MPSA Announces the Selection of the Incoming Editorial Team for the American Journal of Political Science (AJPS)

MPSA Announces the Selection of the Incoming Editorial Team for the American Journal of Political Science (AJPS)

The Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) is pleased to announce the selection of the new editorial team of its flagship journal, the American Journal of Political Science (AJPS).

Dr. Dan Reiter, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Political Science at Emory University, and Dr. Adam Berinsky, Mitsui Professor of Political Science at MIT, have been selected as co-editors-in-chief to lead and manage the American Journal of Political Science, succeeding the current team when their term expires in summer 2025.

The MPSA Council expressed overwhelming support for the recommendation of the editorial team by the search committee chaired by Dr. Dan Hopkins, University of Pennsylvania, and committee members: Dr. Brian Crisp, Washington University in St. Louis; Dr. Lisa Ellis, University of Otago; Dr. Bernard Fraga, Emory University; and Dr. Jessica Weeks, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

About the Incoming Co-Editors-in-Chief

Dr. Reiter is a leading scholar of international relations. He has published on a wide array of topics, especially domestic politics and war, alliances, terrorism, nuclear weapons, gender and international relations, military strategy, and many others, using statistical, experimental, case study, and formal methods.  His scholarly awards include the 2002 Deutsch Award, given to the leading scholar of international relations under age 40 or within ten years of having received the Ph.D. He received the 2010 APSA conflict processes award for How Wars End (Princeton, 2009), given to the best book on conflict processes published in the previous two years. Reiter has extensive experience in editing, including having served as associate editor for AJPS since 2020.

Dr. Berinsky is a leading scholar of American politics and political behavior. His many areas of interest include the political consequences of misinformation, dynamics of public support during wartime, psychological dynamics of political behavior, survey methodology, and many others, using statistical, experimental, and other methods. His many scholarly awards include the 2013 Warren J. Mitofsky Award for Excellence in Public Opinion Research, given annually for outstanding work on public opinion or survey methodology. Berinsky has extensive experience in editing, including having served since 2013 as the editor of the Chicago Studies in American Politics at the University of Chicago Press.

The Unique Qualifications of the Co-Editors-in-Chief

Drs. Reiter and Berinsky are leading scholars in two of the three largest political science subfields, IR and American, and have scholarly interests that spread into other fields, comparative for Reiter and survey and empirical methods for Berinsky. Across the two, they have published using all positivist research methodologies in political science and their combined expertise covers the breadth of nearly all of the discipline, providing them with the ability to identify and champion the highest caliber and most significant research in political science.

Central Goals and Vision

The central goals of the incoming team are to maintain and raise the already excellent scholarly reputation and effectiveness at AJPS and to help AJPS adapt to and make use of opportunities emerging from the evolution of political science and scholarly publishing in the years to come. The team also strives to continue to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals, and to build a healthy relationship with the AJPS publisher that will safeguard the scholarly independence and reputation of the journal.

The role of leading general journals such as AJPS is to publish work that goes further – to provide pathbreaking research that sets scholarly agendas and cuts new ground. From an editorial perspective, this means identifying work that asks new or underexplored questions and develops new theoretical insights. While the new editorial team will not set rigid requirements for manuscripts, emphasis will be placed on prioritizing research that pushes the field forward, paving new paths for other scholars and students to follow.

Beyond this overarching goal, the team will pursue three other priorities:

1. Maintain the tremendous effectiveness and efficiency of the AJPS editorial process.
2. Continue the commitment to improving DEI at AJPS.
3. Develop a space for shorter articles at AJPS.

Editorial Team

The following associate editors are warmly welcomed to the team:

• Elizabeth Zechmeister, Vanderbilt University
• Ellen Lust-Okar, Cornell University
• Christina Davis, Harvard University
• Kathleen Cunningham, University of Maryland
• Efrén Perez, UCLA
• Matt Levendusky, University of Pennsylvania
• Frances Lee, Princeton
• Teppei Yamamoto, Waseda University
• Andrew Little, UC Berkeley
• Elizabeth Cohen, Boston University

The Current State and Legacy of AJPS

The AJPS is currently in a very strong position, thanks in no small part to the outstanding efforts of past editorial teams including the current team of Dr. Kathleen Dolan, University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, and Dr. Jennifer Lawless, University of Virginia, serving as co-editors-in-chief, and Julia Salvatore as managing editor.

The MPSA Council and executive leadership celebrate the achievements and dedication of our current editorial team, extending heartfelt gratitude for their tireless work in advancing the journal’s integrity, mission, and impact. Their high standards, ethics, and commitment to publishing manuscripts that make outstanding contributions to scholarly knowledge about notable theoretical concerns, empirical issues, or methodological strategies in any subfield, has strengthened the journal’s foundation and honored its legacy.

MPSA leadership congratulates and supports the cutting-edge vision of the incoming editorial team, who they confidently feel will carry the AJPS forward in similar fashion with a continued focus on excellence, collaboration, and success for the journal, political science, and the broader social sciences and inter-disciplinary communities as well.

 

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About the American Journal of Political Science

The  AJPS is committed to significant advances in knowledge and understanding of citizenship, governance, and politics, and to the public value of political science research. The AJPS is the flagship journal of the Midwest Political Science Association and is published by Wiley.

The Journal has been published since May 1957 and is published in January, April, July, and October of each year. Learn more at www.AJPS.org.

About the MPSA

Home of the American Journal of Political Science (AJPS), one of the top-ranked academic journals in the discipline, the MPSA was founded in 1939 and is dedicated to the advancement of scholarship in all areas of political science.

The purposes of the MPSA are to promote the professional study and teaching of political science, to facilitate communications between those engaged in such study, and to develop standards for and encourage research in theoretical and practical political problems. As such, MPSA is a nonpartisan association. It does not support political parties or candidates.