A year ago the editors of the European Journal of Political Research decided to create a new type of article, the so‐called state‐of‐the‐field review article. In these articles leading scholars critically survey and summarize the most important academic contributions in their field and discuss the particular relevance to the comparative study of politics in general, and European politics in particular. Authors identify crucial theoretical and conceptual debates, raise new and exciting research questions and, in doing so, inspire innovative empirical projects in the future.

In this issue we will publish the first state‐of‐the‐field review article, “Party politics in hard times: Comparative perspectives on the European and Latin American economic crises”, by Professor Kenneth M. Roberts, a noted specialist of party politics in Latin America in general, and populist politics in particular. We asked him to reflect on his work on the post‐crisis period in Latin America and apply some of his main insights and lessons to the (post‐)crisis period in Europe. It is our hope that his article will inspire and strengthen new theoretical and empirical work on European politics, which will also find its way into the journal.

While state‐of‐the‐field review articles are normally initiated by the editors, interested authors are welcome to propose topics (ejpr@ecpr.eu). It is essential that the proposed manuscripts speak to a broad selection of the EJPR readership and inspire and strengthen future work. Articles will be reviewed by members of the editorial board or external reviewers, who are informed about the specific nature of the contribution, and have a maximum length of 5,000 words.

Cas Mudde and Yannis Papadopoulos

Athens and Lausanne, March 2017