Agent Skills
› brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills
› cps-topic-selection
cps-topic-selection
GitHub用于评估研究问题是否适合《比较政治研究》(CPS) 期刊并确定其比较贡献。通过测试比较杠杆、理论迁移性、学科关联性和目标期刊匹配度，帮助判断选题是否具备跨案例或跨国界的比较价值，而非单一国家描述。
Trigger Scenarios
决定选题是否适合 CPS 期刊
审稿人质疑为何选择比较视角
草稿缺乏比较杠杆或仅涉及单一国家
需判断单案例研究是否具有普遍化理论意义
Install
npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill cps-topic-selection -g -y
SKILL.md
Frontmatter
{
"name": "cps-topic-selection",
"description": "Use when deciding whether a research question fits Comparative Political Studies (CPS) and how to frame its comparative contribution. Tests comparative leverage and travel; it does not design the study or write the paper."
}
Topic Selection & Comparative Fit (cps-topic-selection)
CPS publishes work in comparative politics — democratization & regimes, political institutions, political behavior & participation, ethnic politics & conflict, comparative political economy, and parties & elections — where the contribution is comparative in design or in the portability of the claim. The first job is to confirm the question earns a place in a comparative-politics journal, not a single-country area journal and not a general poli-sci flagship.
When to trigger
- Choosing a question or deciding if CPS is the right venue
- A draft reads as a single-country case with no comparative leverage
- A reviewer or colleague said "this is interesting but why CPS / why comparative?"
- Deciding whether a single case can carry a portable theoretical claim
The comparative-fit test (run all four)
- Comparative leverage. What varies across your cases or over time, and does that variation identify the claim? "Why do some countries/regions/periods do X while others do Y?" is the CPS question form. A snapshot of one country at one time has none.
- Travel. State the argument as a mechanism, then name a different region or regime type where it should also operate. If it only makes sense in your one country, it is area studies, not CPS.
- Comparative-politics stake. Connect to a live CP debate (regime durability, institutional design, ethnic mobilization, redistribution, electoral behavior). A comparativist outside your region should see why the answer matters.
- Right venue. CPS is the comparative specialist — not the general flagship (APSR/AJPS), not IR (World Politics / International Organization), not UK-general (British Journal of Political Science). See the sibling guard below.
Framing priority (highest first)
- A comparative puzzle with leverage — variation across cases/time that the design exploits.
- A portable mechanism — a causal story another comparativist can carry to a new setting.
- A measurement or conceptual advance that improves how a CP phenomenon is compared cross-nationally.
- A reappraisal of a comparative regularity with new cases, data, or design.
- (Weak) A single descriptive country study with no comparative or theoretical leverage.
Single-case work that still fits
A single case can fit if it is a case of something general: a hard/least-likely test of a comparative
theory, a deviant case that exposes scope conditions, or the source of a mechanism you argue travels.
Say what the case is a case of, and to which population the claim generalizes (hand off to
cps-research-design).
Sibling guard (do not mis-target)
- APSR / AJPS — general US political-science flagships; CPS wants the comparative contribution, not a discipline-wide pitch.
- World Politics / International Organization — IR and IR-adjacent comparative; CPS is domestic-comparative-politics first.
- British Journal of Political Science — broad UK generalist; CPS is the comparative specialist.
Checklist
- The question is "why do cases differ / change?" — comparative, not single-snapshot
- The argument is a mechanism that travels to a named second setting
- It engages an identifiable comparative-politics literature/debate
- A comparativist of another region can state why it matters
- Venue checked against the sibling guard (CPS, not APSR/AJPS/WP/IO/BJPS)
Anti-patterns
- "Area studies in disguise" — one country, no comparative leverage, no claim that travels
- Discipline-wide pitch better suited to APSR/AJPS than to the comparative-politics readership
- A pure-IR or pure-formal-theory question that never compares political systems
- A descriptive country profile with no puzzle, mechanism, or generalization
Output format
【Comparative puzzle】one sentence, with the variation that identifies it
【Cases / units / period】and the comparison logic
【Portable mechanism】+ a named second setting it should travel to
【CP literature engaged】the debate it speaks to
【Venue check】CPS vs. APSR/AJPS/WP/IO/BJPS — why CPS
【Next】cps-literature-positioning
Supplementary resources
../../resources/exemplars/library.md— verified CPS papers by subfield × method../../resources/official-source-map.md— CPS scope and aims
Version History
- 1839142 Current 2026-07-05 12:38
