By name: ajps-literature-positioning description: Use when positioning an American Journal of Political Science (AJPS) manuscript against the literature. AJPS is double-blind, so positioning must engage the relevant debates while keeping the manuscript fully anonymized (third-person self-citation, no first-person "we showed"). Stakes the contribution; it does not write the lit review.
Literature Positioning (ajps-literature-positioning)
At AJPS the introduction must do two things at once: place the paper inside a live empirical or theoretical debate that a broad political-science readership recognizes, and stay consistent with double-blind review. The second constraint is easy to break — a single "as we demonstrated in our 2021 paper" can identify the authors. Positioning is where the contribution is staked and where anonymity is most often lost.
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"
- Distinguishing your contribution from the closest prior papers
- Checking that self-citations are anonymized for double-blind review
How AJPS wants the literature engaged
- Engage a debate, not a citation pile. Name the live disagreement, the contested estimate, or the open mechanism your paper speaks to, and cite the works that define it.
- Locate the marginal contribution precisely. "Prior work estimates effect E assuming A; we relax A / identify E cleanly / show E is conditional on C." A generalist reader should see the increment.
- Pre-empt the obvious rival. AJPS reviewers are expert and quantitatively literate; name the
strongest alternative explanation and signal how the design adjudicates it (hand off to
ajps-research-design). - Speak to a broad readership. AJPS spans subfields; show why a reader outside your niche should care, without diluting the specialist contribution.
Keep positioning double-blind (an AJPS-specific demand)
- Third-person self-citation. Cite your own prior work as you would anyone else's — never "in our earlier work" or "we previously showed."
- No identifying tells. Remove acknowledgments, grant numbers, named datasets you uniquely hold, conference-presentation mentions, and "available on my website" links.
- Watch the bibliography. A wall of single-author self-cites can de-anonymize even in third person;
cite only what the argument needs (see
ajps-submission).
Anti-patterns
- A "literature dump" with no organizing debate
- First-person self-reference that breaks anonymity ("as we showed in...")
- Strawmanning prior work or hiding the closest competitor paper
- Claiming "first to study" when the contribution is incremental
- Padding citations to signal effort rather than to position the contribution
Worked micro-example (illustrative)
A paper on close-election incumbency advantage positions against a live debate: prior estimates credit officeholder resources, while a rival camp argues candidate-quality persistence. The marginal-contribution sentence: "Existing RD work estimates a pooled advantage assuming no sorting; we relax that, add a manipulation test, and show the effect survives — isolating the officeholding channel." The strongest rival is named, with a pointer to the adjudicating design. Self-cites stay third-person, preserving anonymity.
Referee-pushback patterns and the venue-specific fix
- "You missed obvious work / don't engage the debate." -> Replace the citation pile with the 3-6 works that define the live disagreement and locate your increment against them.
- "First-person self-cite breaks blinding." -> Rewrite "as we showed" as a third-person citation; a single tell can de-anonymize at AJPS.
- "This is incremental, not 'first to study.'" -> Drop the novelty claim; state the delta.
Calibration anchor: AJPS rewards a contribution that travels across political settings and an introduction engaging a debate a broad readership recognizes; confirm the current anonymizing rules against the journal's guidelines.
Positioning pass for American Journal of Political Science
Run this as a concrete capability pass. First lock the political theory, design leverage, measurement validity, and scope condition; then test whether the manuscript addresses political-science reviewers who expect tight theory, transparent design, and a contribution that travels across political settings.
- Primary move: Build a three-column map: incumbent conversation, unresolved tension, and this manuscript's delta; include one sibling-venue omission that would make a referee doubt the fit.
- Decision ledger: return
claim / evidence / blocker / next editrows so the next pass can patch the manuscript directly. - Sibling comparison: compare against APSR for field-wide breadth, Journal of Politics for broader political-science audience, Political Analysis for methods-first work; if the neighboring outlet has the stronger audience claim, recommend re-routing before polishing.
- Verification floor: before submission-ready advice, re-open
resources/official-source-map.mdfor volatile rules and name the one unresolved fact that could change the recommendation.
Output format
【Debate】the live disagreement / contested estimate
【Key works】the 3-6 that define it
【Gap】what is contested / mismeasured / unidentified
【Move】how this paper changes the debate
【Strongest rival】and how the design will adjudicate it
【Anonymity】self-cites in third person, no identifying tells? [Y/N]
【Next】ajps-theory-building
Supplementary resources
../../resources/official-source-map.md— double-blind review and anonymizing requirements