ajps-literature-positioning

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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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).
4. 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 edit rows 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.md for 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