govern-literature-positioning

Literature Positioning (govern-literature-positioning)

A Governance paper must show it is in conversation with the comparative-institutional community — the SOG/IPSA RC27 readership and the broader fields of executive politics, public policy, public administration, and the study of the state. Positioning is not a citation dump; it is the argument for why this gap matters to that community and why Governance is the right venue. Engage the literature; build the argument in govern-theory-building.

When to trigger

• Drafting or revising the framing / literature section
• A reviewer said the paper "doesn't engage the comparative literature" or "isn't a Governance contribution"
• Unsure which scholarly conversation (and which journal's audience) you are joining
• Establishing the gap the paper fills

The literatures to engage (pick the ones you actually move)

• Comparative governance & the state — state capacity, statehood, bureaucratic autonomy, the organization of government across regimes.
• Public policy & the policy process — agenda-setting, instrument choice, policy feedback, diffusion, punctuated equilibrium, advocacy coalitions, design.
• Public administration & executive politics — delegation, political control of bureaucracy, agencification, NPM/post-NPM, administrative capacity and reform.
• Institutions — institutional change (layering, conversion, drift), historical institutionalism, multilevel governance, accountability regimes.
• Governance networks & regulatory governance — coordination, meta-governance, the regulatory state (engage but do not slide into a pure Regulation & Governance framing).

Speak to the SOG/IPSA comparative-institutional reader

This reader prizes portability and comparison. Make the positioning answer: what does this teach a scholar working on a different country or policy domain? A finding anchored only in one national administrative tradition, addressed only to its national specialists, reads as off-venue here.

Sibling-journal audience map (whose conversation is this?)

If the gap is framed for…	The natural venue is…	To make it a Governance contribution…
US practitioners / administrative practice	PAR (ASPA)	recast as a comparative/institutional claim about governing
Pure PA theory development	JPART	tie the theory to executive politics or the state comparatively
Policy analysis / program evaluation, cost-benefit	JPAM	foreground the institutional/political logic, not the evaluation
Regulatory-instrument design / the regulatory state per se	Regulation & Governance (Wiley sibling)	show comparative reach across policy domains or countries

If, after positioning, the paper sits more naturally in a sibling journal, return to govern-topic-selection — better to reframe now than to be desk-rejected for fit.

Situate the gap (not just name it)

A Governance gap statement earns its place when it: (1) names the dominant account others rely on; (2) shows the specific point where it is incomplete, contradicted, or untested comparatively; and (3) states what the paper supplies that the field cannot currently get elsewhere. "Under-studied" is not a gap; "the leading explanation predicts X but cross-national variation shows Y" is.

Anti-patterns

• A literature section that lists citations without an argument about the gap (and risks reading like the kind of review Governance does not publish)
• Engaging only one national PA literature, ignoring the comparative-institutional community
• Citing the policy-process canon but never saying which claim you revise
• Positioning for a PAR/JPART/JPAM/Regulation & Governance audience while submitting to Governance
• Burying the contribution under a wall of "X argues… Y argues…" with no synthesis

Output format

【Conversation joined】comparative governance / policy process / PA-executive / institutions / networks
【Dominant account】the explanation the field currently relies on
【The gap】where it is incomplete / contradicted / untested comparatively
【Audience check】this is a Governance (not PAR/JPART/JPAM/R&G) contribution because…
【Contribution preview】what the paper supplies
【Next】govern-theory-building

Supplementary resources

• ../../resources/external_tools.md — reference management and comparative-governance corpora
• ../../resources/official-source-map.md — Governance scope and RC27/SOG community notes