Political Science Meets Energy: Methodological and Theoretical Issues

Abstract

Recent years have seen a long-awaited surge in social science research on energy and its self-organization through journals, handbooks, and book series Political science contributions to energy studies were relatively late in coming. Though we can distinguish a whole tradition of energy-linked International Political Economy research, a lot of realist/geopolitical IR writing on energy interdependence and some significant studies of energy policy as a public policy, there is still a visible lack of engagement with energy as a specific socio-technical field. Many political science studies are still torn between arcane technological expertise on the one and theory-driven research on the other side. This panel, bringing together researchers with different backgrounds and empirical interests will attempt to map recent advances and remaining problems.