(which also applies to the literature review of almost any other professional paper)
A literature review is the first thing that you need to do when beginning a new research project in political science. It performs to critical function of placing whatever you are about to do in the context of the work that has come before—both the theories and the empirical content—and the work that is currently being done [see note 1]. The objective of a literature review is to provide the following information
Keep in mind, first and foremost, that a literature review is not simply an annotated bibliography!—you need to consider how the articles relate to each other, and the intellectual development of the topic. In other words, your focus is on the literature as a whole, not simply on individual articles. In addition, around 90% of all articles in political science are never cited in published work—in effect, this means that 9 out of 10 articles are intellectual dead-ends, and a simple listing of the articles on a topic will consist of 90% junk. [see note 2]
Nothing will kill the chances of publishing a paper more quickly than an inadequate knowledge of the existing literature. If your paper is sent to competent reviewers, then you can assume that they know the literature very thoroughly, and any major holes or mis-interpretations will be noted in their review. In short, knowing how to do a literature review is a crucial professional skill.
The model for a good literature review is
Steve Chan. 1997. "In Search of Democratic Peace: Problems and Promise." Mershon International Studies Review. 41,1: 59-92.
Note that this is substantially longer—and considers a substantially bigger topic—than what you are going to be doing, but it is a good example of the types of issues that should be considered. More generally, the International Studies Review (as the journal is now called) and the longer review articles in the American Political Science Review provide a number of examples.
Aim for a paper that is roughly 10 to 15 pages (double-spaced) in length. The number of works cited will vary with the topic, but a thorough review would typically involve 20 to 30 articles and books.
Literature reviews in published research articles (as distinct from articles that are specifically focused on literature) differ substantially depending on the nature of the field. If there is a clear dominant article in the field, or someone else has written a really good survey of the field, citing those works, plus any more recent relevant work, may be sufficient. In contrast, if one is synthesizing material from several different fields that have not been previously combined, the literature review may run for a number of pages.
In the body of the review, not just the footnotes, indicate where the theories are coming from, i.e. "According to the "selectorate" theory of Bueno de Mesquita et al, ....": just look through any examples of literature reviews in the various academic articles we've been reading for examples.
Theories and ways of organizing information (as distinct from basic 'encyclopedic' facts) need to be attached to individuals, because a reader familiar with the literature will use that information to build mental links to other work by the same individual. For example if I was previously unfamiliar with the "selectorate" theory it would be important for me to know it was done by Bueno de Mesquita, since I already know Bueno de Mesquita is a realist and a rational choice modeller. If it had been done by James DerDerian, a post-modernist, I'd know it was going in a very different direction.
Generally a literature review is a mix of two components:
1. The older literature that defines the field—some of this may be quite old—and usually a few key works that have responded to this by either supporting, refuting or, most commonly, modifying, that earlier work. Prioritize this work-which works are leading the development of the field; which works are responding to that lead.
2. The current work in the field—this is used to show that this is an active research field. If you are not considering something that is an active research field, you should indicate that the field looked like when there last was active research and ideally, why did the field die out? Note that articles on a particular question will usually cluster—you will find a number of articles published in a relatively short period of time that address variations on a central question, and then once that is resolved (or exhausted) there will be no additional articles.
If you cannot find any prior literature on your topic, you should ask yourself why. Is the topic too new? Too old? Too dull? Too difficult? If your paper makes assertions about the lack of a particular topic or approach (i.e. "Political scientists have not considered..."), are you sure about this?
1. The obvious place to start is by finding some recent articles dealing with the field you plan to study. If these have been done properly, they will contain a good literature review, and by comparing the literature cited (and not cited) by several articles, you will get a good idea of the structure of the field. Those articles, in turn, can be found by simply going through copies of the relevant journals in your field.
2. The Social Science Citation Index is a very useful, if somewhat complicated, tool for locating literature. This is a "reverse index" of the articles that cite a particular article. For example, if I publish an article using the World Events Interaction Survey data set and cite Charles McClelland's 1983 discussion of that data in International Studies Quarterly, my article (along with any other articles citing McClelland) will be found under the entry MCCLELLAND ISQ'93. This is a great way of locating the current literature that is based on some common prior literature. It is part of the "Web of Science" electronic database available through the library.
3. Occasionally you can find a really good review article that will outline the field for you. This doesn't mean your work is completely finished—you still need to evaluate the validity of the review (again, keep in mind that almost anything in print will be at least two years out of date) and at least skim the key works—but it simplifies the task. It is perfectly okay to use both the review article and it's structuring of the field in your review.
4. In a few cases, upper-division and graduate textbooks will be useful in pointing out literature for a review, particularly in terms of identifying the key theoretical approaches and authors. Freshman-sophomore-level textbooks are usually not very useful—they rarely deal in depth with the contemporary literature, and often combine (and ignore) theoretical differences in order to simplify the material.
1. "Current" is always a difficult concept, particularly when you are first getting into a field. The delay between the production of a paper and its publication can be anywhere from six months to several years, and varies unpredictably between topics, authors and journals. Books are rarely produced in less than a couple of years. This means that the current literature in print actually reflects the state of the field as it existed about one to two years earlier.
In many cases, you will be able figure out the original date of the paper from an "Author's Note" at the beginning. Most journals also indicate when an article was accepted—in theory, though not always in practice, the article should be current with the literature at that point (but in fact, the paper was probably primarily motivated by the state of the field as it existed when the paper was initially written). Conference papers, and papers that are available through electronic servers are considerably more up-to-date, though with the disadvantage that they have not been refereed.
2. This statistic has held steady for at least a decade, and is quite sobering—it means that the average article has only about a 1-in-10 chance of contributing to any further work. (The figure is computed from the Social Science Citation Index data, which does not include books, or all journals, and some people consider it invalid. That may be a legitimate criticism in some subfields where most of the work is book-length‹as in true in parts of political theory and parts of comparative politics‹but it is probably accurate for most of the "mainstream" in U.S. politics and international relations. The statistic is questioned because people don¹t like the implications.
Not being cited is not the same thing as having no influence—an article may have simply confirmed something that was already known. But it certainly is not as good as being cited. Most of the intellectual development of the field is actually directed by a very small percentage of articles and works.
An additional implication of this is that if you want to get something published, be sure to choose a topic that people are still interested in reading about. The fact that there were a number of articles on a topic in the past does not necessarily mean that it is still of interest.
3. More generally, writing a really good review article is one of the best ways to get name recognition in the profession—reviews are among the most widely cited works in the field, and oftentimes the creative synthesis found in a review can have an important impact on the subsequent development of a field.