Publius (journal)

• 1. Introduction

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  Publius: The Journal of Federalism was born from a pen name that three men shared in secret. In 1787 and 1788, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison published a series of papers under the single pseudonym "Publius," a name borrowed from ancient Rome. Those papers became known as The Federalist, and they remain among the most studied political documents in American history. More than a century and a half later, a scholar named Daniel Elazar chose that same name for a new academic journal. He wanted to signal something: that the questions Hamilton, Jay, and Madison wrestled with had never been settled. What does federalism actually mean? How does it work in practice? Who decides where power belongs? Publius has been asking those questions, in print, since 1971.

• 2. Daniel Elazar's Vision

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  Daniel Elazar founded the journal in 1971 under the auspices of Temple University. He served as its editor for nearly three decades, holding that role until 1999. That kind of founding-editor tenure is rare in academic publishing. It gave the journal a coherent intellectual direction across a long stretch of American political history. Elazar built the journal around a simple but expansive premise: federalism is not just a structural arrangement but a living subject, covering history, theory, structures, and the practical application of federal principles to political and social issues. The journal's institutional home is CSF: Publius, Inc., a non-profit affiliate of the Center for the Study of Federalism. Oxford University Press took on publication, giving the journal the distribution reach that a specialist title on federalism requires.

• 3. Editors and Continuity

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  John Kincaid joined as editor in 1981, while Elazar was still at the helm, and he remained until 2006. That overlap meant the journal never experienced an abrupt editorial break. Carol S. Weissert took over from 2006 to 2014, followed by John Dinan, who edited from 2014 to 2023. Since 2024, the journal has been run as a two-person editorial team: Paul Nolette and Philip Rocco. Across more than five decades, only five editorial configurations have steered Publius. That continuity has made the journal a steady reference point for scholars working on federalism and intergovernmental relations. It also carries the sponsorship of the Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations Section of the American Political Science Association, which ties the journal formally to one of the discipline's major professional organizations.

• 4. Standing in the Field

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  By 2023, Publius held an impact factor of 2.2 according to the Journal Citation Reports. That figure placed it 82nd out of 317 journals in the Political Science category, a solid position in a crowded field. The journal is indexed by the Social Sciences Citation Index, Historical Abstracts, and PAIS International, three of the most widely consulted abstracting and indexing services in the social sciences. Quarterly publication keeps the research current; being covered by those major indexes ensures that scholars across disciplines can find its contents. For researchers studying how power is divided, shared, or contested between levels of government, Publius remains one of the first places they are expected to publish and one of the first places they are expected to read. The journal Elazar launched with a classical pen name now carries a measurable rank among every political science journal in the world.