Political Economy of Contentious Politics

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel highlights new work on the political economy of contentious politics. The paper's four papers analyze this theme across a wide range of contexts and dimensions, including revolutionary France, post-revolutionary Mexico, the United States during the Vietnam War, and modern-day India. Each paper makes use of formal modeling and/or novel fine-grained data and statistical methods of analysis. The panel’s first paper evaluates how participation in the American Revolution by French soldiers impacted their subsequent support for democratic values during the French Revolution. The second paper analyzes the government’s tactic of bureaucratic delay in defusing citizen mobilization and distributive conflict and thereby sustaining one-party rule in post-revolutionary Mexico. The third paper evaluates the effect of the military conscription of immigrants in the Vietnam War draft lottery on their subsequent social integration in the United States. The fourth and final paper analyzes the relationship between a district’s exposure to pre-modern conflict involving heavy weaponry and the emergence and endurance of male-favoring gender norms across India. To round out this panel, two expert discussants will offer their perspectives, drawing on their research on conflict processes, post-conflict state-making, and international development. By providing a host of systematic new evidence, this panel will improve our knowledge of the root determinants of contentious politics.

Sub Unit

• Division 6: Political Economy

Individual Presentations

• Revolutionary Contagion - Saumitra Jha, Stanford University

• Bureaucratic Delay, Ambiguity, and Frustrated Collective Action - Emily A. Sellars, Yale University

• Conflict and Gender Norms - Anil Menon, University of Michigan

Chair

• Mark Dincecco University of Michigan

Discussants

• Darin Christensen UCLA

• Sabrina Karim Cornell University