The State of State Politics Research

Abstract

Reviewers of the state of state politics research often lament the field's lack of theoretical progress and its fragmented character These conditions per sist yet a review of this research published in the professions top journals over the past decade reveals a substantively rich and often methodologi cally sophisticated body of scholarship. Applying an inclusive approach, this essay examines all research published on state politics over the last decade in the profession's six top journals: APSR, AJPS, JOP, PRQ Polity and SSQ. Trends in substantive focus and the findings of this research are described, as are methodological approaches and innovations. The study takes stock of the progress the field has made and identifies promising avenues for future inquiry. The subfield could advance by emphasizing its unique comparative analytical advantages. These advantages provide an excellent opportunity to evaluate the impact of institutional and environ mental contexts on political behavior, processes and outcomes. The field needs to emphasize the importance of modeling political behavior across contexts, and interactively across contextual and individual levels of analy sis. By so doing, the subfield can show how states matter and also assess the generality of models that focus too often on behavior or process within single contexts.