How Ideas Shape Urban Political Development

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

Ideas, interests, and institutions are the “holy trinity” of the study of politics. Of the three, ideas are arguably the hardest with which to grapple and thus, despite generally broad agreement of their fundamental importance, the most often neglected or undertheorized. This is nowhere more true than in the study of urban politics and urban political development. In their edited volume, How Ideas Shape Urban Political Development (Penn Press, 2020), Richardson Dilworth (Drexel University) and Timothy Weaver (University at Albany, SUNY) have compiled a series of essays designed to address this lacuna in the extant scholarship on urban politics and, more ambitiously, to establish a research agenda for scholars looking to build persuasive accounts of political change at the urban scale both in the U.S. and comparatively.

This roundtable brings together a range of scholars whose work engages with work on urban politics, the role of ideas, and American political development. This group is ideally placed both to offer critiques of the volume and to reflect more broadly on the implications of the book for the future study of urban politics, American political development, and comparative political development at the national and subnational levels.

The participants on the proposed roundtable include contributors to the volume itself, such as Richardson Dilworth, Timothy Weaver, and Mara Sidney (Rutgers – Newark), and influential scholars who work in the fields of urban politics, such as Michael Fortner (CUNY), and American political development, namely James Morone (Brown University) and Chloe Thurston (Northwestern University).

Chair: Richardson Dilworth, rd43@drexel.edu
Contributors:
Timothy Weaver, tweaver@albany.edu
Mara Sidney, msidney@newark.rutgers.edu
Michael Fortner, mfortner@gc.cuny.edu
James Morone, james_morone@brown.edu
Chloe Thurston, thurston@northwestern.edu

Sub Unit

• Division 7: Politics and History

Chair

• Richardson Dilworth Drexel University

Presenters

• Timothy Weaver SUNY, University at Albany

• Mara Sidney Rutgers University, Newark

• James A. Morone Brown University

• Chloe Thurston Northwestern University

• Michael Javen Fortner Claremont McKenna College