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The 6th Annual APE Research Conference Program
Day 1: Monday, July 27
Margaret Levi (Stanford)
Steven Teles (Johns Hopkins)
Jessica Bulman-Pozen (Columbia)
Abraham Newman (Georgetown)
Dara Strolovitch (Yale)
Chair: Alexander Hertel-Fernandez (Columbia)
Panel: Identity and Symbolic Politics
"Signifying Something? The Role of Symbolic Issues in Contemporary American Voting Behavior", Daniel Hopkins (Penn) 📄;
"The "Great Awokening" Had a Strong Upper-Class Accent", Marco Avina (Harvard) 📄;
"The Red-Green Policy Feedback: Republicans Going Renewable", Giulia Leila Travaglini (Columbia) 📄;
Chair: Jennifer Hochschild (Harvard)
Panel: Climate
"From Monopoly to Monopsony: When States Make and Enforce Climate Policy by Contract", Uma Ilavarasan (Harvard)📄;
"Lobbying, Influence, and the Limits of Blue State Greening: Two Cases", Josh Basseches (Case Western Reserve), and Trevor Culhane & J. Timmons Roberts (Brown) 📄;
Chair: Parrish Bergquist (Penn)
Day 2: Tuesday, July 28
Joe Soss (University of Minnesota)
Joshua Page (University of Minnesota)
Jamila D. Michener (Cornell)
Mallory SoRelle (Duke)
Marie Gottschalk (Penn)
Chair: Kathleen Thelen (MIT)
Panel: The PE of Race, Social Justice and Corruption
"The Electoral Effects of U.S. Prison Construction", Nicholas Ottone (Yale) 📄;
"Racial Disparities in Public Corruption Prosecutions and Sentencing", Mariella Rubenson (Columbia) 📄;
"The Appearance of Corruption: Americans’ Perceptions of Political Corruption and Its Harmful Consequences", Hwayong Shin (Washington University in St. Louis) 📄;
Chair: David Bateman (Cornell)
Panel: Business and the State
"Did Business Give Up on City Governance? Evidence from Three Cities’ Chambers of Commerce,1960-1990", Sarah Anzia (UC Berkeley);
"Loud or Loyal? Business response to Populism in Power", Ritika Goel (Harvard) 📄;
"The Political Economy of Immigration Detention: Mass Feedback and Conservatism", Anna Gunderson (UT Austin) 📄;
Chair: Itay Chay machtei (Yale)
Day 3: Wednesday, July 29
Lane Kenworthy (UC San Diego)
Torben Iversen (Harvard)
Quinn Slobodian (BU)
Brooke Harrington (Dartmouth)
Chair: Paul Pierson (UC Berkeley)
Panel: Risk and Insurance
"Beyond Insurance: Healthcare Financialization and the Politics of Managed Care Conglomerates", Victor Roy (Penn) 📄;
"The Health Politics of ERISA: Institutional Development and the Entrenchment of Private Health Insurance", Miranda Yaver (University of Pittsburgh) 📄;
"When the Rich Confront Risk: Climate change, home insurance, and demands for social policy", Preston Johnston (MIT); 📄;
Chair: Chloe Thurston (Northwestern)
Panel: Subnational Administrative Capacity
"Property Tax Salience and Public Good Investment: Evidence from School Bond Elections", Melissa Arnold Lyon (University at Albany) 📄;
"Administrative Deserts and the Political Economy of State Capacity: An Examination of Geographic Inequality in DMV Performance", Meredith Dost & Sebastian Jilke (Georgetown) 📄;
"(In)Capacity, Violence, and the Local Roots of Mass Incarceration", Rebekah Jones (UC Berkeley)📄;
Chair: Sarah Anzia (UC Berkeley)
Call for Papers:
The 6th annual APE Research Conference
The 6th annual APE Research Conference will be held on Zoom on July 27-29 (Mon-Wed) from roughly 12 to 3 pm ET each day. We invite you to save the date and submit paper proposals for presentation at the conference by Tuesday, April 7 at 11:59 PM (PT).
In addition to paper panels, this year’s conference will feature three special discussions on the current and future state of the American Political Economy:
- New Frontiers for APE Scholarship (featuring Margaret Levi, Steve Teles, Jessica Bulman-Pozen, Abraham Newman, Dara Strolovitch, and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez).
- The Political Economy of Justice in America (Featuring Joe Soss, Joshua Page, Jamila D. Michener, Mallory SoRelle, Marie Gottschalk, and Kathleen Thelen).
- Democracy at Times of Unprecedented Inequality (Featuring Lane Kenworthy, Torben Iversen, Quinn Slobodian, Brooke Harrington, Jacob Hacker, and Paul Pierson).
For the paper-panels, we invite submissions that deal with important aspects of the interaction of markets and governance in the United States. Submissions should be relatively advanced, but not yet published, work.
Past CAPE events have featured papers with diverse methodological approaches across a broad array of topics, from the political economy of local politics, race, and redistribution, to the roles of organized interests, parties, and institutions in shaping American economic governance.
We encourage the submission of papers that bridge APE with other subfields including IPE, CPE, Comparative, and American politics. We are also eager to feature work that speaks to the multi-faceted challenges facing the American (and global) political economy today. Junior faculty are especially encouraged to apply.
Those interested in presenting should submit an abstract and title (and if available, a working draft of the paper) via our online form by Tuesday, April 7 at 11:59 PM (PT).
Stay tuned for additional registration details in June, and feel free to follow up with any questions via info@americanpoliticaleconomy.org.
We look forward to an enriching event!
CAPE
Event Spotlight
Looking back at the 2026 APE Conference
The 6th annual APE Research Conference took place for July 27 to 29, 2006, bringing together over 170 participants for engaging discussions and exchanges. Scroll down to watch video highlights from the event!
