Acta Politica is one of the few truly international political science journals with a broad scope across the discipline. In the past we have published theoretical and empirical articles, comparative and single-country studies and even some methodological notes. In times of an ever-increasing specialisation in political science, we however strongly believe a broad-ranging political science journal is as important as ever for the international scientific community. As Editors, we have a strong preference for articles that will attract a wide audience within the broader field of political science, no matter what the precise topic of the article might be.

Despite this broad scope Acta Politica is very selective about the quality of the articles that it publishes. Acta Politica has always been committed to publishing articles with an 'edge'; providing new insights or new approaches in political science. At the end of the review process, we always ask the question: 'What did we learn from this article?'

Our aim is to provide an exciting read, whether you are interested in political theory or quantitative research methods. Our goal is to select those articles that bring with them a substantive theoretical background, while demonstrating how these ideas can be used in empirical research. On the other hand, we welcome empirical articles introducing new ways to incorporate or to test theoretical discussions which are highly interesting to our readers.

Acta Politica follows a double blind review policy, and our acceptance rate stands at about 35 per cent, ensuring that all the articles we publish meet high academic standards. These standards are, and will remain, our ultimate criteria of judgment for inclusion in the journal. We welcome articles on a broad range of topics, and using a wide array of methods. While in the past most authors publishing in Acta Politica tended to come from Europe, we now also attract more articles from the United States, Canada and the rest of the world. Our aim is to provide authors with substantive feedback within three months of receipt of manuscript.

Acta Politica is committed to publishing relevant political science research, and we invite you to share that commitment, either by subscribing to the journal or recommending it to your library, or by considering Acta Politica when choosing a journal to publish your own research. Potential authors are invited to contact the Editors at acta.politica@fsw.leidenuniv.nl with informal enquiries regarding suitability of their manuscript.