science in the near future. (For those who do not know me and suspect that I am naturally an optimist about the evolution of the discipline, it is probably time for me to “fess up” about the seriousness of my occasional worries about a single-approach one day dominating political science: I was active in the Perestroika movement and remain very loyal to that group's pluralistic values.)Polity, also, retains an interest in publishing what I, when among friends, call “edgy-and-spicy” political science (i.e., dissenting or daring work). Almost every article in this journal either openly questions a point of scholarly and political consensus, or points to a gap in current conversations about politics. Examples from the present issue include Dan Greenwood's essay on what advocates of neoliberalism can teach their critics, and Colin Bird's reflection on the intellectual and political costs of the divergence between academic political theory and ordinary language. The long-standing goal of this journal has been to publish articles that stimulate readers to see politics (including their own work on politics) from a fresh perspective. Manuscripts that avoid controversy, that are mum about different points of view, or that attempt to replicate an argument in a detached manner and without serious critical commentary seldom appear in this journal. That is not the type of significance Polity has attempted to promote in its limited space. Even though systematic replication of data collection and sifting and the incremental extension of generalizations to new cases are important activities that can be found in other widely read and highly regarded journals, replication and extension of generalizations are not the type of significant research that Polity has attempted to promote. Instead, it has devoted most of its roughly four hundred and fifty pages per year to providing “outlets for work trying out new ways of understanding politics” (to borrow the words of former editor M.J. Peterson).2Finally, Polity aspires to publish work accessible to political scientists in general and, therefore, to advance conversations across the entire discipline. This is reflected in the quality of writing. Over the past four decades, editors of Polity have taken pride in their efforts to make it the most readable and literary of all political science journals. Through a two-stage copy-editing process, editors and authors together replace technical phrases known only to tiny subsets of political scientists, make efforts to explain early in an article the short-hand jargon used by specialists within a subfield, and flesh out subfield debates and hypotheses for readers outside a specialized research area. The purpose behind the close attention to writing is much more than producing a journal that scholars like to read. The primary goal is to foster communication within the enormous and heterogeneous field of political science. In the opinion of Polity's editors, creativity arises from the exchange of ideas and information across subfields and specialty areas of political science.3 I intend to preserve the policy of selecting manuscripts that not only are rigorously argued but that are written so that any political scientist can in principle be enriched by the author's discussion.Another way of saying some of this is that Polity is not a journal that publishes “subfield pieces,” as the phrase is conventionally understood. Typically, articles are selected, regardless of the subfield topic, because they are interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary in tone, style, or substance, and because they carry theoretical and empirical significance outside a conventional subfield of political science. Examples in this issue include Nick O’Donovan's article on contingency, Max Weber, and justifications for a realistic U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East; and David McIvor's concept-bending analysis of time, speed, and their relationships to democratic politics.4 These sorts of articles—which depart from familiar conversations, which challenge conventional thinking, and which are written to be accessible to intelligent readers from multiple subfields within the discipline—are what distinguish Polity from other major political science journals.Polity and MePolity's distinctive role in political science has a long history and has been discussed in other settings. In addition, many scholars have their favorite stories about how the journal entered and affected their lives. At the recent American Political Science Association meeting, George Shulman, who was about to receive the David Easton Award from the Foundations of Political Theory Section for American Prophecy: Race and Redemption in American Political Culture, confided to me that he always will have a special place in his heart for Polity: it was the first academic journal to accept his innovative work for publication.5Like other political scientists, I discovered Polity in graduate school because its contents repeatedly challenged what I was being taught in the classroom and what I was reading elsewhere. I remember articles that helped me place Robert Michels in political context, as I was struggling to find a non-mechanical way to sort through various hypotheses about parties and party systems in my European politics course, and that helped me see possible practical gaps in Robert Dahl's discussion of participation, when I took a seminar on controversies over pluralism. The journal helped me see the discipline as alive with debates, disagreements, and creativity. Sometimes after putting down the journal, I was momentarily stunned. Yet, in a mischievous way, I was happy because I felt validated. It was ok that I had an impulse to disagree with older, more experienced teachers in the classroom and with older, more famous authors of authoritative texts. As did Mad magazine when I was an impressionable Catholic grade-schooler, Polity encouraged me to think irreverently because I knew I was not alone in wanting to be simultaneously creative, bookish, and knowledgeable about alternative ways of seeing the world.After I received my doctorate, I reviewed manuscripts for Polity, submitted manuscripts (and even succeeded in getting one published), and avidly read its issues. My research interests are many, ranging from comparative social movements and comparative political economy to democratic theory and political analyses of American novelists. Perhaps because my work does not fall neatly within a single subfield and I, in fact, have written pieces for anthropology, history, and sociology journals, I have found the variety and inventiveness of Polity's articles refreshing. Where else might one find a discussion of jazz as a form of political communication next to an article about education policy in Puerto Rico?6 Where else can one so easily nourish the different sides of one's mind?Polity and Political TheoryBefore closing, I want to say something about Polity's relationship to the vast and internally diverse subfield known as political theory. In two recent surveys of political scientists, Polity was listed among the most desired publication outlets for self-identified political theorists.7 “So,” a hypothetical author might ask, “should I send my best work based on fieldwork in Peru to Polity if it prefers research in political theory to research in, say, international studies or comparative politics?”Although I am happy the political theorists like reading and sending their best work to Polity (in fact, some surveys show that for many years, Polity has been one of the most widely read peer-reviewed journals among all political scientists, not only political theorists),8 I am of two minds as to the accuracy of Polity's reputation as a political-theory journal. I am ambivalent and torn, largely because so much depends on how one defines political theory.If one defines political theory broadly as theoretically informed writings in which concepts are discussed explicitly and systematically, and in which the implications of a historically narrow study—say, recent electoral behavior in two African nations—are overtly related to a broader discussion, debates, or controversy among students of politics, then, the answer is clearly “yes.” Polity is and always has been a political theory journal in the loose sense that it publishes both (1) research in the history of political thought, normative theory, and conceptual analyses, and (2) so-called descriptive research in which the theoretical underpinnings are discussed and the theoretical payoffs of the empirical findings are explained. Pieces of descriptive research that are related to issues of concern to political scientists in general always have been and will continue to be welcomed by the editors, editorial board, and external reviewers.If, however, one means by political theory either (1) the refinement of an a priori mathematical model without a discussion of the refinement's practical, real-world significance or (2) the explication of a canonical writing without reference to a contemporary political topic or phenomenon, then the answer is “no.” Polity is not a political theory journal in the more constricted sense of disseminating either textual exegeses or exercises in deductive reasoning for their own sake. To be published in Polity, a work about a political theorist, about a theoretical writing, or about a paradox or irony in modeling, must be related to a topic or issue that crosses subfield boundaries and concerns. Other prestigious journals devote themselves either to modeling or to the history of western political thought per se. Polity's mission is to publish articles of importance to general political scientists and articles that cast light on current events.9In my opinion, the secret to publishing one's best work in Polity is to put aside preconceptions about subfields, to transcend the still fashionable dichotomy of theory and observation, and to present one's work so that the informative ideas are clearly stated, honestly analyzed, and deciphered for non-specialists, and so that the link between experienced politics and one's ideas is highlighted (or, at minimum, overtly stated). So-called pure “theoretical analyses” that are not tied to experience and, conversely, pure “empirical research” that is not explicitly embedded in a theoretical framework can be published in several first-rate journals. They seldom will find their way into the pages of Polity.ConclusionTwo years ago, the former and current editors of Polity reflected on the history of the journal. As I read the comments, I felt a great deal of affinity with the previous editors. They intended Polity to have the traits that readers today discover in each issue. I was amused by the candor and confidence with which the earlier editors proclaimed the journal's strengths. Jerome Mileur spoke about producing a journal “of a higher literary quality than other journals.”10 Howard Wiarda referred to “a strong emphasis on good writing, clarity, good editing, and articles that were readable and often provocative. We valued these traits—especially in relation to their absence, in our view, in the APSR.”11Obviously, Polsky, Peterson, Mileur, Wiarda, and the other previous editors felt deeply about the journal's mission. So do I. It is an honor to be the next scholar to tend this treasure. Notes 1. Andrew Polsky, “Polity Forum: Polity at 40,” Polity 40 (October 2008): 527.2. M.J. Peterson, “Polity and the Discipline,” Polity 40 (October 2008): 541.3. Andrew Polsky has been particularly eloquent on this topic. See Polsky, “Living with Path Dependence,” Polity 40 (October 2008): 554–55.4. Readers who are intrigued with McIvor's ideas might wish to look at another recent Polity article dealing with speed and modern politics: William E. Scheuerman, “Liberal Democracy and the Empire of Speed,” Polity 34 (January 2001): 41–68.5. George Shulman, “Gerrard Winstanley: The Radicalism of the Good Son,” Polity 18 (July 1986): 473–97.6. See Amilcar Antonio Barreto “Statehood, the English Language, and the Politics of Education in Puerto Rico” and Charles Hersch, “Ken Burns, ‘Jazz: A Film by Burns’,” in Polity 34 (October 2001): 89–116.7. Matthew J. Moore, “Political Theory Today: Results of a National Survey,” PS: Political Science and Politics 43 (April 2010): 265–72; James C. Garand and Michael W. Giles, “Journals in the Discipline: A Report on a New Survey of American Political Scientists,” PS: Political Science and Politics 36 (April 2003): 301.8. Garand and Giles, “Journals in the Discipline,” 299–301.9. An illustration of the type of close textual reading that this journal is seeking is Craig French's article (in the present issue) on Nietzsche's genealogical understanding of value. French closes his analysis with a discussion of the bearing of Nietzsche's thought on a half-dozen highly charged debates over domestic and international policy. He thereby uses textual exegesis to help readers puzzle about political practices, choices, trade-offs, and dilemmas.10. Jerome M. Mileur, “Polity: The Middle Years,” Polity 40 (October 2008): 537.11. Howard J. Wiarda, “Giving Polity An International Flavor,” Polity 40 (October 2008): 532. Next article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Polity Volume 43, Number 1January 2011 The Journal of the Northeastern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2010.24 Views: 54 Copyright © 2011, Northeastern Political Science AssociationPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.