How to Cite in APSA Style: Political Science Citation Guide

Writing for political science? APSA style is the standard. The American Political Science Association developed it for the discipline, and it is used across APSA journals. If you already know Chicago author-date, you are most of the way there — APSA is built on it.

Unusually for a discipline style, the APSA Style Manual is published free online, so this guide does not have to paraphrase a paywalled book. Every rule below is quoted from the manual itself, which also offers a PDF of the December 2023 revision.

What Is APSA Style?

APSA style uses parenthetical author-date citations with an alphabetized reference list at the end. The manual states plainly: "APSA style, in most instances, follows guidelines set forth in the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition (CMS)." What APSA adds on top is guidance for government documents, legal sources and political science materials.

In-Text Citations

Put the author's surname and the year in parentheses. The manual is explicit: "No comma should be placed between the last name and the year of publication."

The examples in this section are the manual's own, reproduced from its parenthetical citations page.

One author:

Two authors — use "and", not an ampersand:

Three authors — name all three:

Four or more authors — "et al." from the first citation:

Same author, same year — "add lowercase letters to the publication year":

Multiple sources — semicolons, alphabetized:

Page numbers — "a comma should be placed after the year before page or chapter numbers":

Note: "The terms ed. or eds. and trans., which are abbreviated in the reference list, are omitted from parenthetical citations."

Reference List Format

"List all references alphabetically by the author's last name. Alphabetize via a letter-by-letter system." Where an author has two works from the same year, the manual alphabetizes them "by title (excluding any initial article), with letters attached to the year (i.e., 2009a; 2009b; 2009c)."

Every worked example below is a real, published source. Each was checked today against Crossref, Open Library, CourtListener, govinfo or the publisher's own page; the audit log for this page records which.

Journal Articles

Format: Author. Year. "Title." Journal Volume (Issue): Pages.

This is the manual's own journal example. Crossref confirms the article — American Political Science Review 74 (3), 651–669, 1980 — and the manual abbreviates the closing page, as Chicago does:

With a DOI. The manual requires a link whenever you read a source online: "Whenever a source is found, read, or used online, a direct link that leads the reader to the source should be included." Its order of preference is "(1) DOI (digital object identifier) numerals, (2) a permalink URL (uniform resource locator), and (3) a short version of the URL."

Books

Two authors — invert only the first name:

Edited volume:

Book Chapters

The manual's own chapter example, in a volume whose 1984 Praeger edition is in Open Library:

Note the APSA abbreviation: "eds." before the editors' names, and a page range for the chapter.

Government Documents

APSA gives government sources their own treatment — essential for political science research. On corporate authorship the manual says: "If the source was published by an organization, association, or corporation and does not carry an author's name, the organization is listed as the author, even if it is also the publisher."

Public laws, the manual says, are "found in volumes of the United States Statutes at Large (Stat.) and later included in the United States Code (U.S.C.)," and "the No. of the law contains the number of the Congress adjoined with the document number by a hyphen." This is the manual's own example, reproduced exactly, including the closing year it prints:

Agency report. This one does carry personal authors, so they take the author position; the corporate rule above applies only where a report does not name anyone. Every element here is the one the report's own suggested citation gives:

Where a report names no author, the agency moves into the author position — "U.S. Census Bureau. 2023." — and the rest of the entry is unchanged.

For hearings, the manual says to "use the full given title of the hearing in italics, and add, if necessary, the names of the committees included"; for House reports and documents, "use H.R. Rep. or H.R. Doc."

Court Cases

Give the case name (italicized) in your text, followed by the year:

Reference list — the manual's own example:

Websites and Blogs

The manual's own example is a political science blog post. (The Monkey Cage has since moved; the original link now redirects to its successor, Good Authority.)

On access dates: "Including an access date in a reference is only necessary if a publication or revision date cannot be determined from the source." If no date at all is available, use "n.d."

News and Commentary

Give the author, year, headline, outlet, date and link. For a printed newspaper, the paper's name takes the place of the outlet below.

Theses and Unpublished Work

"Titles of theses and dissertations should be treated like books, except they do not appear in italics, but quotation marks." For unpublished work: "If a source is unpublished, include Unpublished manuscript after the title and the last modified date of the version consulted." Because an unpublished manuscript is by definition not a published record, the shape is shown here as a template:

Interviews and Research Data

Two different rules apply. "Standalone published interviews (i.e., not published with a title) should be treated as a periodical, using the name of the interviewee as the author." But "research interviews and ethnographic data, on the other hand, should be cited only run in with the text or in endnotes" — they do not get reference-list entries. Database references should be "both modeled on the official citations provided by the database and adapted to APSA style."

Notes in APSA

APSA prefers parenthetical citations. The manual allows notes, but narrowly: "notes should only be used to present short substantive material or to cross reference other sources," and "should be used sparingly." Critically, "notes should not be used to cite sources better left for the reference list" — the manual's exceptions are "unpublished interviews, ethnographic data, or legal and public documents." Anything cited in a note still takes the ordinary parenthetical form and still appears in the reference list.

Key APSA Conventions

• No comma before year. "No comma should be placed between the last name and the year of publication" — (Arena 2014), not (Arena, 2014).
• Et al. threshold. Use "et al." for four or more authors in a parenthetical citation. In the reference list, name everyone: "Do not use et al. in a reference … unless there are ten or more authors. In that case, list the first seven authors and then use et al."
• Organizations as authors. Where a report carries no personal author, the organization goes in the author position, "even if it is also the publisher."
• Links required for anything read online, in the order DOI → permalink → short URL.
• Headline-style capitalization applies throughout, including where a source's own title is set in all capitals.

APSA vs APA

Who Uses APSA?

APSA style is used across APSA's own journals — American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, PS: Political Science & Politics and the Journal of Political Science Education among them — and widely in political science, public policy, international relations and public administration programmes.

Sources for This Page

• American Political Science Association. Style Manual for Political Science, December 2023 revision. https://connect.apsanet.org/stylemanual/ — all quoted rules above, from the About, References, Parenthetical Citations and Notes sections.
• Crossref records for the Aldrich and Vassallo articles; Open Library for the Putnam, Achen–Bartels (LCCN 2016930927) and Sylvan–Chan volumes; CourtListener for Mapp v. Ohio and Obergefell v. Hodges; govinfo for 116 Stat. 2135; the Census Bureau's own PDF of P60-279, whose "Suggested Citation" page supplies the authors, series, publisher and date used above.