This article was downloaded by: [190.66.14.

194] On: 21 March 2013, At: 12:44 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Politics, Groups, and Identities

Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpgi20

How PGI came about

Shaun Bowler , Timothy Kaufman-Osborn , Valerie MartinezEbers , Kenneth J. Meier & Ronald Schmidt
a b c d e c d e a b

University of California, Riverside, USA Whitman College, Walla Walla, USA University of North Texas, Denton, USA Texas A&M University, College Station, USA

California State University, Long Beach, USA Version of record first published: 04 Mar 2013.

To cite this article: Shaun Bowler , Timothy Kaufman-Osborn , Valerie Martinez-Ebers , Kenneth J. Meier & Ronald Schmidt (2013): How PGI came about , Politics, Groups, and Identities, 1:1, 1-3 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2012.758591

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-andconditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

Politics, Groups, and Identities, 2013 Vol. 1, No. 1, 13, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2012.758591

INTRODUCTION How PGI came about

Weve been asked to give a bit of background as to how and why Politics, Groups, and Identities (PGI) came into being. The story begins in 2005 with the suggestion by former executive director of the Western Political Science Association (WPSA), Betty Moulds, that the leadership of the organization needed to think seriously and more broadly about its nancial future, and seek to diversify its sources of income in order to better support a staff and a growing membership that could no longer count on subsidies from traditional sources. So after considerable debate and, at times, heated discussions among members of the WPSA Executive Council, our committee was appointed in 2007 by the president of the association at that time, Valerie Martinez-Ebers, to make that exploration.1 The ofcial title of our ad hoc committee was the Strategic Planning Committee. We rst met in person as a committee at the San Diego meeting in 2008. It was the rst of many meetings of the committee at regional and national conferences.2 Our conversations very quickly focused on the idea that it would be good for the Association to have a journal of its own a journal wholly owned by the Association and one that would be less constrained by the requirements of being a general interest journal and instead be a journal that would more closely reect both the intellectual interests and methodological diversity of our association. We saw the opportunity for a journal that could both reect the Association, and help nance the meetings and infrastructure of the Association. Our discussions regularly revolved around two main themes one intellectual and one practical.

Downloaded by [190.66.14.194] at 12:44 21 March 2013

The intellectual motivation While the Political Research Quarterly (PRQ) is an excellent journal that provides an outlet for the broad range of research interests among political scientists, the new journal, we thought, should have a focus that reects the unique strengths of the WPSA, and especially its annual conference. In particular, we were thinking about the large number of panels we always have at our annual meeting, and the strong interest our members seem to share on subjects related to social identity groups of one kind or another: feminist theory, women & politics, gender & sexuality, race & ethnicity, immigrants & citizenship. These are among the most dynamic foci of our conferences, have been for many years, and their concentration in the WPSA is what sets our conference apart from all others. An emphasis on this subject matter along with the willingness to embrace a wide range of methodologies another quality which permeates the Western conference we thought would help to distinguish our new journal from other journals in political science. While agreement on this intellectual approach may seem straightforward possibly even quite obvious it is worth emphasizing that such an agreement is strongly rooted in our personal experiences with the Western and that, possibly, it is only the Western that could have produced such consensus. The debates and divisions that have preoccupied the profession more broadly often seem to reect institutional and intellectual divisions within the profession. As a committee we had, and have, very different interests and approaches and are associated with a range of
2013 Western Political Science Association

S. Bowler et al.

Downloaded by [190.66.14.194] at 12:44 21 March 2013

different institutions, but we could all wholeheartedly agree on the direction of the new journal, a direction that reected our sense of what the WPSA currently represents and reects. In our view, the new journal should also reect where the association is headed: border crossing. With this notion in mind, we thought the new journal could provide a more permanent space to examine issues that cut across traditional subelds and so has the potential to generate cross-fertilization among people who generally do not interact. To take one example, identity is a central issue in political behavior, political theory, comparative politics, and public administration/policy. As an association, we believe that there is much to be gained by encouraging discussion among different groups those interested in ideas of citizenship talking with political theorists, or policy scholars talking with feminists, environmentalists with scholars interested in race and so on. The combinations for discussion and engagement that we know about, primarily because of the growing number of sections and hybrid panels at our annual Western meetings, are many and varied. There will be many others we have not yet thought about. Obviously, not all discussions will prove fruitful but some will and quite possibly many of them will. The point, however, is through the publication of PGI to provide a space in which these discussions can take place beyond the once-a-year Western meetings. Our practical concerns Once we settled on the intellectual basis for establishing PGI, the practical problems involved with starting a new journal, and in a manner that did not undermine our successful relationship with PRQ, consumed our efforts At this point it may be useful to provide a brief history of the WPSA and its relationship with PRQ. As an association of scholars, the WPSA owes a huge debt of gratitude to the University of Utah. It was scholars at Utah who founded our association, and who also created the Western Political Quarterly, now known as PRQ. The University of Utah, in fact, still owns PRQ, which gives them the legal right to change publishers and/or negotiate new contracts. It also is well within their legal right to take an increasing amount of the journal prots, even as PRQ has become one of the major general journals in our discipline; in part due to its continuing afliation as the ofcial journal of the Western but primarily because of the excellent effort and high standards of past and current editors of PRQ editors that were identied and selected by the Executive Council of the WPSA. For historical and organizational reasons, then, the relationship with the University of Utah has been, and will continue to be, a cornerstone of the WPSA.3 In our efforts to better understand the process of starting a journal, we were struck and sometimes confounded by the odd nature of the journal publishing market. The publishers with whom we met and we met many were uniformly thoughtful, helpful and thoroughly professional. In fact, the ultimate success of our journal proposal was helped in part by feedback from a range of publishers including feedback from a very supportive Taylor & Francis. But the journal business itself was not so straightforward. One concern expressed to us by multiple publishers related to the number of library subscriptions our new journal could likely generate. Interestingly, having the active support of a growing organization of members was not a selling point; we quickly learned that individual subscriptions generated less revenue and were consequently less valuable. Despite WPSA being one of the larger associations, a major talking point became the number of library subscriptions we could deliver. This emphasis on libraries as product consumers highlighted that a key part of the journal business is the negotiation between presses on the one hand and library acquisitions on the other, and this became a central oddity. The confounding fact is that academics the people who read the journals, who write the content and whose careers depend on the journals are not really considered, much less represented, in those negotiations. The bargaining is largely between publishers and librarians. Academics only have a voice

Politics, Groups, and Identities

Downloaded by [190.66.14.194] at 12:44 21 March 2013

in the negotiations and a stake in the budgets if they own the journal and so have a nancial relationship with a publisher. In effect, the only practicable way of academics having a key say over a central part of their careers is via association-owned journals. It is through the association that scholars will have a say over editorial direction of journal and, importantly, manage to capture at least some of the revenues and use them to support academic enterprises, such as conferences. Regardless of intellectual content, it is better for academics to own journals than to have them owned by external or alternate organizations or even presses. While the idea that the Association would own PGI was clear cut, this still left us with the need to make an economic case for the journal. The economic case for the journal was tied to the intellectual argument for the kind of journal we were proposing. That, as it turned out, was a far easier obstacle to overcome than many of the practical matters faced by committee once we identied the publisher we wanted to go with. We should probably stop here and voice our collective thanks to the publisher of PGI, Taylor & Francis. We also want to recognize and thank others who also assisted in the process that led to the creation of PGI, including Betty Moulds, Richard Clucas, Gary Segura, members of the committee who selected the editorial team, and, of course, the PGI editors. A nal word on the intellectual motivation The willingness to cross borders, to provide a space for discussion on issues across sub-disciplinary lines is, we believe, a signature of the new journal and is a distinctive and valued aspect of the WPSA and its membership. Such a journal as PGI could not have come from any other association than the Western and we are pleased that the journal has now come to fruition under the Purdue team, and very proud of the Association that produced and supported the idea for the journal. Shaun Bowler4 University of California, Riverside, USA Timothy Kaufman-Osborn Whitman College, Walla Walla, USA Valerie Martinez-Ebers University of North Texas, Denton, USA Kenneth J. Meier Texas A&M University, College Station, USA Ronald Schmidt California State University, Long Beach, USA Notes
1. There was a rumor, which we can now conrm, that it was not coincidental that the people selected to serve on the committee were seasoned leaders, former presidents of the association who were wise (or at least well-informed) about politics and nances of the Western as well as one who had considerable experience in writing funded proposals and experience in editing a highly respected journal (yes, we had one ringer on the committee but who was it?). Less than good wine and locally produced spirited beverages may have been consumed during these many meetings. Which is, perhaps, just as well given the importance of journal revenues to WPSA nances. Authors are listed in alphabetical order. Equal co-authorship.

2. 3. 4.