Introduction

Since its inception in 1968, Polity has been committed to the publication of a plurality of approaches to the study of politics. As journals within political science have become more specialized in terms of topics and less accessible in terms of styles of argumentation, Polity has remained ecumenical with respect to research topics, theoretical questions, and methods of analysis. In the past year alone, Polity has published more than twenty articles on a diverse topics including methodological practices in comparative politics, American urban politics, American national politics, American political development, African-American politics, the history of political thought, normative political theory, non-western political thought, political thought in literature, comparative party politics, comparative regime change, comparative political economy, comparative constitutional development, the cultural consequences of war, and the foreign policy implications of neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism.

News

Upcoming in Volume 48, Issue 2 (April 2016)
Symposium: The Family, the State, and American Political Development

The family as an institution has been under-examined in the discipline of political science. By showing how the family underlies legal rights, the parameters of state power, and political and historical trends, this symposium illuminates why it is imperative to study the family in relationship to the state and to American political development. Individual contributions specifically examine (the often shifting) legal definitions of what a family "is," the familial basis of women's right to vote, the familial basis of the administrative state, and the use of family imagery by political parties to secure partisan advantage. Taken together, these symposium contributors establish that the family-state nexus is a foundational component of American political development.

Roger Karapin announced as the new Editor of Polity

We are pleased to announce that Roger Karapin (Ph.D. from M.I.T., 1993), Professor of Political Science at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, has become the new editor of Polity from July 2015. Roger's current research focusses on climate and other environmental policies in the U.S. and Germany. He has previously studied environmental movements, far-right parties, anti-immigration campaigns, and racist violence in Germany and the UK. Roger's book, Protest Politics in Germany: Movements on the Left and Right Since the 1960s, won the American Sociological Association's Charles Tilly Award in 2008.

Roger succeeds Cyrus Ernesto "Ernie" Zirakzadeh, Professor of Comparative Politics and History of Political Thought at the University of Connecticut. Palgrave Macmillan would like to extend our gratitude to Ernie and his editorial team for their extraordinary work over the past five years. Ernie's leadership and commitment have made Polity one of the most widely-known journals in political science.

We look forward to Polity's continuing growth, excellence and recognition under Roger's editorship.

Polity 2014 Impact Factor

The Thomson Reuters 2014 Journal Citation Reports^® has been released and we are pleased to announce that the new Impact Factor for Polity is 0.642, rising from 0.458 last year. This result places IP at 92 of 161 titles in the Political Science category for 2014.

Polity also received its first-ever 5-Year Impact Factor - a strong 0.533.

We congratulate the journal's editorial team at the University of Connecticut and would like to take this opportunity to recognize their continuous excellent work on the journal as 2014 is the third consecutive year of growth in citation performance!

Palgrave Open

Open access option for authors

Polity offers authors of accepted primary research papers the option to publish their articles with immediate open access upon publication. Find out more from our FAQs page.

The 2015 Polity Prizewinner

The committee selected Jimmy Casas Klausen's article, "Jeremy Waldron's Partial Kant: Indigenous Proximity, Colonial Injustice, Cultural Particularism," as the outstanding contribution to Polity in 2014.

The members of the selection committee were Robert Pepperman Taylor (University of Vermont) and Jane Junn (University of Southern California).

Congratulations to Dr. Klausen on his fine work!

Read Klausen's prizewinning article here.

Listen to Polity podcasts on the go!

Polity podcasts are now available on iTunes and via subscription to the podcast RSS feed. Visit our Podcast Page to learn more.

Advance Online Publication (AOP)

Polity is now utilising our industry leading Advance Online Publication (AOP) service. This service enables us to publish online the final version of a paper, fully citeable and exactly as it will be published in the printed edition. In some instances papers are published AOP a significant number of months before appearing in print.
View Advance Online Publication.