The Oxford handbook of political science

Every book has a history. This one’s begins with the XVIth World Congress of the International Political Science Association in Berlin, way back in 1994. I was scheduled to be its Program Chair; that was going to be a lot of work; I decided I’d be damned if the program booklet itself was all I’d have to show for my efforts. So Hans-Dieter Klingemann and I carved out a stream of “State of the Discipline” panels designed (with a few nips and tucks here and there) to feed into A New Handbook of Political Science, eventually published by Oxford University Press in 1996. That book did well for OUP. Indecently well, apparently. OUP editors ever since have been under orders to commission several such handbooks each year—doubtless cursing us as they do, for launching the handbook industry.