Critical Junctures and Analytical Horizons: Historical Legacies Across Regions

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

The roundtable engages with the study of critical junctures as an analytical framework in the context of recent scholarship on economic policy choices and their political consequences in Latin American and European contexts. As political actors long associated with center-left politics have adopted pro-market positions in different world regions during periods of financial crisis, participants discuss potentially comparable strategic choices, societal responses, and institutional outcomes. In particular, the roundtable considers if the shift towards economic liberalization constitutes a new critical juncture associated with dramatic changes in party systems and political competition, what the potential legacies of key moments of market reform might be, and whether modern populist phenomena tend to emerge in contexts where center-left parties have joined the convergence around neoliberal policies. By discussing pertinent developments from a cross-regional perspective that considers the utility of a common analytical framework, participants consider new horizons in historical institutionalism.

Sub Unit

• Division 11: Comparative Politics

Chair

• Sheri Berman Barnard College, Columbia University

Presenters

• Binio S. Binev Virginia Tech

• Taylor C. Boas Boston University

• Samuel Handlin Swarthmore College

• Gerardo L. Munck University of Southern California

• Maria Snegovaya Virginia Tech