Perspectives on Politics

• 1. Introduction

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  Perspectives on Politics arrived in 2003 with a pointed question behind it: what should academic political science say to people who actually care about politics? The journal was founded by Jennifer Hochschild and published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association. Its quarterly issues carry peer-reviewed research, but the ambition was always larger than the average specialist periodical. The journal would go on to rank 8th out of 165 journals in the Political Science category according to the Journal Citation Reports, with a 2016 impact factor of 3.234. That climb from a blank page in 2002 to a top-ten position in its field is a story about editors, institutions, and what happens when a discipline tries to speak beyond itself.

• 2. A Journal Takes Shape

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  Jennifer Hochschild shepherded the publication from 2002 through 2005, laying its foundations as the founding editor. James Johnson followed, steering the journal from 2005 to 2008 during its early period of growth and credibility-building. Jeffrey C. Isaac then held the editorial role from 2009 through 2017, the longest single tenure in the journal's history to that point. Each editor brought their own priorities while keeping the quarterly peer-review structure intact. The transition to Michael Bernhard and Daniel I. O'Neill in 2017 marked the journal's first co-editorship model, a pairing that ran through 2023. Current editors Ana Arjona and Wendy Pearlman, both of Northwestern University, took the helm that year alongside associate editor Shmuel Nili, also of Northwestern.

• 3. Where the Field Positions It

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  Two major indexing systems anchor Perspectives on Politics in the scholarly record: the Social Sciences Citation Index and Current Contents/Social and Behavioral Sciences. Both are gatekeeping tools that determine which journals researchers consult and cite. Inclusion in the Social Sciences Citation Index in particular signals that the work inside is trackable across disciplines, not siloed. The 2016 impact factor of 3.234 placed it 8th in a field of 165 journals, a ranking that tells prospective authors and readers something concrete about where the discipline's peer community directed its attention. The continued Northwestern University connection in the current editorial team - Arjona, Pearlman, and Nili all hold positions there - gives the journal a distinct institutional anchor as it moves forward.