Agent Skills
› brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills
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cps-literature-positioning
GitHub用于定位比较政治研究论文，明确学术争论、现有解释局限及核心差距。识别最强竞争假说，确保文献引用具备跨区域广度，避免狭隘或浅层综述，帮助作者精准嵌入相关学术辩论。
Trigger Scenarios
撰写或重写文献综述与引言中的研究缺口段落
审稿人指出未参与相关比较政治文献或重复已知结论
无法明确必须排除的最强竞争解释
文献引用广泛但未在特定争论中定位自身
Install
npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill cps-literature-positioning -g -y
SKILL.md
Frontmatter
{
"name": "cps-literature-positioning",
"description": "Use when positioning a Comparative Political Studies (CPS) manuscript against the comparative-politics literature and the rival explanations it must beat. Sharpens the gap and the engaged debate; it does not build the theory or design the study."
}
Literature Positioning (cps-literature-positioning)
A CPS paper earns space by moving a comparative-politics debate, not by citing everything. Position the paper so a comparativist immediately sees the gap, the rival accounts, and what your paper adds. CPS spans several literatures (regimes, institutions, behavior, ethnic politics & conflict, comparative political economy, parties & elections) — engage the right one(s) deeply rather than all shallowly.
When to trigger
- Writing or rewriting the literature/positioning section or the introduction's "gap" paragraph
- A reviewer said the paper "doesn't engage the relevant comparative literature" or "reinvents a known result"
- You cannot name the single strongest rival explanation your design must rule out
- The paper cites broadly but does not locate itself in a specific debate
Positioning logic (in order)
- Name the debate. One identifiable comparative-politics conversation (e.g., institutional vs. structural accounts of regime survival; supply- vs. demand-side explanations of ethnic voting).
- State the standing answer and its limits. What does the literature currently believe, and where is it incomplete, contradicted by cases, or untested with adequate comparative leverage?
- State the gap as a claim, not a topic. "X is understudied" is not a gap. "The dominant account predicts A, but cases B and C show ¬A, and no design has separated A from D" is.
- Name the rival explanation(s) your evidence will adjudicate — these become the design's job
(
cps-research-design) and the theory's contrast class (cps-theory-building). - Cross-regional breadth. Cite comparative work beyond your own region so the contribution reads as general, not parochial — CPS reviewers police regional insularity.
Engaging the right literatures
| Subfield | Engage | Common miss |
|---|---|---|
| Democratization & regimes | modernization, elite-bargain, institutionalist accounts | ignoring measurement debates (V-Dem vs. Polity) |
| Comparative political economy | VoC, redistribution, welfare-state, growth-coalition work | treating economics literature as the only frame |
| Ethnic politics & conflict | constructivist vs. primordialist, mobilization, salience | conflating ethnicity with region without theory |
| Parties & elections / behavior | cleavage theory, electoral systems, turnout, vote choice | US-centric framing of a cross-national claim |
Comparative debate map
Create a short map before writing the literature review:
| Element | What to specify | Why CPS reviewers care |
|---|---|---|
| Units | countries, subnational units, parties, voters, organizations, events | Defines the comparison and the level of inference |
| Time | period, reform window, election cycle, conflict phase, regime episode | Separates change over time from cross-case difference |
| Region/case logic | why these cases, and what they represent theoretically | Prevents "case convenience" from masquerading as leverage |
| Rival accounts | institutional, structural, cultural, strategic, or historical alternatives | Shows what the paper will adjudicate rather than merely add |
| Portability | where the mechanism should travel, and where it should fail | Turns a regional study into a comparative contribution |
Use the map to prune citations. Keep works that define the debate, create the rival, or anchor portability across regions; move background-only citations to footnotes or cut them.
Checklist
- One named debate, not a topic list
- Standing answer stated, then its specific limit
- Gap framed as a falsifiable claim
- Single strongest rival explanation named (and handed to
cps-research-design) - Cross-regional citations so the contribution reads as comparative, not parochial
- Distinguished from a known prior result (no reinvention)
Anti-patterns
- "Literature dump" — a paragraph of citations with no debate and no gap
- Regional insularity — citing only work on your own country/region
- Straw-man rivals — beating a weak version while the strong rival stands
- Reinventing a settled comparative finding without acknowledging it
- Positioning to the whole discipline (APSR-style) instead of the comparative-politics conversation
Output format
【Debate】the one comparative-politics conversation
【Standing answer + limit】what the field believes / where it breaks
【Gap】stated as a falsifiable claim
【Strongest rival】the explanation the design must rule out
【Comparative debate map】units / time / case logic / rival / portability
【Cross-regional anchors】2–3 works beyond your own region
【Next】cps-theory-building
Supplementary resources
../../resources/exemplars/library.md— how verified CPS papers locate themselves in a debate../../resources/external_tools.md— comparative datasets that define many CP debates
Version History
- 1839142 Current 2026-07-05 12:38
