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Introduction and Comments
James Johnson, followed by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Over the past four years I have come to understand that journal editors actually have even less control over the shape of particular issues than they do over the trajectory of the journal as a whole. This is due largely to the vagaries not just of the pattern of submissions but also of the editorial process which relies on the responsiveness (or otherwise) of referees. So, this issue of Perspectives on Politics, heavily laden with articles on American politics, is not the result of any plan. It just happened that way.

We open with two studies of American public opinion. First we have a study by Leslie McCall and Lane Kenworthy addressing public reaction to wide and increasing inequality of income in the contemporary United States. McCall and Kenworthy argue that while Americans in fact tend to be dissatisfied with economic inequality, they tend to support indirect remedies such as education rather than direct redistributive policies. Our second essay also explores American public opinion, this time on a persistent “cultural” issue—whether evolution should be taught in public schools. Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer focus primarily on the ways that the state-level distribution of opinion and the relatively fragmented nature of the American judicial system combine to mitigate the impact of efforts by the scientific community to police the bounds of “science” in disputes over the teaching of evolution.

Our next pair of studies address the ways that, first, race and ethnicity and, second, gender play out in the context of American political institutions. Rodney Hero and Robert Preuhs examine the complex dynamics of cooperation and its absence among Latino and African-American advocacy organizations in both the U.S. Congress and the Federal courts. Linda Fowler and Jennifer Lawless, in turn, explore how contextual factors—especially differences in media coverage—negatively impact the fortunes of female gubernatorial candidates in the American states.

Next M. Stephen Weatherford turns our attention to the difficulties involved in assessing presidential performance in the realm of economic policy. Weatherford aims to bring some coherence to this task by identifying relevant factors, categorizing them as within presidential control or not, and establishing both the usefulness and the limitations of quantitative indicators in reaching assessments of presidential performance.

Our next three papers move us “offshore” to one or another degree. Sheri Berman traces the dynamics of political-economic ideologies over the course of the twentieth century, differentiating those liberals and Marxists who embraced the “primacy of economics” from the fascists, National Socialists, and Social Democrats who endorsed the “primacy of politics.” Given our contemporary political-economic troubles, her argument—namely, that we need to be aware of historical precedents as we confront an uncertain future—is a compelling one. Catherine Scott takes up yet another dimension of our current uncertainties—terrorism and the ways that participants in our foreign policy debates construe it. She contends that, insofar as terror networks do not fit neatly into the state-centered thinking of policy elites, we would be well advised to reconsider the “new organization of power” that they represent. David Rivera and Sharon Werning Rivera keep our attention focused on foreign policy, in particular on relations between the United States and post-Soviet Russia. They advance a counter-intuitive assessment of the way former President Yeltsin contributed to the democratization of Russia and the reversals we witnessed under now-former President Putin. They advance a revisionist account of the Clinton administration's efforts to promote political democracy and economic liberalization in Russia.

Finally, we return to American politics with a manifesto of sorts by Jessica Trounstine. In her succinct essay Trounstine argues that political scientists should retrieve the study of city politics from the periphery of the discipline. In my view, she offers a set of persuasive reasons for doing so. And, given that my own preoccupation with questions of political theory started with undergraduate readings on power in urban politics, I hope her insistence finds a ready audience.

James Johnson, University of Rochester

In assuming the editorship of Perspectives, I am stepping down after six years of service as chair of the Political Science department at Indiana University, Bloomington. I know how challenging such positions can be, and while they offer invaluable opportunities to make a difference, they also demand much of those who hold them. And so my appreciation of Jim's work and gratitude toward his effort is immense. Perspectives is not yet a decade old. It is very much a work in progress. If it required special skills for Jennifer Hochschild, its inaugural editor, to get it off the ground, it also required special skills to keep it going. Jim and his staff have bequeathed to us a vibrant journal that is just starting to come into its own. One sign of this is the backlog of accepted articles in the queue, which are likely to fill at least the next two, and possibly three, issues. This gives us breathing space, and the opportunity to chart a future course with care.

I would thus like to thank Jim; Linda Lindenfelser, his dedicated Managing Editor; his staff of graduate assistants; and his Editorial Board, for their cooperation during this time of transition, for their service to the profession, and for their intellectual leadership. It is with a sense of excitement but also appreciation that we take the reigns of the journal.

And it is with excitement, and great pride, that I introduce my own staff and Editorial Board. My Managing Editor, James Moskowitz, is an advanced Indiana University graduate student who has worked as an Editorial Assistant on the Book Review for four years, and he will be working full-time on the journal. James is terrific as an office manager, an editor, and as a scholar (of IR), and he has handled most aspects of the Book Review's production during the past four years (beyond political science, James also has experience running a business); this means that there will be a seamless transition.

We will have six Editorial Assistants working on the journal, generously supported by APSA and Indiana University. One of them, Margot Morgan, has (along with James) been working with me on the Review since the start, and she thus has extensive experience dealing with both editorial and production (she also has an M.A. in counseling, always a useful skill in office settings!). A second, Rebekah Tromble, worked with us for two years, then left to do dissertation fieldwork on an SSRC Dissertation Fellowship, and is returning to us in the Fall. Emily Hilty and Carolyn Homes have been working on the Review for the past year. Both are terrific and will continue in their present capacities. And Katie Scofield and Adrian Florea are excellent graduate students who will be joining our staff.

The plan is to have four Assistants (Margot, Emily, Carolyn, and Adrian) focusing on the Review, as we have done from the beginning, and to have two Assistants (Rebekah and Katie) focusing on the Articles section and the peer review process. The staff is terrific and work well together, and there will be a great deal of flexibility in the way they do their jobs over time. We work as a true team. We have weekly staff meetings, often involving pizza (purchased by yours truly, on his own dime!). My staff are true colleagues, and they are the single most important reason why I am so proud of what we have done with the Book Review, and can be so confident about the journal's future operations.

I am equally proud of the distinguished group of scholars who have graciously agreed to work with me as my Editorial Board: Edwina Barvosa (University of California, Santa Barbara), Richard Battistoni (Providence College), Daniel Drezner (Fletcher School, Tufts University), Page Fortna (Columbia University), Marc Morje Howard (Georgetown University), Bryan Jones (University of Texas, Austin), Stathis Kalyvas (Yale University), Elizabeth S. Markovits (Mount Holyoke), Melissa Nobles (MIT), Timothy Kaufman-Osborne (Whitman College), Paul Pierson (University of California, Berkeley), James Scott (Yale University), Dara Strolovitch (University of Minnesota), and Lisa Wedeen (University of Chicago)

I envision this group as a true intellectual community. I intend to report frequently to the board; to meet twice annually (at the APSA and Midwest conferences); to hold conference calls as needed; and to draw upon board members for advice and assistance. My board members share my excitement about the journal and are committed to working together to enhance its already considerable scholarly reputation and intellectual reach.

I would, finally, like to thank those whose administrative support has been essential during this transition: Michael Brintnall, APSA's indefatiguable Executive Director, and his terrific staff, most especially Polly Karpowicz and Robin Smith; Peter Katzenstein, the President of APSA who appointed me to this position; Rogers Smith, chair of the APSA Search Committee that recommended my appointment; Rose McDermott, chair of APSA's publication committee; Mark Zadrony, Jonathan Geffner, Susan Soule, and Andrea Cermichiari, whose terrific work at Cambridge University Press makes all of APSA's journals possible; and Maura Wittstein, who has worked to help us set up Editorial Manager. In addition, I would like to thank the following colleagues at Indiana University, who have worked tirelessly to provide all manner of support to my staff and me during this transition: Dean Bennett Bertenthal and Executive Associate Dean Bob Becker; former Dean Kumble Subbaswamy and Executive Associate Dean David Zaret; Chris Puckett and Sue Weaver of the College; and James Russell, Steve Flinn, Deb Speer and especially Jan Peterson, the Political Science department's amazing Administrator, who has been my right hand these past years.

Our next issue will contain my first real Introduction, in which I will lay out my vision for moving forward with the journal, a vision developed and refined in dialogue with many colleagues, with APSA leadership, and with my own editorial staff.

We are currently undergoing a review of editorial policy, with an eye toward clarifying and streamlining the peer review process and simultaneously projecting more strongly a sense of what is distinctive about the journal and the articles we seek to publish in it. We are also reconsidering the journal's web presence and revising some of the text posted online. All of these revisions will be discussed in Toronto at our first editorial board meeting, and then announced in the December issue

One change can be announced now, since it is a fait accompli. The APSA Book Review has always been edited separately, first as a part of the APSR and then as a part of Perspectives. Readers of the Review will have noticed that over the past four years I have worked hard to upgrade its intellectual content, introducing new review formats and organizing symposia designed to encourage scholars to stretch beyond their normal comfort zones (indeed, one such innovation was my practice of including Review Editor Introductions making explicit my editorial goals and perspectives). It was my satisfaction and pride in what we have been able to accomplish with the Review that initially motivated me to seek the Editorship of the journal as a whole. My editorial proposal, which has been endorsed by the APSA President and Council, envisioned incorporating the front and back ends of Perspectives into a single operation run at Indiana University under the leadership of a single editor—me. So starting with the next issue, the entire journal will be edited by my staff and me. This will afford us more editorial flexibility, in terms of format and the allocation of space. We intend to continue the kinds of changes we have initiated with the Review, and indeed to do more of the kinds of Symposia, Review Essays, and Critical Dialogues that we have published in recent years.

Indeed, as we proceed, the sharp divisions separating the front and back ends of the journal will be relaxed—even though, as I will make clear in my next Introduction, the front end of the journal will continue to be dominated by research articles, all of which are subjected to a vigorous and clear process of double-blind peer review.

This issue thus contains the last separate Review Editor Introduction! From now on I will write a single Introduction commenting on all of the entries in the journal, highlighting interesting connections, and indicating fruitful avenues of further thinking. In the coming months we will be working here at Indiana University getting everything off to a smooth start. We are very excited to be doing this work. Perspectives is a journal of ideas for the political science profession as a whole, and it can only succeed if it is a well-run operation that publishes excellent, interesting, and engagingly written work. We are absolutely committed to running the journal in an open and efficient manner. Our job is to serve and to enhance the intellectual life that we as political scientists share. And in order for us to do our job well, we need you, as contributors, as book authors, as book reviewers, and as manuscript reviewers. We look forward to working with you and for you in the years to come.

Jeffrey C. Isaac, Indiana University