Spatial Dynamics of the American Political Economy

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The last two decades have seen a dramatic transformation of the geospatial structure of advanced political economies, with dynamic, knowledge-economy-oriented metropolitan regions gaining ground while old industrial cities, small towns, and rural areas have declined. This transformation has been particularly consequential -- and conflictual -- in the United States, where it has reshaped the preferences and power of voters in both rising and declining places and created new lines of division within and between the parties at the local, state, and national levels. These papers examine the American “spatial political economy” with the goal not only of understanding how American politics has changed in an era of stark geographic economic divergence, but also of advancing an emerging body of scholarship focused on the links between geography and political economy in rich democracies.

Sub Unit

• Division 55: Class and Inequality

Individual Presentations

• Bridging the Blue Divide - Jacob S. Hacker, Yale University; Paul Pierson, University of California, Berkeley

• Migration, Social Ties, and Political Preferences - William Marble, University of Pennsylvania; Junghyun Lim

• Working Families, Global Cities: Local Labor, High-SES Liberals, and U.S. Cities - Thomas K. Ogorzalek, Co-Lab Research

• Redlined Forever: The Racist Past of Today’s Land Use Regulations - Jessica Luce Trounstine, University of California, Merced

Chair

• Jonathan Rodden Stanford University

Discussants

• Jamila D. Michener Cornell University

• Sam Trachtman University of California, Berkeley