State Informational Capacity in Historical and Contemporary Governance

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Scholarship on state capacity increasingly emphasizes the role of information in shaping a variety of outcomes including public goods provision (D'Arcy and Nistotskaya 2017; Zhan and Lee 2017), democratization (Brambor et al. 2020), conflict (Lee 2020), and ethnic diversity (Amatller and vom Hau 2023, Charnysh 2022). While this scholarship has sparked novel and exciting ways to think about the origins and consequences of state capacity, many open frontiers remain in understanding why state actors acquire and manage information in the ways that they do, and how states’ informational capacities shape their responses to a variety of policy challenges. This panel brings together five papers that explore the roles of state informational capacity in complex governance issues such as COVID-19, the management of ethnic diversity, democratic backsliding, and migration. By looking across these different issue areas – and using both historical and contemporary approaches, land also arge N and case studies – the panel will generate discussion and debate on the optimal ways to conceptualize, study, and understand the causes and consequences of informational capacity.

Sub Unit

• Division 11: Comparative Politics

Individual Presentations

• The Information Capacity of States, Ethnic Diversity, and Social Development - Matthias vom Hau, Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals

• COVID-19 and State Capacity: Did the Pandemic Crisis Strengthen the State? - Andrea Vaccaro, University of Oxford

• State Capacity and Responses to Forced Displacement in Developing Countries - Eun Kyung Kim, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies; Sung Min Han, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

• People Processing as State Capacity: Immigration Control in Canada and Sweden - Andreas Asplén Lundstedt

• Informational Advantages and Bureaucratic Resistance to Democratic Backsliding - Rachel Sigman, University of Denver

Chair

• Marina Nistotskaya University of Gothenburg

Discussants

• Jonathan Hanson University of Michigan

• Carl Henrik Knutsen Department of Political Science, University of Oslo