Agent Skills
› brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills
› bjps-theory-building
bjps-theory-building
GitHub专为BJPS论文构建理论论证，将实证、形式化或诠释性发现转化为具有普遍意义的贡献。明确机制、假设与适用范围，确保论点可迁移至其他案例或子领域，避免“无理论”或“HARKing”等反模式。
Trigger Scenarios
实证结果强劲但理论解释薄弱
审稿人批评论文缺乏理论或仅为孤立发现
需要明确阐述因果机制、假设和适用范围
形式建模中需确定建模重点及模型价值
Install
npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill bjps-theory-building -g -y
SKILL.md
Frontmatter
{
"name": "bjps-theory-building",
"description": "Use when building the theoretical argument of a British Journal of Political Science (BJPS) manuscript into a contribution of general interest — whether the work is formal\/game-theoretic, empirical with explicit mechanisms, interpretive, or normative. BJPS rewards a clear, portable argument over a bare finding. Structures the argument; it does not run analyses."
}
Theory & Argument Building (bjps-theory-building)
At BJPS a result is not a contribution until it is attached to an argument the field can use elsewhere — across countries, cases, and subfields. This skill turns findings into theory: explicit mechanisms, scope conditions, and observable implications, in the idiom appropriate to your kind of work.
When to trigger
- The empirics are strong but the "so what / why" is thin
- A reviewer said the paper is "atheoretical," "ad hoc," or "just a finding"
- You need to state mechanisms, assumptions, and scope conditions explicitly
- Formal modeling: deciding what to model, what to assume, and what the model buys you
Build the argument (by mode of work)
Empirical paper with a theory
- Concept — define the key constructs precisely; distinguish from neighbours.
- Mechanism — the causal story: who does what, why, under what incentives/constraints.
- Observable implications — what we should see if the mechanism operates (and what we should
not see). These become the tests in
bjps-research-design. - Scope conditions — where the argument holds and where it does not. Portability ≠ universality.
Formal / game-theoretic paper
- State the substantive puzzle the model addresses before the setup.
- Keep assumptions transparent and motivated; flag which results are robust to which assumptions.
- Translate equilibrium predictions into comparative statics a reader can test or recognize.
- Say what the model buys: a non-obvious prediction, a resolution of a puzzle, a unifying logic.
Interpretive / normative paper
- Make the conceptual or normative stakes explicit and connect them to political life.
- Build the argument through reasons and texts, not hypotheses; engage the strongest counter-view.
- Show what the argument lets the field see or justify that it could not before.
The "portability" test (BJPS-specific)
Ask: Could a scholar studying a different country, or working in another subfield, import this
mechanism/concept to their own problem? If yes, you have a contribution of general interest. If the
argument only works for your exact case, tighten it into a general logic or reframe (back to
bjps-topic-selection). BJPS's international, cross-subfield readership is the audience for the
argument's portability.
Anti-patterns
- "Hypothesizing after results are known" (HARKing) — state theory before tests; preregister where possible
- A model with opaque assumptions chosen to produce the desired result
- Mechanisms named but never made observable
- A single-case generalization with no scope conditions, or a universal claim with none
- Burying the argument under the empirics — the contribution paragraph must state it plainly
Output format
【Core claim】one sentence
【Mechanism】the causal/logical story
【Assumptions】(formal) the load-bearing ones
【Observable implications】testable consequences → research-design
【Scope conditions】where it holds / fails (and across which cases)
【Portability】who else (which country/subfield) can use this argument
【Next】bjps-research-design
Referee-pushback patterns and the BJPS-specific repair
- "This is a finding, not a contribution." → Attach the result to a mechanism with scope conditions and state the portable claim a scholar elsewhere could import.
- "The argument only works for this one country." → Generalize the logic: name the institutional or behavioural feature the case instantiates, and what other cases share it.
- "The model's assumptions are doing the work." → Flag which results survive which assumptions and motivate each; show the model buys a non-obvious comparative static.
- "Mechanism is asserted, not observable." → Translate it into observable implications (and a
disconfirming pattern) that
bjps-research-designcan test.
Calibration anchors (hedged)
- BJPS rewards a portable argument: the test is whether a comparativist studying a different country, or a scholar in another subfield, could carry the mechanism to their own problem.
- Methodological pluralism extends to theory-building: formal, empirical-mechanistic, interpretive, and normative arguments are all welcome, each judged in its own idiom — do not dress one as another.
Supplementary resources
../../resources/external_tools.md— formal-modeling and analysis tooling../../resources/official-source-map.md— BJPS scope and contribution expectations
Version History
- 1839142 Current 2026-07-05 12:26
