Advances in Analytical Politics and Public Choice

Analytical Politics and Public Choice provide a distinct methodological approach to the study of diverse political phenomena. At its core is the empirical testing of hypotheses which were derived from public choice theory. A strong focus of the approach is on the strategic interaction of rational decision-makers. This Section will contain Panels on recent advances in analytical politics and public choice. They cover a range of topics concerning the political process and reflect the methodological approach. The Section will provide space for both theoretical and empirical contributions. One of the major strengths of Analytical Politics and Public Choice is the coherent methodological approach. It is characterized by combining the deduction of hypotheses from stringent theoretical models with the empirical testing of said hypotheses. This approach has been used to successfully study diverse phenomena in Political Science. We propose a Section which helps to reflect on recent advances in the way in which the methodology of Analytical Politics and Public Choice is used to study political processes. We seek to include Panels on different aspects of the political process to reflect the richness of the public choice approach as a tool for understanding politics. We thereby seek both theoretical and empirical contributions. The first Panel is a Panel on Spatial Models of Party Competition and Recent Trends in European Policy Spaces. It is chaired by Ana-Sophie Kurella (MZES Mannheim) and Ingrid Mauerer (University of Barcelona). The Panel is concerned with the strategic response of parties to new salient topics, such as climate change or the increasing polarization of electorates. The second Panel will be on Explorations in Historical Political Economy. It will be chaired by Gidon Cohen (Durham University) and Chitralekha Basu (CCCP and University of Cologne). Recent breakthroughs in computational techniques have made the quantitative analysis of historical political developments, or historical political economy, possible - allowing us to test theories about political processes against historical as well as contemporary evidence. This Panel will bring together a series of Papers that use quantitative methods to analyse historical data. Papers on British political development will be especially welcome. The third Panel will be a Panel on recent advances in analytical politics and testing theoretical models. Recently, the methodology by which models are tested has received renewed attention. New methods are being developed, which allow for a better estimation of strategic models. Likewise, recent advances in data collection and theoretical refinements open new possibilities, which will be discussed in this Panel chaired by Simon Hug. The fourth Panel will be on formal and empirical models of lobbying. The study of lobbying has been a cornerstone in the public choice approach. The main focus is on theoretical approaches to help the understanding of interest group activities in a strategic perspective, i.e., we seek Papers who analyze the incentives for and effects of specific lobbying tactics. Both theoretical Papers and tests of formal models are welcome. The Panel will be chaired by Sebastian Koehler (University of Konstanz). The fifth Panel will be a Panel on Humanitarian Aid, Resilience, and Social Cohesion. In this Panel the focus is on the effects of foreign aid on both resilience and social cohesion in the receiving countries. The focus is on economic and strategic incentives. The Panel will be chaired by Carmela Lutmar (University of Haifa) and Leah Mandler (Weizmann Institute). About the convenors: Sebastian Koehler studied Political Science and Economics at the University of Mannheim, where he also obtained a PhD in Political Science in 2014. Afterwards, he joined the London School of Economics and Political Science to work as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Government Department. Currently, he works as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Data and Methods of the University of Konstanz. He also serves as the convenor of the Standing Group on Analytical Politics and Public Choice. His research interests include political decision-making and lobbying in a public choice perspective with a strong emphasis on combining theory and empirical work. Chitralekha Basu is currently the Assistant Professor for Empirical Democratic Theory at the Cologne Center for Comparative Politics at the University of Cologne. In 2017, she obtained a PhD in Political Science from the University of Rochester. Prior to her doctoral studies, she completed a BA in History at the University of Oxford and an MPhil in Political Thought and Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge. Her research interests include electoral politics, voting behaviour, party system dynamics and representation in both historical and contemporary societies.