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I extensively agree with Lieberman's main argument and especially with his recommendations to graduate students and journal editors, which come at a critical time for our discipline's development and future relevance. However, I depart from Lieberman on two issues. First, I argue that the research cycle is circular, and not teleological as Lieberman implies. For instance, randomized control trial (RCT) studies could be the start (and not the end) of a research cycle that leads to more descriptive and qualitative analysis in order to improve our understanding of causality. Second, I believe that the size of effects in RCT studies does matter, among other reasons because small effects might be symptoms of defective conceptualization of the main research problem.

The essay by Murillo, Shrank, and Luna constitutes a much-needed and welcome wake-up call for those of us who study Latin America—and for political scientists more generally. The authors make a plea for "a rigorous, comparative, and empirically grounded" study of Latin American political economy. I fully agree with their diagnosis of this field and their recommendations. I also praise the authors for defining political economy broadly—rather than narrowly, through a focus on research methods. They understand political economy to encompass all the economic, social, and political factors that are either contextual conditions or consequences of major macroeconomic transformations. Thus the authors lay out an important research agenda for the study of Latin American political economy that includes not only issues of economic development and inequality, but also patterns of democratic politics, state capacities, the rule of law, identity politics, and international linkages, among others. For the authors, the major political and economic transformations that the region has undergone since the start of the twentyfirst century—in its postneoliberal era—cry out for a contextualized research agenda and, I would add, open a host of opportunities for theoretical and conceptual innovation.