Comparative Politics Workshop (CPW)
This workshop serves as a multi-disciplinary forum for the presentation and discussion of research related to comparative politics. Past seminars have examined political identity, presidential power, voting rules, consolidation of party systems, economic sanctions, language politics, and ethnic mobilization. All methodologies, including case studies, statistics, formal theory, and interpretivist approaches are welcome. We encourage papers with a specific geographic focus, as well as broad cross-regional analyses. The mission of the workshop is to foster a vibrant intellectual exchange among comparativists, to bring students and faculty into contact with nationally recognized figures in the field of comparative politics, and to create a comfortable, professional environment for the development of faculty and graduate student research at all levels.
Questions? Please contact Professor, and CPW director, Jan Pierskalla (pierskalla.4@osu.edu).
Autumn 2024 Schedule
CPW will be held on Tuesdays from 1 to 2pm in the Derby Hall 2130. We will maintain the hybrid format: you may attend in-person in the Reading Room (highly encouraged) or via Zoom. Zoom link: https://osu.zoom.us/j/95734895781?pwd=NROEyuS2IyIxg7rZmSPqJzaOctw5wv.1
Sept 24, 2024, Amanda Robinson, "Survey of Traditional Authorities in Malawi."
Oct 1, 2024, José Pérez, "Street-level Bureaucrats and Venezuelan Migration to Brazil: Governmentality, Agency, and State Transformation."
Abstract: Over the past few years, Brazil has integrated over 425,000 Venezuelan migrants/refugees by resettling them to various municipalities, without any noticeable anti-immigrant backlash. Meanwhile, U.S. cities, like New York and Chicago, with considerably more resources and technology, have struggled to integrate about 119,000 Venezuelan and other migrants/refugees during recent years, and have experienced significant anti-immigrant backlash. This raises the question: how can states incorporate migrants/refugees into local communities and municipal public services, while avoiding social backlash? This article argues that street-level bureaucrats can play a key role in integrating migrants/refugees and reducing societal backlash, despite a lack of sophisticated software, detailed policy directives, or budgetary resources. I support these claims by employing recent Venezuelan migration to Brazil since 2017 as an in-depth case study of the contemporary relationship between migration influxes and local bureaucratic agents. Consequently, I contend that Brazilian street-level bureaucrats effectively integrate Venezuelan migrants/refugees by learning new skills, creating informal networks of support, socializing migrants/refugees within local norms, and searching for new resources. Research methods include an interpretative approach based on 290 semi-structured interviews and 60 participant observations with Brazilian bureaucrats and Venezuelan migrants/refugees, across multiple field sites. In effect, bureaucrats are not merely “cogs in the machine,” but rather they learn from quotidian interactions with migrants/refugees, in ways that are easily overlooked and difficult to quantify, especially in situations where they lack clear policy or legal directives on how to approach these populations.
Oct 8, 2024, Jack Fernandes, "Disaster Governance and Climate Adaptation in Malawi: Political Challenges and Opportunities."
Oct 29, 2024, Daniel Smith, "Built on Shifting Sands: Warfare and Extraction in Pre-modern Eurasia, 1000-1800 CE."
Abstract: Prominent explanations for Western Europe’s unique political development focus on the interaction between war and elite bargaining power. Severe external threats increased rulers' reliance on powerful non-state actors with military and fiscal endowments, resulting in concessions up to, and including, limited political inclusion. Those conditions are typically associated with the proliferation of noble councils in medieval Europe and the subsequent emergence of parliaments with legal autonomy and executive constraint capabilities. Yet war-centric models rest on the premise that rulers and elites have a shared interest in the polity's survival such that institutionalized bargaining is efficacious for both parties. I argue that realms where military elite bargaining advantage was greatest, where elite "exit" capacity was highest, were historically associated with both noble councils and transient political entities. That is, the probability of noble councils emerging within a given polity was inversely related to polity duration, restricting possibilities for institutional development. Moreover, I reframe European nobles' territorial embeddedness as a limitation on bargaining power, as it increased exit costs and bound their interests to those of the polity. I find support for these propositions using a novel dataset of over 150 sovereign or semi-sovereign political entities present in Eurasia between 1000 and 1799 CE. My findings suggest a more nuanced picture of how warfare and elite bargaining power shaped the political development of medieval and early modern societies. Bargaining only yielded environments conducive to broadening participation where elites shared a ruler's commitment to the polity, per se.
Nov 12, 2024. Erin Lin & Kaveri Sarkar, "Information Operations and Civilian Trust: Local Responses to US Aerial Warnings in Rural Cambodia During the Vietnam War."
Abstract: A large literature has found that winning the goodwill of the civilian population is a crucial factor in establishing military control. Consequently, wartime governments have invested massively in “hearts and minds” campaigns that distribute information and propaganda, aimed to inspire confidence and ultimately win over civilian support. Disagreement persists, however, about the efficacy of these campaigns. One prominent example occurred during the Vietnam War, where the military airdropped warnings to civilians about the incoming aerial attacks. Yet countless villagers from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia ignored the information and perished in the air raids. We examine where and why these efforts failed to protect civilians. Our paper provides preliminary interview data from three bombed Cambodian settlements; each village appears to have had a different response to the leaflet campaign, accompanied by distinct survival strategies and experiences of violence. Our interviews suggest that when village elites held meetings to interpret information and its trustworthiness, their influence and political alliances mediated the military’s preventative measures. We find that constituents today continue to adopt the foreign policy preferences of their local leaders, even as the US and China compete over individual hearts-and-minds through investment, infrastructure, and development assistance.
Nov 19, 2024, Sohyeon Kim, "Adapting to Urbanization: Political Party Strategies in response to Shifting Voters in sub-Saharan Africa."
Abstract: Urbanization in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to bring about significant social changes with further political implications, especially where ethnic voting is prominent. How do sociodemographic changes in a society influence the behaviors of different political agents? Focusing on political parties, this research compares Malawi and Zambia to investigate how rural-urban migration affects party policies and strategies. I expect that rural-urban migration within a country reshapes party policies and strategies as parties respond to shifting voter bases and attitudes to maximize public support beyond traditional ethno-regional cleavages. In this paper, I analyze political party manifestos to compare current policies and strategies, examining how they have changed over time. I supplement these perspectives with interview data collected in January-February 2024.
Spring 2024 Schedule
Mar 27, 2024, Jan Pierskalla, “Cadre Networks and Bureaucratic Careers in Autocracies.”
Apr 3, 2024, SoYun Chang (Coauthored with Alexander Thompson and Jieun Oh), "Public Support for Restrictive Border Policies During Transnational Health Crises."
Apr 10, 2024, Zuheir Desai, "How do Gender Quotas Impact Accountability?”
Spring 2023 Schedule
Feb 9, 2023, Marcus Kurtz
Feb 23, 2023, Jack Fernandes
Mar 9, 2023, Seamus Wagner
Mar 23, 2023, Amanda Robinson
Mar 30, 2023, Karis Neufeld
Apr 6, 2023, Soh Hyeon Kim