Political Science Reviews, Italian Style. A Round-Table with the Editors of Political Science Journals
This edition of IPS marks the start of a series of round table type interviews with the editors of the leading politological journals together with the editors of other social science journals who, over the years, have devoted significant space to issues and researches related to political science.
This first edition obviously begins with our association’s official publication, the Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica (or RISP) and its editor, Sergio Fabbrini. We also have news and information from Giorgio Fedel, the editor of Quaderni di Scienza Politica (or QUASP), from Gigi Bonante, the editor of Teoria Politica (or TP) and from Lorenzo Bordogna, the editor of Stato e Mercato.
Here are the answers to the questions formulated by IPS.
How many copies of your journal are printed? And how many subscriptions you have?
Fabbrini: RISP was founded in 1971 by Giovanni Sartori and became the official journal of the Italian Association of Political Science (SISP) in 2004. There are about 700 subscriptions plus a few copies sold through bookshops. All the members of SISP get a copy when they renew their membership every year.
Fedel: As far as QUASP is concerned, we print about 250 copies every issue. There are currently about 150 subscription holders (70% of those are institutions and the other 30% private) and that has been the case since the year 2000, except for a brief change in 2005-2006.
Bonanate: We print about 800 copies of Teoria Politica. 300 of those are sent out to subscribers (mainly public libraries, some of them universities, some of them not; there are about a hundred private subscription holders). The rest goes to bookshops (we sell mainly through Feltrinelli stores). The situation is perfectly stable and the journal has been around for 24 years now so it is difficult to imagine things changing. There are about thirty foreign libraries amongst our subscription holders.
Bordogna: Our publisher – il Mulino – has the precise figures for Stato e Mercato. Anyway, after a slight drop in sales in the late nineties and the early part of this decade, things are more or less stable now, with a slight increase in recent years. Most sales are via subscription even though the journal is available in bookshops (where sales vary from issue to issue but are always fewer than the subscriptions, as I mentioned before).
Let’s move on to how the work is organised. What are the different sections included in the journal? Do you publish articles in other languages?
Fabbrini: Since the first article by the founder Giovanni Sartori in 1971, which was a real celebration of the comparative method, the RISP has always prided itself on being a journal of comparative politics. It has remained faithful to its cultural heritage over the years, even though interest on the part of political scientists in the “Italian Case” has waned, especially in the eighties and nineties. The RISP contents are organised differently now compared to the early years. The traditional subdivision into essays and articles has gone but we have kept the section called “Focus”, a kind of review of the most important foreign publications in the field of political science which are of relevance to Italy. There is also a call for papers for a new section called “Political lexicon” which is devoted to major concepts in the field.
Fedel: The contents of QUASP are organised into five different sections: essays, researches, collections, notes and readings. And it has always been like that. Most of the articles are in Italian but we have, on occasions, published work in English written by foreign or Italian academics or people working abroad.
Bonanate: There are always three sections and then we may add something else. In theory we only have 200 pages available but in practice the average issue has 220 pages. The first section is for essays on a theme (this is not always strictly the case, but whenever and as far as it is possible). The second section includes essays written by young scholars and even very young scholars but on diverse subjects. We only accept previously unpublished work and this applies even to articles from abroad which we translate by ourselves if necessary. We would like to do a journal in English but it is too complicated and too expensive.
The guiding principle for us (especially for the editor) is to try not to publish our own work unless it is a subject we are particularly involved in. The journal doesn’t normally have an editorial except in special occasions as, for example, in the first issue in 1985 to explain our intentions, and then on a couple of other occasions to comment on the political situation in Italy when the circumstances were exceptional.
Bordogna: Under recent editorial leadership, from the mid-nineties onwards, there has been a closer focus on issues relating to Europe and the European Union (with a special section entitled “State and Market in Europe”) and then more recently on emerging economies (China and India), though we would like to give more space to this, and Japan is given due attention thanks to Ronald Dore. Since the mid-nineties there has also been the opportunity to add two or three brief comments (about 2,000 words each) on the leading articles.
The journal is published in Italian. There are no articles in other languages and there is no English version. At the end of each article there is a brief summary in English with the title and keywords in English as indicated in the JEL classification system.
Has your review policy changed over time? And how?
Fabbrini: Since I have been in charge we have tended to favour reviews of Italian publications. This is partly because the RISP is the Journal of Italian political scientists but also because books published in Italy do not get much attention abroad because of the language problem. Our coverage is meticulous so RISP, in the last few years, has reviewed every politological book that has come out in Italy. There are about fifteen reviews in every issue relating to every area of political sciences. We have given space to political sociology as well.
Fedel: The original idea was not to publish formal reviews but to leave space for lengthy reflections (much longer than a normal review) around a theme related to the content of one or more books. We called this section, for obvious reasons, “reading”.
Bonanate: Our review policy has always been a) mainly foreign publications and only if they are important; b) multiple reviews as far as possible, which means they take the form of critical debates; c) a strict ban on reviews of works written by anyone connected to the journal or their friends; d) the length of reviews can change depending on the book.
There are also “notes” which vary from half to a full page in length to inform people about books that are so important it is impossible to discuss them in any depth or books that will be dealt with in future issues or other publications it is useful to know about. For me this part is as important as any other section. A half-way house between the essays and the reviews are the Critical Notes. These may be more similar to a review if they are discussing a collection of studies or may seem more similar to a short essay if it is an initial attempt to get to grips with a particular issue or investigate a new subject or issue.
Bordogna: In Stato e Mercato we don’t publish classic reviews but discussions (between two or three people) about publications on topics which are pertinent to our journal. These are mainly foreign works, often when they come out in Italy. We do not discuss works written by authors who are part of the journal’s editorial team.
As far as subject matter is concerned, which sectors of political science do you give more space to? What kind of relation is there with authors and topics from related disciplines? How much space do you give to empirical research and case studies etc? And what about theoretical articles?
Fabbrini: As I mentioned before, the comparative method has always been a guiding principle for RISP, even when our essays and articles are concerned. You might say it’s a distinctive Italian trait. If you think about the Comparative Politics section in the American Political Science Review, where they use the term ‘comparative’ to refer to anything that isn’t American. Of course, the crisis in the Italian political system in the Eighties and Nineties meant that political scientists focused their attention even more closely on Italy and its specific institutional and political make-up. That interest has waned over the last few years however. Since I have been editor, there has been an increase in the number of articles on the European Union, its leading players and how it works. Just as the research work carried out by our colleagues and the subjects covered by PhDs reflects the internationalisation of Italy, so within the journal itself there is a lively interest in developments within the European Union and in everything that happens in other continents. I personally think, for example, that it is important to make sure that a good percentage of our writers are internationalists. This has to be a good thing for all political scientists.
Fedel: The editorial policy of this journal has always aimed to sustain empirical political theory and so it favours articles about general political theory, institutional theory, international relations, communication theory and political symbols. Substantial coverage is given to empirical research (including case studies). The theory behind it is more important than the actual subject matter being researched. We also publish at fairly regular intervals articles which are not strictly political but which are important to the understanding of politics: articles relating to political philosophy or law, history of political thought or political sociology.
Bonanate: With regard to this question, TP has already been the subject of a couple of conferences. Basically the original idea was to bring together political science and political philosophy within a context of political theory, as both disciplines belong to this broader field. It may seem we have published more philosophy than science but if we look closely at the figures we can see that this is not the case. In 24 years we have published 180 essays on political science (excluding international relations which number 94 and which would take political science to a total of 274!) as opposed to 150 on political philosophy. Just think that I have been often told off by certain colleagues for devoting too much space to political philosophy!
As far as related disciplines are concerned, we have published 113 essays on history of political doctrine, 37 on general legal theory and 28 on history. There is very little empirical research, though there is some, but it doesn’t sum up to more than 10% of the political science essays even though I have always asked for contributions from empirical research. This means that a good 80% is purely theoretical.
Bordogna: Stato e Mercato favours articles with a comparative and multidisciplinary slant, and which a focus on problems relating to the regulation of advanced socio-economic systems (the so-called comparative political economy approach). The editorial team comprises economists, sociologists and political scientists (including Schmitter, Ferrera, Regonini, Maino). Subjects which are closely related to political science have included: institutional governance and analysis; national and European public policy; welfare state and reform processes; public administration; local government; institutions and economic development (local and beyond); globalised socio-economic politics and the role of collective players. Empirical articles are not so much case studies but rather an analytical basis for reflections and comparisons of a broader nature. There are some purely theoretical articles, but this is not the kind of approach we specifically look for.
Another important question at this point is who actually writes for your journal? Do you mainly get contributions from more experienced scholars or from younger researchers, from well-known writers in the field or from research groups? Or from foreign academics?
Fabbrini: There is no question that the number of young researchers writing for RISP has significantly increased. There is also a proven system of referees: in general there are two or three referees – obviously anonymous– for each paper, not only Italians but also foreigners who read Italian or colleagues who are working abroad.
Fedel: Over the 14 years the journal has been running (from 1994 to 2007) 140 academics have written for us, 100 of whom contributed only once. The writers include both young researchers and experienced academics. To give an idea of the kind of ratio, fifty of the people who wrote for us were full or associate professors at Italian universities at the time of publication. About twenty articles were by foreign academics.
Bonanate: TP is open to absolutely anyone who demonstrates knowledge of the rules of the profession, be they cultural or stylistic (I try to reject anyone who doesn’t know how to write proper Italian!). I often receive work from absolute unknowns but once their work has been assessed we have no qualms about publishing it even if they don’t have any sponsorship. The majority of the work we publish is sent to me by academics. We usually commission the foreign articles. We only commission essays when we are doing special double issues (the cover is white, unlike the three normal issues which come out every year and which are in three different colours).We have produced four special issues so far.
Bordogna: There is a good quota of young researchers, and maybe their numbers have increased in recent years as have contributions from research groups. There are quite a few contributions from foreign authors too. All the papers that are sent in are read and judged anonymously by two readers.
One last question. As you know, IPS started off as a professional bulletin. Do you give space to articles/research on the developments of political science, or developments within the profession, including teaching methodology and materials?
Fabbrini: Starting with the language, with its section on political terminology, RISP has always tried to be a useful teaching tool and tried to encourage a young readership interested in political science. Teaching young people about political science is very important and RISP has always tried to play its part. Even in terms of the editorial team, we have always tried to strike a good balance in terms of numbers of young people and in terms of where people come from.
Fedel: In QUASP, articles which deal with the actual subject in a professional and or teaching context are not excluded a priori but there are in fact very few articles of this type.
Bonanate: The short answer is no. I choose what to publish from amongst the articles I receive. I
don’t consider TP in any way linked to a particular sector or school or aspect of a subject. The key feature is the analytical spirit which combines perfectly well with empirical application.
Bordogna: There isn’t anything devoted specifically to political science. But this doesn’t mean that Stato e Mercato articles are not used for teaching purposes or included in the bibliographies for university exams. In some cases, the monograph editions of the journal, for example the one on “Social Capital”, subsequently published as a book by il Mulino, are widely used in university teaching programmes of political science.
IPS: I would like to thank the four editors for their interesting and comprehensive responses. In one of the next issues of IPS we will be looking at the other political science journals.
