Finally, the call for papers for the ECPR’s 5th conference (at Potsdam, September 10-12 2009) is out. Our section on the Radical Right will consist of the following nine panels:

• The Radical Right in Central and Eastern Europe
• The Internationalisation of the Radical Right
• Will Fascism return?
• On the Borderline Between Protest and Violence: Political Movements of the New Radical Right
• Consequences of the surge of anti-immigration parties
• The Radical Right in Western Europe
• Inside the Radical Right: An Internalist Perspective
• Party-based Euroscepticism in Western and Eastern Europe
• Neighbourhood Effects Revisited: the Visualisation of Immigrants and Radical Right-Wing Voting

Continue reading “Call for Papers: Perspectives on the Radical Right” »

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, political_science, political-science, peer-review, survey, journals, publications

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 other reviewers did not like the piece either). A couple of days ago, an obscure national journal sent me the very same (though slightly updated and upgraded) manuscript review. Is this sad or funny? How often did they authors have to downgrade their ambitions for finding a decent outlet in the process? And how common is this?

Thanks to the all new, all shiny political science peer-review survey, there is at least an answer to the last question: about 30 per cent of our respondents say that they would submit a rejected manuscript to a less prestigious journal. But what really strikes me is the proportion of reviewers who have reviewed (and rejected?) the same manuscript for at least two different journals: 29 per cent. This squares nicely with my personal experience (sometimes I seem to hit the same wall twice or more) and points to the fact that political science is a small world. Too small perhaps.

Continue reading “Another War Story from the Blind Review Process” »