Comparative Area Studies (CAS) in Action: Innovative Applications of Contextualized Comparison Across Regions and Issues

In a previous volume published by Oxford, Ariel Ahram, Patrick Köllner and Rudra Sil (2018) laid out the distinctive features and value-added of “comparative area studies” (CAS) against the backdrop of ongoing methodological debates in the social sciences. CAS reaffirms the value of strong area studies training and expertise while leveraging “contextualized comparisons” intended to engage with both theoretical debates in political science as well as scholarly discourse in two or more area studies communities. More recently, a new cohort of scholars has sought to connect CAS to a growing body of innovative comparative research while insisting on extending its analytic flexibility and epistemological breadth. This has created the impetus for a second volume on CAS to be published by Oxford (Ahram, Köllner and Sil, forthcoming) while spurring a vigorous effort to connect CAS to a wider range of substantive topics approached through more varied research designs. The papers on this panel are a part of this effort. The authors showcase innovative comparative work that comfortably fits within the framework of CAS while generating fresh insights on a wide range of topics cast at various levels of analysis. The topics covered include: the impact of resource rents on various economic and political outcomes across Eurasia and the Middle East (the papers by Mikhail Strokan and by Allison Evans and Ian Hartshorn); the continuing legacy of past efforts to control corruption in the Soviet Union and China (Cheng Chen); sectoral level comparisons of political economy across China, India and Russia (Roselyn Hsueh); the varied trajectories in the practice of human rights among different clusters of countries in different regions (Eileen Doherty-Sil); and the cross-area movement of the social organization of production transplanted from one region to another (Calvin Chen). Albeit encompassing quite different substantive issues, the panel as a whole demonstrates that the promise of CAS lies not only in its ability to simultaneously generate fresh insights on a range of substantive topics but also in its dialogical role in spurring multiple area studies communities to engage with each other and with broader concepts and theories in political science.