Contextualized and Multilevel Sectoral Analysis and the New Political Economy

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

We are in an age of post-neoliberal globalization, whereby complex interdependence has integrated many economies and industries within them, and in parallel led to the rise of varied national and subnational political and economic responses. These forces have witnessed the rise of a new political economy that requires new methodologies and new approaches. The assembled roundtable brings together senior, mid-career, and junior scholars to deliberate the empirical and analytical leverage and opportunities for theory development of contextualized national and subnational comparisons at the sectoral level of analysis. Roundtable participants will discuss empirical strategies employing qualitative and quantitative methods and how such contextualized and multilevel sectoral analysis provides analytical traction and theoretical value-added in addition to the adjudication of competing explanations in the new political economy.

The roundtable’s body of research demonstrates how the “contextualized comparative sector approach” (Hsueh, forthcoming) revolutionizes our understanding of comparative and international political economy, alternatives to the neoliberal paradigm, and the new complex interdependence. This approach of contextualized and multilevel sectoral analysis transcends traditional area studies’ assumptions of similarities and differences between cases and within cases and identifies the multidimensional effects of industrial sectors. Uncovered are new sites of inquiry within and across countries connected to the social and political constructions of sectors, technological properties of sectors, and context-specific sectoral organization of institutions.

The studies represented by the roundtable highlight the multidimensional impacts of sectors in intersecting global, national, and subnational contexts. They focus on and compare manufacturing to services, labor-intensive sectors to capital-intensive, emerging technologies, and extractive sectors to renewable energy. Within country, across country, and transregional comparisons include developed and developing countries and democracies and autocracies in Africa, East Asia, Eurasia, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. This new research agenda focused on the sectoral level of analysis is represented by the roundtable’s scholarship on the role of the state in market governance and regulation (Allison Evans, Roselyn Hsueh, Aseema Sinha, John Yasuda); sector coalitions and policy networks (Richard Doner, Aseema Sinha); state choices and industrial development (Richard Doner, Roselyn Hsueh, Rahul Mukherji), environmental transitions (Kathryn Hochstetler), and industrial upgrading and technology transfers (Roselyn Hsueh, J.D. Minnich); and natural resources and political economic impacts (Allison Evans, Jean Hong, Rudra Sil).

Sub Unit

• Division 6: Political Economy

Chair

• Roselyn Hsueh Temple University

Presenters

• Richard F. Doner Emory University

• Allison D. Evans University of Nevada, Reno

• Kathryn Hochstetler LSE

• Ji Yeon (Jean) Hong University of Michigan

• John David Minnich Massachussetts Institute of Technology

• Rahul Mukherji Heidelberg University, South Asia Institute

• Rudra Sil University of Pennsylvania

• Aseema Sinha Claremont Mckenna College

• John Yasuda Johns Hopkins University