The Colloquium on Comparative Research is a cross-disciplinary program based at the Watson Institute for International Studies (WIIS) and tied to the Graduate Program in Development at Brown University. It draws on a core group of faculty in the departments of Anthropology, Economics, Political Science and Sociology at Brown University, as well as WIIS researchers, whose scholarship falls broadly in the area of development.
The Colloquium meets on Wednesdays from 5:00pm - 6:30pm. Presentations normally last about 40 minutes, followed by questions and discussion. Following are the confirmed dates for the 2010 Fall Semester:
September 15: Jose Carlos Orihuela, Visiting Fellow in International Studies, Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, "An Environmental Resource Curse? Governing Air Pollution from Smelters in Chuquicamata (Chile) and La Oroya (Peru)"
October 13 (at 12:00pm): Christopher B. Barrett, Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Professor of Applied Economics and Management, International Professor of Agriculture, Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University, “Social Network Capital, Economic Mobility and Poverty Traps”
October 27: Jason Beckfield, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Harvard University, “Regional Integration and the Convergence of European Welfare States”
November 10: Jocelyne Cesari, Director of the Islam in the West Program, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, "Muslims in the West After 9/11: Religion, Law and Politics"
December 1: Alexandra Scacco, Assistant Professor of Politics, New York University
Upcoming Events
Wednesday, September 15 at 5:00 PM Jose Carlos Orihuela -- An Environmental Resource Curse? Governing Air Pollution from Smelters in Chuquicamata (Chile) and La Oroya (Peru)
Wednesday, October 13 at 12:00 PM Christopher B. Barrett -- Social Network Capital, Economic Mobility and Poverty Traps
Wednesday, October 27 at 5:00 PM Jason Beckfield -- Regional Integration and the Convergence of European Welfare States
Wednesday, November 10 at 5:00 PM Jocelyne Cesari -- Muslims in the West After 9/11: Religion, Law and Politics
Past Events
Wednesday, September 15, 2004 Ethnic Diversity and Democratic Stability
Wednesday, September 29, 2004 Systemic Vulnerability and the Origins of Developmental States: Northeast and Southeast Asia in Comparative Perspective
Wednesday, October 6, 2004 Social Content of the International Sphere: Symbols and Meaning in Franco-German Relations
Wednesday, October 20, 2004 Presidential Memoirs: Reflections by a Social Scientist
Wednesday, November 3, 2004 Mission Creep and Discretion in Sociological Perspective: The Case of IMF Conditionality
Wednesday, November 10, 2004 The Collapse of Party Systems and the Crisis of Democracy in the Andean Region: Causes and Consequences
Wednesday, November 17, 2004 Dams & Development
Wednesday, December 1, 2004 A Theory of Terrorism
Wednesday, February 2, 2005 Evading the State: Hills and Valleys in Mainland Southeast Asia (or) Why Civilizations Can't Climb Hills
Wednesday, February 9, 2005 Globalization and Business Politics: Markets and Political Change in the Middle East
Wednesday, February 16, 2005 The Logic of Violence in Civil War
Wednesday, February 23, 2005 Scholarship to Practice: What Have Development Practitioners Done With Our Insights
Wednesday, March 9, 2005 A Passive Revolution in Global Environmental Politics: The Changing Dynamics of Environmental NGO/Oil Company Relations
Wednesday, March 16, 2005 The Politics of Government Responses to AIDS in Developing Countries
Wednesday, April 6, 2005 Party Systems, Economic Crisis, and Electoral Stability in Latin America: Societal and Institutional Explanations
Wednesday, April 13, 2005 Post-Communist Welfare Politics
Wednesday, April 20, 2005 Rethinking the Failure of Democracy in Weimar Germany
Wednesday, September 14, 2005 Defending Democracy: Responses to Extremism in Inter-war Europe
Wednesday, September 28, 2005 Making Space for Civil Society: Evidence from Governance Reforms in 10 Brazilian Municipalities
Wednesday, October 5, 2005 Related Lending and Economic Performance: Evidence from Mexico
Wednesday, October 19, 2005 Are Germany's Troubles Due to Globalization?
Wednesday, October 26, 2005 Corporate Governance and Managerial Risk Taking: Theory and Evidence
Wednesday, November 2, 2005 Democracy and Governance: International Tendencies
Wednesday, November 16, 2005 Corporations, consumers and transnational labor activism: Experiments in independent monitoring in South Africa, India and Guatemala
Wednesday, November 30, 2005 The Composition of Growth Matters for Poverty Alleviation.
Wednesday, December 7, 2005 Policymaking Patterns: Privatization and Regulation of Latin American Public Utilities
Wednesday, February 8, 2006 Gauging the Power of Global Civil Society: Intellectual Property and Public Health
Wednesday, February 22, 2006 Rethinking the Resource Curse: Lessons from the Soviet Union
Wednesday, March 8, 2006 Delivering on Doha: Farm Trade and the Poor
Wednesday, March 22, 2006 States, Movements, and Nationalism: Peru in Comparative Perspective
Wednesday, April 5, 2006 Bounded Rationality and Policy Diffusion: Social Sector Reform in Latin America
Wednesday, April 26, 2006 Trafficking in Persons and Japanese ODA: A Multi-Sited Engagement
Wednesday, September 20, 2006 Politics of Change in Advanced Political Economies
Wednesday, October 4, 2006 Accountability without Democracy: Solidary Groups and Public Goods Provision in Rural China
Wednesday, October 18, 2006 Teresa Caldeira -- Democracy, Neoliberalism, and the City: Remaking Urban Policy in Brazil
Wednesday, November 8, 2006 Nitsan Chorev -- Globalization in the Making: Politics, Institutions, and U.S. Trade Policy, 1934-2004
Wednesday, November 15, 2006 Sexual Violence during War: Toward an Explanation of Variation
Wednesday, December 6, 2006 Transnational Law, Governance and Labor Movement: The Emergence of a Labor Rights Regime in North America
Wednesday, February 7, 2007 Julia Lynch -- The Age of Welfare: Citizenship, Clientelism and Intergenerational Justice in the Welfare State
Wednesday, February 21, 2007 Hwa-Jen Liu -- Rethinking Movement Trajectories: A Comparison of Labor and Environmental Movements in Taiwan and South Korea
Wednesday, March 7, 2007 Thad Dunning -- Oil and Democracy in Latin America
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 Richard Locke -- Does Monitoring Improve Labor Standards?: Lessons from Nike
Wednesday, April 4, 2007 Neil Brenner -- Rethinking the logic of comparison in urban studies: promises and pitfalls of the globalization debates
Wednesday, April 18, 2007 Roger Petersen -- Rationality, Fear, and Loathing: Intervention and Ethnic Conflict in the Twenty-First Century
Wednesday, May 2, 2007 Craig Jeffrey -- Immoral Economies? 'Corruption' as Practice and Discourse in India
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 Rawi Abdelal -- Capital Rules: The Construction of Global Finance
Wednesday, September 26, 2007 Gianpaolo Baiocchi -- Democracy is an Open Source Technology: The Paradoxes of Participatory Institutions
Wednesday, October 17, 2007 Bay, Perla, & Snyder -- Who Sets the Intellectual Agenda? Foreign Funding and Social Science in Peru
Wednesday, November 7, 2007 Susan Stokes -- Globalization, the Welfare Gap, and the Rise of the Left in Latin America
Wednesday, November 14, 2007 Ashutosh Varshney -- Ethnic Conflict and Civil Society: Evolution of a Research Program
Wednesday, November 28, 2007 Vivek Chibber -- Beyond Gerschenkron: State and Class in Late Development
Wednesday, February 6, 2008 Robert Jensen -- Do the (Perceived) Returns to Education Affect the Demand for Schooling? Evidence from the Dominican Republic
Wednesday, February 20, 2008 Julia Paley -- Indigenous Movements and Aid Agencies in Ecuador
Monday, March 3, 2008 Michael Ross -- Oil, Islam, and Women
Wednesday, March 19, 2008 Julian Go -- American Empire and the Politics of Meaning: Power, Culture, and US Colonialism in Puerto Rico and the Philippines
Wednesday, April 2, 2008 Tulia Faletti -- The Fourth Branch: Decentralization and Subnational Politics in Latin America
Wednesday, April 16, 2008 Michael Bratton -- Institutionalizing African Democracy: Formal or Informal?
Wednesday, April 30, 2008 Steven Fish -- Why Democracy Fails and What Can Be Done about It
Wednesday, September 10, 2008 Alfred C. Stepan -- The Multiple Secularisms of Modern Democracies
Wednesday, September 17, 2008 Sonia E. Alvarez -- Beyond the Civil Society Agenda?: 'Civic Participation' and Practices of Governance, Governability and Governmentality
Wednesday, October 1, 2008 Theda Skocpol -- Studying the Institutional Foundations of Democratic Civil Society
Wednesday, October 15, 2008 Susan Rose-Ackerman -- Corruption in the Wake of Domestic Conflict
Wednesday, October 29, 2008 Jason Brownlee -- Authoritarianism in the Twenty-First Century
Wednesday, November 12, 2008 Vijayendra Rao -- The Grammar of Gram Sabhas: Understanding the Anatomy of Deliberative Democracy in Rural India
Wednesday, November 19, 2008 Peter Houtzager -- Urban Citizenship: Empirical Varieties and Political Construction in Latin America
Wednesday, December 3, 2008 Juan Pablo Luna -- Unpacking the Concept of Party System Institutionalization: The Case of Latin America
Wednesday, February 4, 2009 Ana De La O - Do Poverty Relief Funds Affect Electoral Behavior? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Mexico
Wednesday, February 18, 2009 Erik Wibbels - Trade, Development and Social Insurance
Wednesday, February 25, 2009 Ben Ross Schneider - Hierarchical Market Economies and Varieties of Capitalism in Latin America
Wednesday, March 4, 2009 Archon Fung - A Pragmatic Approach to Democratic Institutions: Beyond Electocracy
Wednesday, March 18, 2009 Robert Fishman - Enduring Legacies of Revolution and Reform: Democratic Practice and Social Outcomes in Portugal and Spain
Wednesday, April 1, 2009 Macartan Humphreys - Can Development Aid Contribute to Social Cohesion After Civil War? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Post-Conflict Liberia
Wednesday, April 15, 2009 Sebastián Mazzuca - Southern Cone Leviathans: Center and Periphery in the Creation of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay
Wednesday, April 29, 2009 Bryant Garth - Asian Legal Revivals: Lawyer-Compradors and Colonial Strategies in the Reshaping of Asian States
Wednesday, September 16, 2009 George Gavrilis -- State Failure and Regional Cooperation: The Case of Afghanistan
Wednesday, September 30, 2009 Daniel Ziblatt -- Electoral Fraud and Democratization: Lessons from Europe
Wednesday, October 14, 2009 Melani Cammett and Sukriti Issar -- Bricks and Mortar Clientelism: Sectarianism and the Logics of Welfare Allocation in Lebanon
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 Kamal Sadiq -- A Paper Trail to Citizenship
Wednesday, November 11, 2009 Jeremy Seekings -- Building Welfare States in the Global South: The Origins of Divergent Welfare Regimes
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 Greta Krippner -- Capitalizing on Crisis: The Political Origins of the Rise of Finance in the U.S. Economy
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 Timothy Patrick Moran -- Unveiling Inequality: A World-Historical Perspective
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 Deborah Thomas -- Bad Friday: Rastafari, State Violence, and the Perils of Neoliberalism
Wednesday, March 10, 2010 Anna Grzymala-Busse -- Breeding Dependence: How Some Religions Grow without Diluting Strict Doctrine
Wednesday, March 24, 2010 Lauren MacLean -- Citizens or Clients?: A Comparative Analysis of Political Attitudes and Everyday Practices in Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire
Wednesday, April 21, 2010 James Ron -- Rights-Based Organizations in the Global South: Are they Sustainable and Locally Legitimate?
Wednesday, April 28, 2010 Lisa Wedeen -- Scientific Knowledge, Liberalism, and Empire: American Political Science in the Modern Middle East