Subnational peripheries and the comparative method

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Thomas B Pepinsky, Associate Professor of Government, Cornell University
• Thursday 14 May 2015, 14:00-15:30
• Alison Richard Building (ARB), 7 West Road, 2nd floor, Room S2.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Helen Williams.

This paper identifies subnational peripheries as regions with historical trajectories and social formations that differ from those the majority of state’s territory, and that present distinct inferential challenges to within-country comparative designs using the subnational comparative method (Snyder 2001). These challenges are directly interpretable using standard concepts in quantitative and qualitative political methodology: unit heterogeneity, unobserved heterogeneity, complex interactive causes, small-n problems, and nonignorable missing data. I illustrate the stakes of the argument for current practice using three questions for which the subnational comparative method is ideally suited—local public goods and economic development, identity and insurgency, and ethnic voting—in the context of six Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. My discussion clarifies exactly how subnational peripheries complicate causal inference through within-country comparisons, and shows how many of the solutions to the problems raised by subnational peripheries frequently change the causal parameter of interest, or alternatively, the population being studied. These findings have important implications for current practice.

The paper can be read in advance and is available here: https://tompepinsky.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/peripheries1.pdf

This talk is part of the All POLIS Department Seminars and Events series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Africa Research Forum
• Alison Richard Building (ARB), 7 West Road, 2nd floor, Room S2
• All POLIS Department Seminars and Events
• Cambridge Centre for Data-Driven Discovery (C2D3)
• Cambridge talks
• Centre of African Studies Lent Seminar Series
• Centre of African Studies Michaelmas Seminars
• Centre of African Studies Occasional Talks
• Chris Davis' list
• Economics and Philosophy
• Gem's List
• Interested Talks
• The Audrey Richards Annual Lecture in African Studies
• The Smuts Memorial Fund Lecture
• Trust & Technology Initiative - interesting events
• bld31
• hc446
• jer64's list
• mas270
• ndk22's list
• ob366-ai4er
• rp587

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.