The Professional Review Of The Italian Political Science Association ... journal's content, the state of the discipline in Italy and to outline a number of possible innovations ... the world and to publish articles by important names of the profession.
The Professional Review Of The Italian Political Science Association
Publishing political science in Italy. An analysis of the last decade of contributions to the RISP by Diego Garzia and Luca Verzichelli | Published in issue6 / Political science community
Introduction This short note replicates, in terms of structure and content, the article by Sani and Legnante1 appeared ten years ago on the Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica. Our aim is that of comparing the findings from their analysis concerning the articles published in the first thirty years of the journal with a similar analysis focused on the last decade, in order to provide answers to a number of questions: is the main Italian PS journal covering a stable set of sub-fields in the discipline? Looking at the most recurrent topic and approaches is there any sign of transformation ? Who did publish in the RISP during the last ten years? Where did the submissions come from? What about the analytical tools and data employed by the authors? How different, in the end, has been the publication profile of the RISP during the last decade, as compared to the phase of first institutionalization of the journal, in terms of authors, analytical focus and approaches? This note is of course just a first discussion, whose primary goal is to assess, through the analysis of the journal’s content, the state of the discipline in Italy and to outline a number of possible innovations in the editorial policies of the RISP.
Authors Before moving to the analysis of the topics and the methodologies employed in the 156 articles appeared in the RISP during the last decade, we begin with an assessment of the authors’ characteristics. As compared to the first three decades, we observe a slight increase in the proportion of co-authored articles (17.3% in the period 2001-2010; 8.7% in the period 1971-2000) which marks an encouraging trend towards some increased forms of collaboration among scholars and different academic institutions – in line with the AngloSaxon tradition and with the most recent international trends. In terms of internationalization, the years between 2001 and 2010 testify a smaller proportion of contributions authored (or co-authored) by non-Italian scholars – the proportion being 20.5% as compared to 26.9% in the period 1971-2000. This could be imputed to the editorial policies developed during this period – a “random” and fully spontaneous process of submission to the editorial board of the journal, and an institutionalized procedure of external anonymous review of the submitted articles. In the long run, these policies are supposed to re-balance the international visibility of the journal, even thanks to two recent occurrences like the application of RISP to the most important international bibliometric indexes for social sciences (RISP is already included in Scopus and it is currently under review by ISI C itation Index) and the novel editorial policy to consider articles in English. However, such policies had, as an immediate consequence, that of stimulating above all the submissions from young Italian scholars. In spite of this, the RISP looks still a journal capable to attract submissions and contributions from all around the world and to publish articles by important names of the profession. In the last ten years, the journal have featured in its pages contributions by (just to mention a few) Ian Budge, Hans Daalder, Russell Dalton,
Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Theodor Lowi, Max Kaase, Philippe Schmitter and Robert Franzese. Even among the Italian contributors, a good mix of senior and junior scholars seems to be reached. The rate of nontenured scholars is indeed quite high (more than 20% in the last decade), although the journal keeps publishing the research of established scholars from different generations. The list of the most assiduous contributors of the last ten years, for ins tance, includes Gianfranco Pasquino (6 articles), Giacomo Sani, Leonardo Morlino, Filippo Andreatta, Mauro Barisione, Luigi C urini, Guido Legnante and Daniela Piana (all with 3 articles).
Topics In terms of geo-political units under analysis, we find no sensible difference between the first three decades of the journal and the most recent decade, with a proportion of articles around 30% dealing only with the Italian political system. In other words, this confirms that, notwithstanding the broad prevalence of submissions by Italian authors, the RISP and its authors have kept their eyes opened on the supra-national dimension of politics, employing mainly (although not exclusively) the comparative method repeatedly recommended by Sartori in the early years of the journal. Due to the increasing complexities of (supra)national politics, we observe a correspondingly high heterogeneity in terms of topics on which the articles appeared in the last years have focused. We deem useful to explore the content of these articles by focusing, in turn, on two core features. The first feature we put under observation is the political institution to which the contributions are (mainly) devoted. For the sake of comparability, we employed the 12 categories used in Sani and Legnante’s article in order to map the main institutions focused in the contributions. Table 1 reports the percentage of articles dealing with each institution in both the first three decades (first column) and the last one (second column). Three considerations arise from this comparison: (i) the major institutions under study are – throughout the forty years – the crucial units of analysis of comparative politics, that is to say, political parties and governments. However, we observe (ii) a declining attention to what was (and nonetheless still is) the object of foremost attention – political parties – and a corresponding increase of articles dealing with governments. This can be explained by two factors: the increasing importance of executive politics and leaders in Western democracies and the relative consolidation of the discipline of International Relations (IR) within the RISP (see the article by Marco C lementi in the present issue), which determines an increase of contributions dealing with national governments. Additionally, we note that (iii) the last decade has witnessed a three-fold increase in the percentage of articles dealing with Europe broadly-defined. This can be easily explained with the deeper relationship between national and supra-national political arenas in EU-member states, whose effects on the research agenda of many European scholars are evident. Table 1. Institutions covered in the articles published by the RISP (Sources: For 1971-2000: Sani & Legnante (2001); for 2001-2010: Authors’ calculations) 1971-2000 2001-2010 Diff. Governments
11.9%
23.8%
11.9%
European Institutions
4.0%
11.9%
7.9%
Local Governments
2.9%
8.7%
5.8%
Ministries
2.1%
2.4%
0.3%
Judiciary
1.8%
1.6%
-0.2%
Bureaucracy
2.1%
1.6%
-0.5%
Armed Forces
1.8%
0.8%
-1.0%
Political Parties
36.7%
34.1%
-2.6%
Trade Unions
4.0%
0.8%
-3.2%
Parliaments
12.9%
9.5%
-3.4%
Interest Groups
5.8%
0.0%
-5.8%
Party Systems
14.0%
4.8%
-9.2%
The second feature of the contributions appeared on the RISP we want to analyze here, strictly connected to
the institutional units of analysis, relates to the specific actors studied in these articles. Our data confirm that, during the last decade, a larger proportion of articles dealing with national and local executives has appeared, balanced by a corresponding decline in the percentage of articles devoted to MPs and other politicians. Voters remain stably as the major focus for actor-centered empirical analyses published by our journal, while we have to notice the emergence of a new interesting category of analysis: party/movement members – an actor which was no relevant at all in the first three decades of the RISP – has been studied by more than 10% of the articles published in the most recent period. This has clearly to do, on the one hand, with the problem of transformation/crisis of political parties, which has induced many scholars to explore the change of membership and other aspects of the cartelization of political parties. On the other hand, the remarkable amount of articles focused on movements’ members has to do with the strengthening of important sub-disciplines of political science, dealing with new forms of political participation, social and spontaneous movements and deliberative democracy. Table 2. Actors covered in the articles published by the RISP (Sources: For 1971-2000: Sani & Legnante (2001); for 2001-2010: Authors’ calculations) 1971-2000 2001-2010 Diff. Party/Movement Members
0.0%
12.8%
12.8%
Executive Members
8.2%
18.1%
9.9%
Local Administrators
3.3%
6.4%
3.1%
Voters
4.0%
42.6%
1.6%
Trade Union Personnel
0.8%
1.1%
0.3%
Judges
0.4%
0.0%
-0.4%
Army Personnel
2.5%
0.0%
-2.5%
Interest Groups Members
3.3%
0.0%
-3.3%
MPs
15.2%
6.4%
-8.8%
Politicians
25.4%
12.8%
-12.6%
Analytical approaches As a second step of this note, we would like to focus on the analytical approaches employed in the last decades’ contributions to the RISP. Looking at the data from the period 2001-2010 (second column in Table 3), what emerges quite clearly is the persisting primacy of ‘case study’ approaches – a not so surprising finding for a country-based journal, which anyway clashes with the comparative mission of the RISP. A comparison with the previous three decades demonstrates a substantial continuity in the employment of this methodology. Yet it also highlights a five-fold increase in the proportion of articles devoted to relations between nations – a category encompassing proper IR as well as the new field of European studies (see above). At last, a welcome occurrence in times of increasing professionalization of political science is related to the slightly increased presence of methodological papers (+1,4%). Table 3. Analytical approaches followed in the articles published by the RISP (Sources: For 1971-2000: Sani & Legnante (2001); for 2001-2010: Authors’ calculations) 1971-2000 2001-2010 Diff. International Relations
3.0%
14.7%
11.7%
Methodology
5.9%
7.3%
1.4%
Case Study in Comparative Perspective
5.2%
5.3%
0.1%
Comparative Analysis
16.1%
14.0%
-2.1%
Case Study
37.2%
34.0%
-3.2%
Non-Systematic References
13.3%
9.3%
-4.0%
General Politics
19.3%
15.3%
-4.0%
When we focus on the type of data and analytical techniques employed by the contributors the last decade
When we focus on the type of data and analytical techniques employed by the contributors the last decade denotes, once again, no substantial changes. A move towards a more intensive use of sophisticated types of data gathering and analysis did not occur (Table 4). Indeed, the articles appeared in this period are still strongly based on aggregate-level electoral data (e.g., election results, turnout rates, and so on) notwithstanding the indisputable developments in the field of survey research in Italy – the brightest example being the intensive program of studies and publications of ITANES2 . Table 4. Type of Data (Sources: For 1971-2000: Sani & Legnante (2001); for 2001-2010: Authors’ calculations) 1971-2000 2001-2010 Diff. Electoral
23.8%
26.9%
3.1%
Organizational
23.0%
22.3%
-0.7%
Demoscopic
16.6%
14.6%
-2.0%
Social
15.0%
11.5%
-3.5%
Economic/Financial
12.1%
10.0%
-2.1%
Other
9.5%
14.6%
5.1%
In terms of analytical techniques, descriptive analyses and frequency distributions remain the most frequently used tools by the authors of RISP: approximately, two thirds of the articles from the period 20012010 do not present multivariate analysis or other non-descriptive techniques. The increasing use of exploratory descriptives and a slight increase in the use of regression (Table 5) cannot really change the impression of a substantially weak panorama: Italian political scientists (or more generally the scholars publishing in the most important Italian journal) present a set of techniques which is still, all in all, limited in comparison to the typical content of the most relevant English-speaking journals. A more attentive scrutiny of this aspect reveals that the analyses of variance and the recently developed techniques of multivariate statistical modeling are still, all considered, the Achilles’s heel of our scientific community. Table 5. Analytical Techniques (Sources: For 1971-2000: Sani & Legnante (2001); for 2001-2010: Authors’ calculations) 1971-2000 2001-2010 Diff. Descriptive analyses
15.5%
39.9%
24.4%
Frequency distributions
41.7%
26.1%
-15.6%
Crosstabulations
8.8%
14.4%
5.6%
Correlations
10.0%
4.3%
-5.7%
Regressions
4.7%
6.9%
2.2%
Indexes
11.0%
3.7%
-7.3%
ANOVA
2.3%
0.0%
-2.3%
Multivariate
3.1%
1.1%
-2.0%
Other
2.8%
3.7%
0.9%
International impact Are the contributions published by the RISP visible and impacting enough in the scientific debate? This question has been a constant concern for the Italian political scientists, and particularly for those who have contributed to the making of the journal, from the founder Giovanni Sartori to all the co-Editors, Editors and members of the editorial board. An important dilemma, for all of them, has been the choice between a journal mainly grounded on the production of the “local community” (and, specially, open to its younger generations of scholars) or a journal giving voice to important contributions coming from the “international community”. In the pioneers’ times of the first decades, the translation of important pieces of literature written by well known international scholars was a tool of socialization for the Italian political science. Now, the publication (even in English) of fresher contributions written by well and less well known non-Italian
scholars is possible. In any case, the individuation of a precise “target” of pieces is not yet clear and it can change continuously. What is, anyway, the overall impact of the articles published by the RISP? In order to answer this question, one can use an instrument like Publish or Perish – a freeware application based on Google Scholar statistics – which allows to have a rough measure of the level of internationalization of the journal. Not surprisingly, we can discover that the RISP is, by far, the most quoted Italian journal in the field of political science. This confirms the good record in terms of distribution: the RISP counts, indeed, some hundreds of subscribers, including a remarkable number of non Italian scholars and libraries. C lassic RISP articles have reached a good number of citations recorded by this archive, thus confirming the validity of such kind of indicators of scientific impact and, overall, the good ranking of the journal in the International scene. Among them, two famous Sartori’s pieces: La politica comparata, premesse e problemi – the opening piece of the first issue of RISP – and Videopolitica, a piece from 1989. Even in recent times, well known articles from Italian and non Italian first class authors provide a good record of citations. The best performers, among the articles published by the RISP so far, is an article published in 1999 by Renate Mayntz: La teoria della governance: sfide e prospettive. However, the challenge of international visibility remains a difficult task. The average citations per year (about 60) of the articles published by the RISP is still relatively low and the trend, although slightly increasing in the long run, does not seem so particularly encouraging (Figure 1). The international visibility and the consequent citations of the articles seem still to be very much correlated to the appearance of famous names, like those who signed many of the most-quoted articles published during the period 19952002. Much more difficult is, as expected, the visibility of pieces authored by young Italian scholars and now even those authored by less prominent non Italian scholars submitting their works to the Editorial board (since 2009, as already said, articles in English are admitted to the review process). No doubt, the policies adopted during the last years – for instance, the abolition of special issues, the definitive elimination of the translations of famous pieces already published abroad and the limitation to the automatic publication of “key note speeches”- can be a risk, since they open the process of publication to a purely random selection based on the peer review. However, a critical mass of citations (between 30 and 80 per year) remains. This has to be considered the basis for a new aggressive policy of presence of the journa l on the international debate for the years to come.
Figure 1. Frequency of citations of the articles published by RISP on Publish or Perish (1971-2008).
Concluding Remarks This summary of the articles appeared in the RISP during the last decade provides a mixed picture. On the one hand, the period 2001-2010 witnessed an increased tendency towards collaboration among scholars, as well as an implicit willingness to look beyond the Italian borders and open the journal to a truly European horizon. Indeed, only one third of the articles dealt exclusively with the Italian case, while we have observed a growing attention on emerging themes in European political science such as EU institutions, international organizations and social movements. The presence of different generations of scholars is per se a good
indicator of relevance of the journal within the discipline, and the broad participation of a number of approaches and scholars representing very different sub-field of political science shows a fruitful application of the generalist mission of the RISP, while the continuity with Sartori’s original idea of a journal mainly devoted to modern comparative politics is at the same time assured. On the other hand, much remains to be done for ensuring the ultimate consolidation of the main Italian PS journal in a highly competitive world: the degree of internationalization of the journal, in particular, should be strengthened, both in terms of contributions and contributors, and the methodologization of its content (above all, in terms of analytical techniques) is also a delicate open question. The traditional openness to a plurality of methods and approaches seems to be confirmed by the data. However, the RISP did not bring, so far, to a strong transformation of the research techniques used by the Italian political scientists. To put it in other words, we still tend to discuss methods (and particularly statistics) without employing these resources in the daily life of political science. This gap is evident if we compare the results of the researches produced by the Italian scholars to those produced within other communities which still look more advanced in their methodological skills. In particular, Germans and Scandinavians represent the most sophisticated communities, but also the younger scholars from Spain and Portugal look very competitive under this point of view. Similarly, although we tend to talk a lot about comparative politics, we are still too much committed to the study of a single country-case, which is in most of the cases – but this is quite expectable – the case of the Italian political system. However, if we do not want to make another journal on Italian politics – a task which is by the way perfectly pursued by different publications both in Italian and in English – we have to increase the number of truly comparative articles and even case-studies based on the knowledge of different and stimulating geo-political areas.
Notes 1
Sani, G. & Legnante, G. (2001) “Trent’anni, 253 autori, 14422 pagine di scienza politica” in Rivista Italiana
di Scienza Politica 31 (2), pp. 277-290. fn2. The ITANES (Italian National Election Studies) association runs a research program on voting behavior in Italy, the origins of which date back to the early 1990s, when the Istituto C arlo C attaneo Research Foundation conducted two post-election surveys (1990 and 1992) within the context of a project devoted to the study of change in the Italian political system. For the 1994 elections the C attaneo’s research program was joined by various researchers from several different universities. Since then, ITANES have conducted a number of pre/post electoral large-n surveys during each national election held in Italy, ftpm which a number of key publications in the field are derived (see: Bellucci, P. & Segatti, P. (2011). Votare in Italia. Dall’appartenenza alla scelta. Bologna: Il Mulino). Further information is available at http://www.itanes.org.
