Scholarship on the Middle East in Political Science and International Relations: A Reassessment

ABSTRACT A recently published dataset of Middle East and North Africa (MENA)–focused scholarship in journals selected to represent the disciplinary “core” political science sheds empirical light on key publishing trends, from balance between quantitative qualitative studies growth experimental “large-N” statistical methods. Cammett Kendall’s (2021) analysis shows that 2001 2019, MENA-focused declined as a share publications but slightly less than half work is qualitative. However, definition research study uses significantly overstates number such articles Kendall dataset. Our rectifies this, distinguishing among use evidence, methods, theoretical traditions, paradigms (i.e., positivist/post-positivist). This yields more accurate starker picture marginality MENA core politics journals. These results raise question why methodologically sophisticated outside “top journals” has not been there.