Since the beginning of the new millennium, comparative historical research has experienced a remarkable flowering across the social sciences. In part it builds on older analytical traditions that go back to investigations from Max Weber to Barrington Moore. In part it is inspired by new methodological avenues and comparative analytical frames to explore the continuing causal impact of chronologically prior, if not distant premises and constraints of societal organization. The Duke University spring 2022 “Frontiers of Political Science” workshop takes up these themes in five baskets (below). The configuration of panels is driven by what participants of the preparatory group—political science PhD candidates and graduate students from Duke and UNC Chapel Hill—perceive as particularly relevant for their own work and as critical for the development of the field. Some of them will present their own research papers.
The five conference themes, organized into panels, include:
- Historical Comparative Analysis, Past and Present: Methodological and Theoretical Considerations
- Political Governance of Finance and Trade
- Institutional Arrangements and Political Economic Developments
- The Footprint of Migration: Causes and Consequences
- Constructing Executive Bureaucracies
