wp-literature-positioning
Use when positioning a World Politics manuscript against the comparative-politics and international-relations literatures so it reads as a contribution that travels across cases. World Politics expects engagement with both theoretical and substantive literatures; the move is to locate the paper in a live cross-case debate, not a single-country conversation. Stakes the contribution; it does not write the lit review.
Profile →npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill wp-literature-positioning --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# Literature Positioning (wp-literature-positioning) World Politics expects every article to **engage with theoretical and substantive literatures** and to draw conclusions of broad importance. Positioning is therefore not throat-clearing — it locates the paper in a **comparative-politics or IR debate that crosses cases**, where the contribution is visible to scholars beyond one country or region. ## When to trigger - Drafting or revising the introduction and the "contribution" paragraph - A reviewer said you "missed obvious work" or "don't engage the debate" - Your single-case literature is solid but the paper doesn't connect to a general debate - You need to distinguish your contribution from the closest prior comparative/IR work - Building a **review article**, where the literature *is* the object of analysis ## How World Politics wants the literature engaged 1. **Engage the debate, not a pile of citations.** Identify the live theoretical disagreement or open question your paper speaks to in comparative politics or IR, and cite the works that *define* it. 2. **Connect the case to the general.** A study of one or a few cases must engage the **cross-case theory** it bears on. Show
- When to trigger
- How World Politics wants the literature engaged
- Review-article positioning (a distinctive World Politics format)
- Anti-patterns
- Referee-pushback patterns and the venue-specific fix
- Worked micro-example (illustrative)
- Output format
- Supplementary resources
What does the wp-literature-positioning skill do?
Use when positioning a World Politics manuscript against the comparative-politics and international-relations literatures so it reads as a contribution that travels across cases. World Politics expects engagement with both theoretical and substantive literatures; the move is to locate the paper in a live cross-case debate, not a single-country conversation. Stakes the contribution; it does not write the lit review.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills --skill wp-literature-positioning --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From brycewang-stanford/Awesome-Journal-Skills, a repository with 909 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.