Accumulated evidence identifies discernible gender gaps across many dimensions of professional academic careers including salaries, publication rates, journal placement, career progress, and academic service. Recent work in political science also reveals gender gaps in citations, with articles written by men citing work by other male scholars more often than work by female scholars. This study estimates the gender gap in citations across political science subfields and across methodological subfields within political science, sociology, and economics. The research design captures variance across research areas in terms of the underlying distribution of female scholars. We expect that subfields within political science and social science disciplines with more women will have smaller gender citation gaps, a reduction of the “Matthew effect” where men’s research is viewed as the most central and important in a field. However, gender citation gaps may persist if a “Matilda effect” occurs whereby women’s research is viewed as less important or their ideas are attributed to male scholars, even as a field becomes more diverse. Analysing all articles published from 2007–2016 in several journals, we find that female scholars are significantly more likely than mixed gender or male author teams to cite research by their female peers, but that these citation rates vary depending on the overall distribution of women in their field. More gender diverse subfields and disciplines produce smaller gender citation gaps, consistent with a reduction in the “Matthew effect”. However, we also observe undercitation of work by women, even in journals that publish mostly female authors. While improvements in gender diversity in academia increase the visibility and impact of scholarly work by women, implicit biases in citation practices in the social sciences persist.

This paper applies a methodology utilized in economics to study citation patterns in two International Studies Association journals. The paper analyzes articles published in International Studies Quarterly (ISQ) and International Studies Perspectives (ISP) in 2005. Comparisons are made based on the sex of the authors of articles and the sex of the cited authors in each paper's bibliography. Empirical analyses suggest that male authors of ISQ and ISP articles are less likely to cite work by female scholars in comparison with female authors. Mixed-gender author teams are also significantly less likely to cite research by female scholars relative to female article authors.

Scholars have argued for some time that the rally 'round the flag phenomenon creates incentives for political leaders to use military force to divert attention away from domestic turmoil. It is hypothesized that the type of strategic or historical context of a state is important in conditioning the use of military force abroad, and the probability of diversionary uses of force is higher in opportunity-rich environments of enduring rivalry. Empirical analyses lend support to this hypothesis, showing that high levels of inflation increase the probability of militarized dispute initiation in settings of rivalry but actually decrease it in nonrival settings. However, the results are contingent on the regime type of the potential initiator. Consistent with recent strategic models of diversion, the analyses demonstrate that although democratic leaders have the greatest incentives to divert, they have fewer opportunities to do so due to the transparency of their regimes.

Early research on contentious issues in world politics suggested that there is an important distinction between largely tangible and largely intangible issues. Tangible issues are thought to be easier to resolve, while intangible issues can fester for long periods of time through fruitless negotiations and repeated armed conflict. Research on territorial issues has suggested that many territorial claims are driven by both tangible and intangible concerns, though, which complicates the analysis of issue tangibility. The authors argue that territorial issues with greater intangible salience (e.g. historical possessions, important homelands, sacred sites, identity ties) should be harder to resolve peacefully and should produce more frequent and severe militarized conflict. Empirical analyses of 191 territorial claims in the Americas and Western Europe (1816-2001) provide mixed support for these expectations. Territorial claims with high intangible salience are significantly more likely to experience militarized disputes and wars. Surprisingly, though, states are much more likely to strike peaceful agreements with their adversaries over territories that are valued for intangible reasons.

This paper builds on a large literature that explores the linkages between resource scarcity and interstate conflict. Focusing on competing claims over cross-border rivers, we analyze peaceful and militarized techniques used by states to manage river claims, and compare the success of these techniques for resolving the issues under contention. We focus on two key factors to account for variance in the use and effectiveness of conflict management strategies: water scarcity and institutions. We argue that high levels of water scarcity increase the frequency of explicit claims over fresh water, increase the chances of militarized conflict over these claims, and make it more difficult for conflict management institutions to be created or to be effective. We also examine the role of peace-promoting institutions, both river-specific and general institutions, arguing that institutional membership should promote peaceful attempts to resolve river claims. Analyzing data on river claims (1900e2001) from the Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) Project, we find that greater water scarcity increases the likelihood of both militarized conflict and peaceful third party settlement attempts, while river-specific institutions reduce militarized conflict and increase the effectiveness of peaceful settlement attempts.