apsr-literature-positioning

Literature Positioning (apsr-literature-positioning)

APSR's peer-review policy lists "failure to engage the relevant literature(s)" as an explicit desk-rejection ground. Positioning is therefore not throat-clearing — it is survival. The goal is to place the paper where a general political-science audience can see the gap and the move.

When to trigger

• Drafting or revising the introduction and the "contribution" paragraph
• A reviewer said you "missed obvious work" or "don't engage the debate"
• Your subfield literature is solid but the paper doesn't connect to the broader discipline
• You need to distinguish your contribution from the closest prior papers

How APSR wants the literature engaged

1. Engage the debate, not a pile of citations. Identify the live disagreement or open question your paper speaks to. Cite the works that define it, including across subfields where relevant.
2. Two audiences at once. Satisfy specialists (you know the frontier) and generalists (why it matters). The intro should make a comparativist care about an Americanist paper and vice versa.
3. Name the gap precisely. Not "little is known" — say what is contested, mismeasured, under-theorized, or untested, and why resolving it advances the field.
4. Position the contribution as a move in the debate. "Prior work argues X via mechanism M; we show M fails / is conditional on C / is better explained by M′."
5. Pre-empt the obvious objection. APSR reviewers are expert; acknowledge the strongest rival account and say how your design adjudicates it (hand off to apsr-research-design).

Cross-subfield engagement (a distinctive APSR demand)

If your paper is…	also engage…
an empirical test of an institutional claim	the formal/theoretical literature generating the claim
a country/region case	the general comparative theory it speaks to
a measurement contribution	the substantive literatures that will use the measure
normative/theoretical	the empirical work the argument bears on, where applicable

Anti-patterns

• A "literature dump" with no organizing debate
• Engaging only your own subfield (a top APSR rejection reason)
• Strawmanning prior work, or hiding the closest competitor paper
• Self-citation that breaks anonymity (APSR is double-anonymous — see apsr-submission)
• Claiming "first to study" when the contribution is incremental

Output format

【Debate】the live disagreement / open question
【Key works】the 3-6 that define it (incl. cross-subfield)
【Gap】what is contested / mismeasured / untested
【Move】how this paper changes the debate
【Strongest rival】and how the design will adjudicate it
【Next】apsr-theory-building

Engagement depth APSR editors expect, by paper type

Because APSR is the discipline's generalist flagship — the APSA/Cambridge venue read across American, comparative, IR, theory, and methods — "the relevant literature" is rarely just your home subfield's. The desk screen asks whether a non-specialist editor can see the debate; this table sets the depth that usually clears it.

Paper type	Literature it must engage	The desk-reject trap to avoid
American-politics empirical	the general theory of representation/institutions it tests	citing only Americanists; "first to study district X"
Comparative case study	the cross-national theory the case speaks to	a country literature with no general claim
IR / formal	the substantive empirical work the model bears on	a model debate detached from political outcomes
Normative / political theory	the empirical or public-life stakes, where applicable	a purely internal exegesis with no discipline-wide payoff
Measurement / methods	the substantive literatures that will use the measure	method-for-its-own-sake with no consumer

Worked micro-example (illustrative)

A hypothetical comparative paper argues that proportional electoral rules raise legislative responsiveness to minority preferences. Drafted for a comparative-politics audience, it cites 22 works, 19 of them on European party systems. An APSR-calibrated reframe keeps the core comparative cites but adds the representation debate Americanists own and the formal spatial-voting result the mechanism rests on — roughly 6 cross-subfield anchors — and re-states the gap as a contested general claim ("responsiveness is treated as institution-invariant; we show it is conditional on electoral rule"). The bibliography barely grows, but the contribution now reads as discipline-wide. (Counts illustrative.)

Referee-pushback patterns and the APSR fix

• "The contribution is subfield-bound, not general political science." → Recast the gap as a live disagreement the whole discipline recognizes, and add the 3–6 cross-subfield works that define it.
• "You missed obvious work / don't engage the debate." → This is an explicit desk-reject ground at APSR; map the live disagreement, then cite the works that constitute it, not a citation pile.
• "Closest competitor is hidden." → Name the nearest prior paper and state precisely what your move changes (mechanism fails / is conditional / is better explained).
• "Self-citation breaks anonymity." → Neutralize first-person self-references; APSR is double-anonymous (see apsr-submission).

Calibration anchors (hedged)

• APSR's premium is interest to the whole discipline, so positioning that satisfies only one subfield's frontier is structurally weak even when the within-subfield contribution is real.
• Methodological pluralism extends to literatures: a normative argument may legitimately engage empirical work, and vice versa — the bridge across traditions is itself a positioning asset.
• "Failure to engage the relevant literature(s)" remains a desk-reject category; confirm the exact current wording against the journal's submission and peer-review guidelines before relying on it.

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — desk-rejection grounds incl. literature engagement