11. Comparative Politics

Ben Schneider, Northwestern University, brs@northwestern.edu
Steven Wilkinson, University of Chicago, swilkinson@uchicago.edu

The Comparative Politics section, using this year’s APSA theme of Categories and the Politics of Global Inequalities as our inspiration, especially invites panel and paper proposals that reexamine the analytic categories we use in comparative politics. Proposals, for instance, might wish to examine how categories such as class, ethnicity, race, developing world, institution, globalization, or corruption were formed, whether these categories are valid, and also how the use of these categories shapes our interpretations of outcomes (and categories) such as conflict, economic development, democratic consolidation, party competition or economic, ethnic, and gender inequalities. In addition, inequality has long been a central concern in comparative politics, both across countries and within. We welcome proposals that interrogate conventional wisdom on inequality, as well as the impact of global economic integration and democratization on it.

Because APSA meetings provide rare opportunities for debate among scholars working on different regions, we welcome cross-regional panels on topics such as immigration, rentier and failed states, party and electoral systems, and varieties of capitalism, as well as the categories and inequalities mentioned above.

In addition to these thematic panels, we also as usual encourage panels from the full range of diversity of areas, topics, and theoretical and methodological perspectives that together constitute comparative politics.