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From Within to Between Nations: Subnational Comparison across Borders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2019

Jefferey M. Sellers Open the ORCID record for Jefferey M. Sellers [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

Long a staple in the toolkit of American politics, comparison among subnational territorial units has gained increasing currency in comparative politics. A growing portion of subnational research, especially in the monographic literature, employs comparisons of subnational territorial units within different countries. This approach to comparison, which I term transnational comparison, has the potential to build on and extend the advantages of subnational comparison. Despite the numerous added challenges it poses, transnational comparison offers a variety of ways to incorporate and leverage variations between countries as well as within them. Drawing on exemplary studies from the literature on subnational regimes and beyond, I outline a typology of successful transnational comparative strategies. The choice among these strategies depends on their distinctive properties, on the substantive questions asked, and on the stage of a research program. All have contributed to advancing the study of politics beyond nation-centered comparison.

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Perspectives on Politics , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 85 - 105
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Copyright © American Political Science Association 2019 

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Footnotes

A list of permanent links to Supplementary Materials provided by the author precedes the References section.

*Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/V1OVVA

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