The Research in Comparative Politics (RCP) workshop serves as a forum for the presentation of research by faculty and graduate students in comparative politics.
Fall 2024
| Date | Speaker | Topic |
| Sep 25 | Andrew O’Donoghue (Harvard) | “Law versus Democracy: Minoritarian Courts, Audience Costs, and Democratic Backsliding in Turkey” |
| Oct 10 | Kim Yi Dionne (UC Riverside) | “Money and Medicine in Malawi: Linking State Health Spending to Health Outcomes” |
| Oct 16 | Noah Nathan (MIT) | “Vernacular Architecture and Grassroots Urban Politics: How Political Ties are Embedded in Residential Design (with Paige Bollen)” |
| Dec 4 | Alberto López Ortega (Harvard and VU Amsterdam) | “Selective (Il)liberalism: Identifying and Countering it” |
AY23/24
| Date | Speaker | Topic |
| Jan 31 | Danny Choi (Brown) | “Severed Connections: Intraparty Politics and Representation in Kenya” |
| Feb 14 | Marsin Alshamary (Boston College) | “Shi’a Clerical Participation in Anti-Government Protests in Ba’athist Iraq” |
| Mar 27 | Aram Hur (Tufts) | “Narratives of Inclusion: National Stories and Migrant Integration in South Korea” |
| Apr 3 | Prerna Singh (Brown) | “Moral Vaccination: How Ideas and Institutions Controlled Contagion in China and India in the 19th and 20th centuries” |
| Apr 24 | David Art (Tufts) | “The Resilience of the Old Regime: Paths Around Democracy in Europe, 1832-1919” |
| Sep 20 | Noam Lupu (Vanderbilt) | “Keeping Workers Off the Ballot: How Electoral Democracy Undermines Working-Class Representation” |
| Oct 11 | Mashail Malik (Harvard) | “Discrimination & Defiant Pride: How the Demand for Dignity Creates Slack for Poor Governance” |
AY22/23
| Date | Speaker | Topic |
| Feb 1 | Cathie Martin, BU | “Same as it Ever was? Culture, Literature, and Institutional Change” |
| Feb 15 | Jessie Trudeau (Brown) | “Criminal Capital, Voter Mobilization, and Suppression” |
| Apr 15 | Ora Szekely (Clark) | “Syria Divided” |
| May 3 | Mai Hassan (MIT) | “Who Gets Hired? Political Patronage and Bureaucratic Favoritism” |
AY21/22
| Date | Speaker | Topic |
| Oct 20 | Anne Meng, University of Virginia | “Power Sharing and Authoritarian Stability: Evidence from Rebel Regimes” |
| Dec 8 | Nadya Hajj, Wellesley College | “Networked Refugees: Palestinian Reciprocity and Remittances in the Digital Age” |
| Jan 31 | Jeremy Menchik, BU | “The Spirit and/of Political Science” |
| Feb 9 | Megan Turnbull, University of Georgia | “Support, Toleration, and Repression: Incumbent Responses to Dissident Armed Groups in Nigeria and Kenya” |
| Mar 2 | Steven Wilson, Brandeis University | “Measuring Internet & Politics: Introducing the Digital Society Project” |
| Apr 28 | Lisel Hintz, John Hopkins University | “Fight Scenes: Identity and Contestation in Turkey’s Pop Culture Arena” |
AY20/21
| Date | Speaker | Topic | Discussant |
| Sept 23 | Richard Nielsen, MIT | How the Rhetoric of Women in the Alt-Right Broadens the Movement’s Appeal | Katherine Levine Einstein, BU |
| Oct 7 | Rachel Brule, BU | Women, Power, and Property: The Paradox of Gender Equality Laws in India | Virginia Sapiro, BU |
| Feb 10 | Hannah Alarian, University of Florida | Immigrant Voting Rights and Naturalization in the European Union | None |
| Mar 3 | Thomas Pepinsky, Cornell | Voting in Authoritarian Elections (with Turkuler Isiksel) | None |
| Mar 31 | Susan Stokes, University of Chicago | Parties and Mobilization in Referendums | None |
| Apr 28 | Laura Paler, American University |
Can Mediated Contact Change Prejudice and Political Preferences? Evidence from a “Married at First Sight” Experiment (with Kyle Gray)
|
None |
AY19/20
| Date | Speaker | Topic |
| Mar 4 | Angelica Duran-Martinez, UMass Lowell | Negotiating with Criminal, Non-Rebel Groups in Latin America |
| Sept 25 | Milan Svolik, Yale | Democracy in America? Partisanship, Polarization, and the Robustness of Support for Democracy in the United States |
| Oct 15 | Yonatan Morse, University of Connecticut | Why Run for Office in an Authoritarian Regime? MP Motivations and Role Orientations in Cameroon |
| Nov 6 | Chipo Dendere, Wellesley | Three Decades of HIV – A Look at How Parties Benefited from Crisis |
| Nov 20 | Nicholas Barnes, Brown | Monopolies of Violence: Gang Governance in Rio de Janeiro |
AY 2018/19
| Date | Speaker | Topic |
| Sept 12 | Bill Grimes, BU | Institutionalizing Financial Cooperation in East Asia cosponsored by the Pardee Research Seminar |
| Oct 10 | Rebecca Weitz-Shapiro, Brown University | What is Political Knowledge Good for? Conceptualizing Political Knowledge in Developing Country Democracies |
| Oct 31 | Nicholas Rush Smith, The City College of New York | Democratic Death: South Africa’s Killing State cosponsored by the African Studies Center |
| Feb 6 | Michael Woldemariam, BU | From Rebelling to Ruling: How Power Distributions and Communal Structure Affect Regime Consolidation After Rebel Victory in Africa |
| Mar 20 | Steve Rosenzweig, BU | What Explains Ethnic Voting? |
| Apr 17 | Guadalupe Tunon, Harvard | When the Church Votes Left: The Electoral Consequences of Progressive Religion |
AY 2017/18
| Date | Speaker | Topic |
| Oct 24 | Pia Raffler, Harvard | Meet the Candidates: Experimental Evidence on Information and Voting Behavior in Uganda Primary and General Elections |
| Jan 31 | Robert Blair, Brown | The Effects of Chinese Development Finance on State Legitimacy in Africa: Cross-National and Sub-National Evidence from Surveys, Survey Experiments, and Behavioral Games |
| Feb 7 | Jeremy Menchik, BU | Woodrow Wilson and the Spirit of Liberal Internationalism |
| Apr 4 | Melani Cammett, Harvard | Coethnicity and Clientelism in Divided Societies: Insights from an Experimental Study of Political Behavior in Lebanon |
| Apr 18 | Germán Feierherd, Yale | Does the Left Breed Economic Informality? Party Strategies and Selective Enforcement in Brazil |
AY 2016/17
| Date | Speaker | Topic |
| Nov 7 | Prerna Singh, Brown | How Ideas and Institutions Explain the Differential Control of Disease in China and India |
| Dec 12 | Johannes Lindvall, Lund University | Economic Downturns, Political Competition, and State Capacity |
| Mar 1 | Cathie Jo Martin, BU | Imagine All the People: Literature, Society and Cross-National Variation in Education Systems |
| Mar 22 | Gwyneth McClendon, Harvard | Religious Influences on Political Engagement: Insights from Sub-Saharan Africa |
| Apr 26 | Taylor Boas, BU | Norms versus Action: Voting Against Malfeasance in Brazil |