The Political Science 400: A 20-Year Update

Abstract

This essay is the first of a planned three-part series dealing with quantitative indicators of continuity and change in the political science discipline, focusing on the period since 1960. The series is inspired by the work of Somit and Tanenhaus (1967) which presented reputational rankings of both departments and individuals. For this series of essays, we created a unique database in which we recorded cumulative citation counts between 1960–2005 for all regular faculty members of U.S. Ph.D.-granting institutions ca. 2002. In addition to identifying the department at which the individuals in this data set are presently employed, we have also collected information on their date of Ph.D. and the institution from which their Ph.D. was awarded. The authors would like to thank Robert Axelrod, Nathaniel Beck, Russell Dalton, James Fowler, Ronald Inglehart, Margaret Levi, Michael Lewis-Beck, Jean Oi, Dorothy Solinger, Don Wittman, and the anonymous reviewers of PS for their helpful feedback and corrections. We are also indebted to the bibliographic assistance of Clover Behrend-Gethard, and to the inspiration of Hans-Dieter Klingemann's pioneering work. Any errors presented in this paper are the sole responsibility of the authors. The authors welcome corrections to the data that is presented in this series. Comments and corrections can be sent to [e-mail].