Former Visiting Fellow Sara Niedzwiecki (2020-21), associate professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, published a co-authored article with Agustina Giraudy (American University) in the journal Regional & Federal Studies.
"Multi-Level Governance and Subnational Research: Similarities, Differences, and Knowledge Accumulation in the Study of Territorial Politics" studies two research programs that have tackled crucial questions in comparative politics, such as how power is distributed across levels of government, the causes of uneven territorial development, or why democracy trickles down unevenly within countries. Despite their shared principle that actors and institutions located at one territorial level are shaped by and shape other levels of government, Multi-level Governance and Subnational Research traditions have developed their own set of concepts and theories without fully acknowledging the other. The paper asserts that this has been detrimental for knowledge accumulation, arguing that more knowledge accumulation in the study of territorial politics is possible if (1) scholars engage with each tradition, and (2) they are attentive to differences, or blind spots, in each traditions’ theories, concepts, and scope conditions. Drawing on two examples, the Regional Authority Index (RAI) and Kent Eaton’s work (2021) the article shows the benefits of transcending the boundaries of each tradition.
And, from the American Political Science Association's Qualitative and Multi-Method Research Section, Niedzwiecki received the 2021 Kendra Koivu Paper Award for the Best Paper developing and/or applying qualitative research methods, which was presented at the 2020 Annual Meeting . The paper is co-authored with Jennifer Pribble (University of Richmond) and is titled “Reconceptualizing Social Policy Expansion and Retrenchment: South America after the Commodity Boom.”