Political Studies
British Government and Politics | Politics & International Relations | Politics (General)
Political Studies is a leading international journal in politics and international relations scholarship. Since its inception sixty years ago the journal has remained at the forefront of its field, publishing rigorous and original work in all areas of the discipline. Political Studies is not constrained by any particular methodological or theoretical framework and encourages a pluralistic approach to politics and international relations. Innovative submissions, which cross and challenge traditional discipline boundaries, reconsider the relationship between international and domestic politics or offer a fresh comparative perspective, are particularly welcome. Political Studies aims to develop the most promising work available, facilitate professional communication in political science and is committed to the highest standards of peer reviewing.
The Political Studies Association awards the Harrison Prize for the best paper published in Political Studies every year. Read the virtual issue that brings together all the award winning papers here.
Political Studies is published in association with the Political Studies Association.
The PSA acknowledges the prevalence of systemic bias and unequal power dynamics within academia and publishing. The PSA believes that the promotion of equality and diversity should be core values for the practice of politics as well as the study, teaching and writing of politics. We are passionate about supporting inclusion in the academy and wider society through our publishing activities.
Working with our journal editors and publishing partner SAGE, we are doing this by:
- Publishing and amplifying content from diverse, global perspectives, including women, scholars of colour, LGBTQIA+ people, disabled people, and historically marginalised communities.
- Working to increase diversity of our journals’ editorial boards, peer review processes and author bases.
- Ensuring that our content and communications are inclusive and accessible, challenging bias and stereotypes.
Read more about the PSA’s commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion
Read more about the minimum standards for inclusion and diversity for scholarly publishing developed by the RSC cross-publisher group (which includes SAGE as a member)
Political Studies is a leading international journal, which is committed to publishing high-quality research in all areas of politics and international relations. The journal publishes rigorous and original work of significance to the discipline broadly defined, and which speaks to the whole discipline. The journal’s editorial approach is not constrained by any particular methodological or theoretical framework and the editors wish to encourage a pluralistic approach to the discipline and debate among the different approaches. The editors particularly welcome submissions which aim to be innovative in their approach, which cross traditional disciplinary boundaries, which reconsider the relationship between the domestic and international politics, or which offer fresh comparative perspectives. The journal is committed to the very highest standards of peer reviewing, to developing the most promising new work available, and to facilitating professional communication in political science.
| Graeme Davies | University of York, UK |
| Daphne Halikiopoulou | University of York, UK |
| Sarah Shair-Rosenfield | University of York, UK |
| Mónica Brito Vieira | University of York, UK |
| Udit Bhatia | University of York, UK |
| Harriet Gray | University of York, UK |
| Eva Heims | University of York, UK |
| Daniel Keith | University of York, UK |
| Nicole Lindstrom | University of York, UK |
| Alfred Moore | University of York, UK |
| Peg Murray-Evans | University of York, UK |
| Indrajit Roy | University of York, UK |
| Anna Sanders | University of York, UK |
| Tim Bale | Queen Mary University, UK |
| Rosie Campbell | Birkbeck, University of London, UK |
| Simone Chambers | University of California, Irvine, USA |
| Sarah Childs | University of Bristol, UK |
| Harold Clarke | University of Texas at Dallas, USA |
| Annelien de Dijn | University of Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| John Dryzek | University of Canberra, Australia |
| Geoffrey Evans | Nuffield College, UK |
| Rachel Gibson | University of Manchester, UK |
| Kathryn Harrison | University of British Columbia, Canada |
| Will Jennings | University of Southampton, UK |
| Cecile Laborde | University of Oxford, UK |
| Adam Morton | The University of Sydney, Australia |
| Katherine Morton | University of Sheffield, UK |
| Pippa Norris | Harvard University, USA & University of Sydney, Australia |
| David Owen | University of Southampton, UK |
| Patricia Owens | University of Oxford, UK |
| John Ravenhill | Basillie School of International Affairs |
| Jan Aart Scholte | University of Gothenburg, Sweden |
| Miranda Schreurs | Environment and Climate Policy, Bavarian School of Public Policy, Munich, Germany |
| Robbie Shilliam | Queen Mary, University of London, UK |
| Gerry Stoker | University of Southampton, UK |
| Tetsuki Tamura | Nagoya University, Japan |
| Diana Tussie | Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Argentina |
| Jack Vowles | Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand |
| Linda Weiss | University of Sydney, Australia |
Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/post to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Political Studies will be reviewed.
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this journal.
As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere. Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that the journal may accept submissions of papers that have been posted on pre-print servers; please alert the Editorial Office when submitting (contact details are at the end of these guidelines) and include the DOI for the preprint in the designated field in the manuscript submission system. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper on the preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the journal. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy.
If your paper is accepted, you must include a link on your preprint to the final version of your paper.
If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journal Solutions Portal
- What do we publish?
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article Types
1.3 Writing your paper - Editorial policies
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgments
2.4 Declaration of conflicting interests
2.5 Data - Publishing Policies
3.1 Publication Ethics
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
3.3 Open Access and author archiving - Preparing your manuscript
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.3 Supplemental material
4.4 Reference style
4.5 English language editing services - Submitting your manuscript
5.1 ORCID
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
5.3. Permissions - On acceptance and publication
6.1 Sage Production
6.2 Online First publication
6.3 Access to your published article
6.4 Promoting your article - Further Information
Before submitting your manuscript to Political Studies, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.
Political Studies publishes rigorous and original work in all fields of political and international relations. The editors encourage a pluralistic approach to political science and debate among these different approaches. Articles should be between 7,000 and 10,000 words in length including all notes but excluding references.
PSA Equitable Citations Policy
PSA is committed to addressing inequities in academic publication processes that are suffered by under-represented and minority communities and has set out its position in our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policy.
As part of this commitment, we recognise that references cited in journals such as ours sometimes replicate and reinforce such inequities by under-representing minority scholars. Clearly not all minority group characteristics are easily visible in citations, but those inferred which are easier to discern include gender, race, early career scholars and scholars from under-represented parts of the world such as the global South, among others.
To address these inequities, we exhort our authors whose manuscripts are accepted for publication to critically examine their references with a view to including citations of equally rigorous and relevant scholarship by under-represented minority authors. To support this effort, Political Studies will no longer count reference lists in our maximum word count of 10,000 for all articles.
The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.
1.3.1 Making your article discoverable
For information and guidance on how to make your article more discoverable, visit our Gateway page on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online
Sage does not permit the use of author-suggested (recommended) reviewers at any stage of the submission process, be that through the web-based submission system or other communication. Reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. Our policy is that reviewers should not be assigned to a paper if:
• The reviewer is based at the same institution as any of the co-authors
• The reviewer is based at the funding body of the paper
• The author has recommended the reviewer
• The reviewer has provided a personal (e.g. Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail) email account and an institutional email account cannot be found after performing a basic Google search (name, department and institution).
All parties who have made a substantive contribution to the article should be listed as authors. Principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits should be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. A student is usually listed as principal author on any multiple-authored publication that substantially derives from the student’s dissertation or thesis.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.
Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.
2.3.1 Third party submissions
Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:
- Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
- Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
- Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.
Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.
2.4 Declaration of conflicting interests
Political Studies encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.
Sage acknowledges the importance of research data availability as an integral part of the research and verification process for academic journal articles.
Political Studies requests all authors to submit any primary data used in their research articles if the articles are accepted to be published in the online version of the journal, or provide detailed information in their articles on how the data can be obtained. This information should include links to third-party data repositories or detailed contact information for third-party data sources. Data available only on an author-maintained website will need to be loaded onto either the journal’s platform or a third-party platform to ensure continuing accessibility. Examples of data types include but are not limited to statistical data files, replication code, text files, audio files, images, videos, appendices, and additional charts and graphs necessary to understand the original research. The editors can also grant exceptions for data that cannot legally or ethically be released. All data submitted should comply with Institutional or Ethical Review Board requirements and applicable government regulations. For further information, please contact the editorial office.
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway.
3.1.1 Plagiarism
Political Studies and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of articles published in the journal. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked using duplication-checking software. Where an article is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article (removing it from the journal); taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author’s institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; banning the author from publication in the journal or all Sage journals, or appropriate legal action.
3.1.2 Prior publication
If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
Before publication, Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants the Political Studies Association the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. For more information please visit our Frequently Asked Questions on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.
3.3 Open Access and author archiving
Political Studies offers optional open access publishing via the Sage Choice programme. For more information please visit the Sage Choice website. For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage Publishing Policies on our Journal Author Gateway.
Authors retain copyright of your Sage Choice article. Sage will publish your article under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license (CC BY-NC) which allows others to re-use the work without permission as long as the work is properly referenced and the use is non-commercial. Authors required to publish under a CC BY licensing by their funder can publish under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) which allows use of the work for commercial purposes.
If you require a CC BY NC-ND license, please contact the Open Access team at: openaccess@sagepub.com
PSA Statement on CC-BY
Please be aware that the Political Studies Association (UK) have issued the following statement about the CC-BY licence:-
The Political Studies Association endorses the principle of freedom of choice and is thus prepared to offer authors choosing to pay an Article Processing Charge under Online Open the option of publishing under a CC-BY licence. However, the Association wishes to draw the attention of authors to the following risks associated with CC-BY licences:
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- Lack of requirement under the terms of the current CC-BY licence (version 3.0) for other parties to give any indication as to how the original work has been modified in any derivative product
- Lack of protection against poor translation
- Lack of recourse against the work being quoted out of context
- Lack of recourse against the work being reprinted in anthologies where the context is offensive to the author
- Lack of recourse against intermediaries republishing work for commercial gain
For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage Publishing Policies on our Journal Author Gateway. Your rights as an author are outlined below:
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- You retain copyright in your work.
- You may do whatever you wish with the version of the article you submitted to the journal – version 1.
- You may not post the accepted version (version 2) of the article on your own personal website, your department’s website, the repository of your institution, the repository of another institution or a subject repository, until 24 months after first publication of the article in the journal.
- Once the article has been accepted for publication, you may use the accepted article (version 2) for your own teaching needs or to supply on an individual basis to research colleagues, provided that such supply is not for commercial purposes.
- You may use the accepted article (version 2) in a book you write or edit any time after publication in the journal.
- You may not post the published article (version 3) on any website or in any repository without permission from Sage.
- When posting or re-using the article please provide a link to the appropriate DOI for the published version of the article on Sage Journals (http://online.sagepub.com).
All commercial or any other re-use of the published article should be referred to Sage. More information can be found at: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
When posting or re-using the article, you should provide a link/URL from the article posted to the Sage Journals Online site where the article is published: http://online.sagepub.com and please make the following acknowledgment: ‘The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in <journal>, Vol/Issue, Month/Year by Sage Publications Ltd, All rights reserved. © [The Author(s)]
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. (La)Tex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.
This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full text of the article. These will be subjected to peer-review alongside the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplementary files, which can be found within our Manuscript Submission Guidelines page.
Political Studies adheres to the Sage Harvard reference style. View the Sage Harvard guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the Sage Harvard EndNote output file.
Please keep endnotes to an absolute minimum and use only for essential contextual background, to provide details of variables or methods, or for similar material which, while essential, would nonetheless be disruptive to the flow of the main text, or of interest only to a minority of readers.
4.5 English language editing services
Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.
Political Studies is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/post to login and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.
The collection of ORCID IDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID ID you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID ID will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID ID is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.
If you do not already have an ORCID ID please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed in the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guideance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway.
6. On acceptance and publication
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal Sage Edit or by email, and corrections should be made directly or notified to us promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.
Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.
6.3 Access to your published article
Sage provides authors with online access to their final article.
You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.
You may also be asked to prepare a short (approximately 500 word) version of your article for us on blogs and may also be invited to preare tweets relating to the article as part of the journal's social media strategy.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Political Studies editorial office at politicalstudies@sagepub.co.uk.