The state of political science, 2020

Abstract

This article maps the state of political science since the turn of the millennium. It begins by reviewing the influential description of the discipline in Robert Goodin’s (2011 [2009]) introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Political Science. It then introduces an alternative approach, based on citation indexes, to generate a comparative list of influential authors for the same time period. After comparing Goodin’s list with our own, we use the same method to generate a list of the most influential books and articles of the 2009–2018 period and describe how the discipline has changed over the intervening decade. Two of the more interesting findings include the continued importance of books (in addition to articles) in political science citations and an apparent trend towards increased pluralism in recent years.