Bringing the Sector Back In (BSBI):
The Multidimensionality of Sectors in the New Political Economy
Berkeley Workshop (April 17-18, 2025)
Social Science Matrix
820 Social Sciences Building
U.C. Berkeley
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 Berkeley Workshop brings together research, which demonstrates how the “contextualized comparative sector approach” (CCSA) (advanced as an explicit approach in Hsueh, forthcoming 2025) transforms our understanding of international and comparative political economy, alternatives to the neoliberal paradigm, and the new complex interdependence.
Bringing the leverage of contextualized comparative sectoral analysis to the forefront of comparative and international political economy is critical for the following reasons. First, focusing on sectors as embedded in multilevel contexts allows analysts to examine the dimensions of sectoral structural attributes, sectoral institutional arrangements, and values, identities, and norms attached to how sectors are perceived in the new political economy. Second, contextualizing sectors provides traction to expose their interconnectedness to global, national, firm, and individual levels, even while disaggregating the national to study internal state dynamics. Thirdly, technological advances and emergent organizational structures that are context-specific have shaped and reshaped the new political economy. Finally, the CCSA provides analytical and theoretical leverage over extant dominant perspectives on national level and subnational geographical trajectories, in addition to overly structural or micro-level studies.
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 of Advanced Socio-Economics, BSBI endeavors to promote a new research agenda and to build a research community. 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. The planned outputs of the meetings are an edited volume and special journal issue.
The introductory roundtable gathers political economy of development scholars in dialogue on the merits and limitations of the sectoral approach vis-à-vis other approaches, from institutional adaptation to varieties of capitalism and the new developmental state. The four paper panels, highlighting structural, institutional, and sociopolitical constructivist dimensions of sectoral characteristics, demonstrate how the CCSA revolutionizes our understanding of real-world problems in the new complex interdependence. The assembled papers study the impacts of sectoral contexts at the intersection of 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. A comparativist and an IR scholar provide reflections on the CCSA agenda before a discussion on the workshop outputs. Then a public panel brings together scholars of the political economy and law and society to examine the role of technology in the internal and external politics of China during times of global tensions.
The Bringing the Sector Back In Berkeley Workshop is sponsored by the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative (BESI) and cosponsored by the Institute of East Asian Studies (IEAS), Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES), and the Department of Political Science, at the University of California, Berkeley. The Institute of International Studies (IIS) and the U.C. Berkeley School of Information are additional cosponsors of the public panels. Unless specified, the workshop is closed to the public. 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. Please email BSBI organizer Roselyn Hsueh with any questions and/or a request to join the closed workshop.
AGENDA AT-A-GLANCE
THURSDAY, APRIL 17
8:30 – 9:00 Coffee and Light Breakfast
9:00 – 9:15 Welcome and Introduction
9:15 – 10:45 Roundtable on Nations or Sectors in the New Political Economy (public panel)
10:45 – 11:00 Coffee Break
11:00 – 12:30 Multidimensionality of Sectors and Economic Statecraft, Global Value Chains, and Trade and Investment
12:30 – 1:30 Lunch for Workshop Participants
1:30 – 3:00 Multidimensionality of Sectors: Regime Type and Sectoral Dynamics in Labor, Market, and Environmental Transitions
3:00 – 3:15 Coffee Break
3:15 – 4:45 Multidimensionality of Sectors: New Industrial Policy, Sectoral Institutions, and Globalization
6:00 – 7:30 Dinner for Workshop Participants
FRIDAY, APRIL 18
8:30 – 9:00 Coffee and Light Breakfast
9:00 – 10:30 Multidimensionality of Sectors: State and Private Choices, Sectoral Dynamics, and Governance and Regulation
10:30 – 10:45 Coffee Break
10:45 – 11:45 Workshop Reflections and Next Steps Discussion
11:45 – 12:00 Coffee Break
12:00 – 1:30 Matrix on Point: Technology and China in the New Political Economy (public panel)
Public Panels
Roundtable on Nations or Sectors in the New Political Economy
We are in an age of post-neoliberal globalization, whereby a 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. The advent of the Washington Consensus, the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Big Bang Liberalization in India, and China’s distinctive global economic integration since its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 parallel rejoinders, often neither liberal economically nor politically, which have occurred at the sector and subsector levels, giving way to firm-level interactions that intersect national politics and global economics. The gathered roundtable of comparative and international political economy scholars deliberates the leverage and value of “bringing the sector back in” vis-à-vis other perspectives, including institutional adaptation, varieties of capitalism, and the new developmental state, for studying new industrial policy, market governance and regulation, innovation and growth, natural resource management, environmental transition, and geopolitical implications in the new political economy.
This panel will feature Richard Doner, Goodrich C. White Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Emory University, Roselyn Hsueh, Professor of Political Science at Temple University and Visiting Scholar at the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative, Ben Ross Schneider, Ford International Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Aseema Sinha, Wagener Chair of South Asian Politics at Claremont McKenna College, John Yasuda, Associate Professor of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University, and Steven K. Vogel, Il Han New Professor of Asian Studies and Professor of Political Science and Political Economy at the U.C. Berkeley, who will moderate and serve as chair.
Matrix on Point: Technology and China in the New Political Economy
The innovation, use and experience, and exchange of new and emerging technologies today are influenced by the role that China plays in global politics and economy. This panel brings together experts of the Chinese political economy and law and society in a conversation to discuss the political, economic, security, and social dimensions and complexities of technology in China’s internationalization during times of global tensions. Topics covered will include the institutional foundations of China’s technological development, technology governance and industrial policy, global technology competition, and legal technology and societal impacts in today’s China. This panel will feature Mark Dallas, Professor of Political Science and Science, Technology, and Society at Union College; Roselyn Hsueh, Professor of Political Science at Temple University and Visiting Scholar at the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative; and Rachel E. Stern, Professor of Law and Political Science at U.C. Berkeley. AnnaLee Saxenian, Professor in the School of Information, will chair and moderate.