Bringing the Sector Back In and the New Political Economy

We are in an age of post-neoliberal globalization, whereby complex interdependence has integrated many economies and industries within them, and in parallel led to the rise of varied national and subnational political and economic responses. These forces have witnessed the rise of a new political economy, which scholars have characterized as “weaponized interdependence” (Farrell and Newman 2019), requiring new methodologies and new approaches. The Bringing the Sector Back In (BSBI) research agenda brings together research, which demonstrates how the “contextualized comparative sector approach” (CCSA) (advanced as an explicit approach in Hsueh, Perspectives on Politics, forthcoming 2025) transforms our understanding of international and comparative political economy, alternatives to the neoliberal paradigm, and the new complex interdependence. We study the impacts of intersecting sectoral and multilevel contexts in the international and comparative political economy, including on trade and investment; state choices and market governance and regulation; industrial policy and global supply chains; coalitions and global networks; industrial relations; and natural resources and environmental transitions.

Building on the momentum of assembled panels on contextualized and multi-level sectoral analysis in the new political economy at the 2024 annual meetings of the American Political Science Association and the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, a virtual workshop in February 2025, and a two-day workshop in April 2025 at U.C, Berkeley, BSBI endeavors to promote a new research agenda and to build a research community. An expanded group of participants, comprising five panels, will meet at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in Vancouver in September 2025. Senior, mid-career, and early-career scholars discuss and debate the assembled scholarship on sectors and subsectors across world regions. These range from labor-intensive, less value-added apparel and clothing to capital-intensive, value-added infrastructure and services, such as aircraft, electronic vehicles, and semiconductors to extractive industries and new and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence and solar and electric vehicles in green technology – in Africa, Central Asia, East and Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Russia, and South Asia.

Events

BSBI APSA “mini-conference” (roundtable and four paper panels) at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in Vancouver, Canada (September 11-14, 2025)

BSBI Berkeley Workshop at Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative, Social Science Matrix, U.C. Berkeley (April 17-18, 2025)

BSBI Virtual Workshop (February 20, 2025)

BSBI roundtable at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in Philadelphia, PA (September 5-8, 2025)

BSBI panel in the New Political Economy mini-conference at the 2024 annual confere of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) in Limerick, Ireland (June 27-29, 2025)

Contact

Dr. Roselyn Hsueh, Ph.D. 
Professor of Political Science  
Co-director, Certificate in Political Economy 
Temple University 
443 Gladfelter Hall 
1115 Polett Mall 
Philadelphia, PA 19122-6089 
Email: rhsueh@temple.edu