Academische vaardigheden voor politicologen

Style Sheet Political Science

This document provides guidelines for proper academic referencing. It presents a Harvard-style variant that
is used across the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. Please note that there
will always be situations where the rules below cannot be applied directly. In such cases, you are expected
to provide a reference in a style that corresponds to the spirit of the rules below.

Referencing following Harvard style: in-text references

In-text references are put between parentheses. They must include the name of the author(s) and the year of publication. When ref-
erencing a specific page number, the year of publication is followed by a colon (and a space) and the page number(s).
In-text referencing can be done in two ways: at the end of a sentence or paragraph (and in that case: before the full point that closes
the sentence) or in the middle of the sentence if you name the author and/or title in the text. For example:
One can therefore make a distinction between, on the one hand, neoliberalism as a model for the organization of the international
economy and, on the other hand, as a political project trying to re-establish the power of economic elites (Harvey 2005: 19).
The American social-geographer Harvey (2005: 19) therefore makes a distinction between, on the one hand, neoliberalism as a
model for the organization of the international economy and, on the other hand, as a political project trying to re-establish the
power of economic elites.

The following rules apply for in-text references:

• Chapters in edited volumes: If you refer to a chapter in an edited volume, always refer to the author(s) of the respective chapter,
not to the editor(s) or compiler(s) of the volume.
• More than one page: If you want to refer to a piece of text or a citation that covers more than one page you mention the first
and the second page, separated by a hyphen. For example: (Harvey 2005: 19-22). If you make a reference to several pages from a
publication you separate the page references by a comma. For example: (Harvey 2005: 19, 44-52).
• More than one author: If you refer to a publication with two authors, both authors should be mentioned. For example: (Fennema
and Tillie 2004). If there are three or more authors, the first author is mentioned and the other names are replaced by the Latin
abbreviation “et al.”. For example: (Kriesi et al.: 2013: 231).
• More than one publication: when referencing at once several publications from different authors, the references are placed in
alphabetic order separated by a semicolon. For example: (Maussen 2007; Slijper 2013). When referring to several publications of
the same author, you may choose to mention their name only once. For example: (Rawls 1973: 413; 1990: 4).
• Referencing the same source consecutively: When referencing for the second consecutive time the same source and page(s), you
may use the Latin abbreviation “ibid.”. When referencing the same publication, but a different page, use the Latin abbreviation
“idem”, mentioning the pages. For example: (idem: 56-58).
• More than one publication of the same author in the same year: you sometimes have to refer to several publications of the
same author that are published in the same year. In this case, you should add lower case letters in order to distinguish the publi-
cations. For example: (Bader 2014a; Bader 2014b). The list of references must display the same lower case letters after the year
of publication.
• Prefixes (for Dutch names): Many Dutch surnames have prefixes such as “van” (Van Praag), “van der” (Van der Vlies), “de” (De
Vries), “ten” (Ten Hoven) of “in ‘t” (In ’t Veld). These prefixes are included with a capital letter in the in-text reference (Van Praag
2005). In the list of references the reference is included under the surname of the author without the prefix. For instance, a pub-
lication by Philip van Praag comes under P as “Praag, P. van” and so on (see below).
• An institution or organization as an author: When referencing a report or policy document in which an institution figures as the
author – for instance the European Commission (EC), the Social Democrat Party or the Netherlands Institute for Social Research
(SCP) – you should use the abbreviation or acronym for that institution in the in-text reference, when applicable.
• Internet sources: Internet sources should as far as possible be included as “normal” references, mentioning the name of the author
and the year of publication. Making a reference to page numbers is usually not possible. For example: in the case of a speech by
the American president Barack Obama held in 2013 that you have found on Obamaspeeches.com you should include as a refer-
ence (Obama 2013), and not “obamaspeeches.com” or “Website Obamaspeeches.com”. The URL is only included in the list of
 references, not in the text. If no other option is available, you may refer to the general website in parenthesis. For example: (www.
vvd.nl). In this case, the complete URL is provided in the list of references, which also indicates when the page was last consulted.
Do not include full web addresses as in-text references.
• Newspaper articles: if the newspaper article you are referencing has a clearly identified author, you should refer to it in the stand-
ard (Author Year: Page) format. In other cases, you should include the name of the newspaper as the author. For example: (New
York Times 2013: 3).
• Interviews: if the person you have interviewed gave you permission to mention them by name, the interviewee is considered as
author for the purpose of referencing. The reference should also include the year of the interview. For example: (Smith 2014). The
same applies if you refer to an interview in a newspaper or on the radio. If you do not have permission to mention the interviewee
by name or exact position you can number the interview (Interview 1) and indicate in a separate section in the bibliography a list
of interviewees and what kind of person they are (for example: “Interviewee 1: employee of the city of Amsterdam”, “Interviewee
2: woman 35 years old”).
• Documentaries: If you refer to a documentary or television program, the reference should include the title of the broadcast and
the year of broadcast (Zembla 2014). If the name of the director of a documentary is directly relevant (for example because he or
she is well-known) you may decide to make a reference to his or her name . For example (Moore et al. 2003) when referring to
the documentary Bowling for Columbine.

Lay-out of references in the reference list (the bibliography): general rules

General rules for the content and lay-out of the reference list
• The list of references comprises all the references that are mentioned in the next. References that have not been mentioned should
not be included. You should only include a publication in your list of references if you have actually consulted it.
• For each reference in the list you must provide the title and subtitle (if any) as they are mentioned on the title page. You should
include the year of publication of the edition you are using. If the book is reprinted (so the edition is the same), the year you
indicate should be that of the edition, not of print (occasionally a book is first published as a hardcover and reprinted a year later
in a paperback edition – in that case the year of publication is the year the hardcover came out).
• The list of references must be in alphabetic order based on the surname of the first author. There are no distinctions between
types of publications (journals, books). All authors are mentioned in the bibliography (including if there are more than three).
• In case you are using two or more publications from the same author(s) published in the same year, you should add lower case
letters to the year of publication (2012a, 2012b and so on). In general, the publication that is mentioned first in your text is assigned
the letter a, the next b, and so on.
• In English and American publications both single and double quotation marks are used. As a rule you use the same type of quota-
tion marks in the bibliography as in the rest of the text.
• The list of references should have no bullet points or numbers.
• Do not include blank lines between references, but if you want you may format the list of references using a hanging indent.

General rules for internet publications

• Internet publications are as far as possible listed as “normal” references and included in full in the list of references. In some case
it may be practical to include a separate list of “consulted webpages”.
• Please note: You do not need to provide the URL of publications that have been downloaded from a database on the internet,
but that also exist as hardcopies and can be downloaded as such (for example from JSTOR). The URL is exclusively mentioned for
publications that can be downloaded in PDF format from journals or other sources that only exist online (for example from the
International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences or the International Studies Compendium).
• References to sources that are only published online (for example on NOS.nl) and that only exist in HTML format include the URL
and date of consultation.

Examples of different types of publications lay-out style

A book with one, two or more authors:
Pitkin, H. (1967). The concept of representation. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Rosenzweig, R. and Thelen, D. (1998). The presence of the past. Popular uses of history in American life. New York: Columbia
University Press.
 Schuyt, C.J.M., Groenendijk, K. and Sloot, B. (1976). De weg naar het recht. Deventer: Kluwer.

A volume with one or more editors:

Deth, J.W. (ed.) (1997). Private groups and public life. London: Routledge.
Becker, U. and Praag, P. van (eds) [1] (2006). Politicologie. Basisthema’s & Nederlandse politiek. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis.

A report, policy brief, or book with an institution as author:

(OECD) Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (2014). Entrepreneurship at a Glance. Paris: OECD.
(HRW) Human Rights Watch (2014). Clearing Human waste: Manual “Scavenging”, Caste and Discrimination in India. New
York: Human Rights Watch.

A chapter in an edited volume with one or several editors (see above for the rules in case of multiple authors):
Ward, S. (2003). “Transcending the nation: A global imperial history?”. In: Burton, A. (ed.) After the imperial turn. Thinking with
and through the nation, 44-56. Durham: Duke University Press.
Keane, J. (2001). “Global civil society?”. In: Anheier, H., Glasius, M. and Kaldor, M. (eds) Global civil society, 152-182. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.

An article in a scienti�ic journal (see above for the rules in case of multiple authors):
Mandler, P. (2006). “What is ‘national identity’? Definitions and applications in modern British historiography”, Modern
Intellectual History, 3(2): 271-299.

An internet publication (without of�line version), with and without author:

Chazel, F. (2001). “Social movements, Sociology of”, International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Science: 14371-14374,
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B0080430767019240.
ALA (American Lands Alliance) (2007). “IMF policies lead to global deforestation”, http://americanlands.org/imfreport.htm.
Consulted on June 23 2007.
NOS.nl (2014). “Chinezen vluchten uit Vietnam”, http://nos.nl/artikel/648092-chinezen-vluchten-uit-vietnam.html. Consulted
on May 4 2014.

An article in a newspaper or non-scienti�ic magazine with author:

Lichfield, J. (2014). “Channel ferry crossings from Britain to France could be ‘blocked’ over Calais migrant row”, The
Independent, September 3: 3.
Wood, G.S. (2014). “A different idea of our Declaration”, The New York Review of Books, August 14: 2.

An article in a newspaper without author:

The Guardian (2014). “Nigeria and neighbours hold talks on Boko Haram’s rapid advance”. September 3: 12.

An interview (held by yourself or not):

Jones, B. (2014). Head of the Department of Recreation and Youth Services , City of Rochester, N.Y. Interview conducted on
January 24.
Smith, A. (2012). Interviewed by John Humphrys on Today, BBC Radio 4, September 21.

A documentary or television program:

Panorama (2014). “ISIS: Terror in Iraq”. BBC, 18 July.
Moore, M., Glynn, K.R., Czarnecki, J., Bishop,C., Donovan, M., Heston, C., Danitz, B. McDonough, M., Engfehr, K, and Gibbs, J.
(2003). Bowling for Columbine. United States: MGM Home Entertainment.

Academische
Marcel Maussen en Madeleine Moret (red.)

vaardigheden voor
politicologen
BACHELOROPLEIDING POLITICOLOGIE, COLLEGE SOCIALE WETENSCHAPPEN Marcel Maussen en Madeleine Moret (red.)

Rik-Jan Brinkman
ACADEMISCHE VAARDIGHEDEN VOOR POLITICOLOGEN

Bram Creusen

Agnes Dessing

Stefano Giani

Armèn Hakhverdian

1. Please note that eds is spelled without a dot. Sander van Haperen

Nynke Kruiderink

Sarah de Lange

Marcel Maussen

Madeleine Moret

Marijke Mossink

Boris Slijper

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