Who keeps the gates? A descriptive analysis of the composition of political science journal editors by country

Abstract Following the ongoing debates on (1) editorial bias and the degree of internationalization of journals in different fields and (2) internalization of (European) political science, this paper aims to descriptively analyze the composition of editorial teams and editorial boards of all 187 political science journals indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI). Although there are significant differences between individual journals, the analysis revealed an overwhelming Anglo-American dominance in both editorial teams (with an average of 60.6 per cent) and editorial boards (58.6 per cent) across the entire list of journals, reproducing the patterns of dominance and dependence. In addition to the global level, the analysis focuses more closely on the European environment and confirms the conclusions of some previous studies that the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region remains largely (semi-) peripheral in European and global political science. Based on previous research, we can infer that a higher level of editorial diversity would lead to increased diversity in published content, encompassing a wider range of methods, topics, theories, and cases. In conclusion, the study suggests (1) weakening possible biases by building more diversified editorial teams and boards and (2) continuing to analyze specific manifestations of bias in political science journals.