SPPQ - Mission
The mission of State Politics and Policy Quarterly is to stimulate research on state politics and policy and to provide an institutional structure to develop a progressive and coherent research agenda in the field. The U.S. states provide, arguably, the world's most advantageous venue in which to test general propositions about political behavior and policy. Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to design a better system of polities for testing hypotheses about politics. The states represent 50 units of analysis with broadly similar political structures, cultures and populations, but with significant and limited variation across a range of social, policy and institutional characteristics that are directly relevant to many theories of politics. Unlike the examination of single units of government, such as the U.S. federal government, there is enough variation in these characteristics for scholars to explore cause and effect relationships in a valid way. Unlike the comparison of different countries or local governments, there is not so much of this variation as to overwhelm our ability to identify such relationships as might exist. From a comparative perspective, the state represent a natural laboratory for testing hypotheses derived from theories of Americans-style institutions. Further, the accessibility of state government officials makes quite feasible many research strategies that would be unthinkable in the study of national level officials and institutions.Beyond these clear advantages to the empirical study of political phenomena, the states are also of central and increasing importance in the U.S. political system. While the past thirty years have seen an unprecedented resurgences of the state in political power, policy responsibility and institutional capacity, the states have been critical to politics and policy in the U.S. from the beginning of the republic. Indeed, the very name of our nation indicates the pivotal place of the states in its governance.
Not surprisingly, the intrinsic importance and unique methodological advantages of the states have long attracted political scientists. Indeed, some of the earliest and most seminal studies in the discipline have used the states as a venue to develop and test general propositions about politics. But what is surprising is that unlike the fields of, for example, legislative studies, political methodology, comparative politics, and political psychology, there has never been an academic journal that focused its attention solely on U.S. state politics. In this age of academic specialization, the lack of such an outlet for state politics scholars has caused the field to be less coherent, less attractive to younger scholars and less progressive than it could be. It is the goal of State Politics and Policy Quarterly to fill this need and provide a leadership role in developing, integrating and sustaining the study of politics in the U.S. states in the 21st Century.