THE PERESTROIKA MOVEMENT

Perestroika/Glasnost and "Taking Back the APSR"

Sven Steinmo, (University of Colorado, Boulder)

A recent storm of protest has erupted within the political science community. A group going by the acronym "Perestroika-Glasnost" has challenged many APSA institutions and practices. Their initial email "Manifesto" has exploded over the internet because it has effectively exposed the frustration so many political scientists have with the APSA and in particular with the APSR.

Two years ago, I was nominated to the APSA Council through an email campaign on a "Take back the APSR" ticket. I decided to get involved because I, like Mr. Perestroika and an enormous number of political scientists, had become frustrated with the APSR. I believe that the Review has become dominated with a very narrow vision of `science' and that this is destructive to the profession as a whole. What I have discovered over the past couple of years, however, is that while there is a great deal of agreement about the problem, there is little agreement about what to do about this problem. Real change will not come easy.

Contrary to my initial expectations, I found that the APSA central administration was quite sympathetic to the critique of the narrowness of the APSR. As an institutionalist, I should have expected this. The Association is worried that disaffection with the APSR is undermining APSA as an institution: Many, many political scientists have left (and are leaving) their professional association because of anger and frustration with the APSR. Put bluntly, the Review has become a "selective disincentive" for APSA membership.

My second surprise was to find that the APSA Council was not made up of a clique white males from elite East Coast universities. On the contrary, the Council membership represents a diverse set of political scientists from different parts of the country and different types of schools. Indeed, I quickly discovered that many Council members clearly agreed that the APSR needed change.

In response to the complaints about the Review, APSA President Robert Keohane constituted a "Strategic Planning Committee" (SPC), with the explicit mandate to examine the Association' s journals. I was included on this committee. The SPC met several times in 1999-2000 and struggled with a number of distinct issues regarding the APSA. Our central task was to examine what to do about the discontent with the APSR. Even on this committee, I found almost no supporters for the very narrow APSR that we currently have. Even people who have published repeatedly in the APSR told me that they did not (and some even admitted that they "can not") read it.

However, identifying a problem is a lot easier than agreeing about how to solve this problem. In my experience, there is very little agreement even amongst the APSR's most ardent critics about what should be done. The SPC's first suggestion was to make the APSR editor submit his/her list of editorial board members to the Council for approval. The idea was to make this person search for a broader mix of scholars to be on the board. It was easily agreed that this would be a step in the right direction.

Beyond this obvious step, consensual solutions were difficult to find. While virtually everyone agreed that the APSR should reflect the breadth of the discipline, we could not agree on specific mechanisms that will guarantee this outcome. Possibly, no single journal can reflect the best work across a discipline as broad as political science. One should note that we are virtually alone among academic disciplines to require association members to purchase a single journal. So, what is to be done? There are four main suggestions that have been forwarded to date:

1) Get another editor. This is probably the most common suggestion. But, a new editor has just been chosen, Lee Sigelman. I would personally have preferred an historical institutionalist as editor, but by all accounts Sigelman is a methodological pluralist and aware of the discontent. Still, many people believe that the problems with the APSR are so far institutionalized that it is unlikely to be solved by replacing the editor.

2) Force the APSR into the 21 st century and `go electronic' (at least in part) and thereby making more room for longer and more qualitative kind of work. The SPC made this suggestion in the Spring 2000. For a lot of reasons, this suggestion aroused a great deal of criticism. I support this idea but do not feel that it is a magic bullet.

3) Create a separate book review journal with more overview essays, etc, that would be of interest to a wider swath of the profession. This idea is still on the table, but many people (myself included) are not enthusiastic about the idea because we fear that such a journal might simply be seen as `second tier'. For example, in the worst scenario, a second journal could allow the APSR to become even narrower. In defense of the proposal, however, taking the book reviews out of the APSR could allow for more space and thereby longer, and more different, articles.

4) Allow choice: in my view, APSA members should be given a choice of journals. There are various versions of this idea. One version allows any number of journals affiliate with the APSA and thus lets APSA members to get whichever of these journals as part of their membership. They may, of course, choose the APSR. Another is to create another APSA officially sanctioned journal (e.g., a review journal-see 3 above) and allow APSA members to choose both journals for an additional fee. A third possibility is to allow APSA members opt out of the Journals all together and thereby reduce their dues. This option is my least favorite because I believe we should collectively subsidize the academically publishing market.

A problem with ALL of these solutions is that well-meaning people passionately disagree with each of them. I do not know which alternatives (other than 1) will be implemented.

What can YOU do? If you agree that have consciously and specifically acted change is needed, please continue to apply pressure on the APSA and the APSR to be broader and more inclusive of differing intellectual traditions and methodological preferences. Get - and stay active in the reform movement. In my view, one of the reasons that the profession has become so narrow is that we have allowed it to become so. Go to the APSA meetings. Participate actively in section meetings- like WEPS. Nominate reform-minded colleagues to the Council and other APSA executive positions. Volunteer to serve on committees (e.g., award committees) in the association. In general, do not allow the profession to be taken away from you by apathy. Rational Choice proponents have done so well politically, because they understand collective action problems and because they acted strategically. So do the same.