This award provides partial funding for the 2014 meeting of the Working Group in African Political Economy. This meeting brings together an interdisciplinary group of social and behavioral scientists who are actively engaged in cutting edge research on the political economy of African development. The meeting includes many graduate students and junior scholars as full participants and it serves as a training ground and a crucial research network for these participants.
WGAPE attendees publish in leading scientific journals. The research results are widely disseminated to policymakers, including sessions at the World Bank, presentations to African policymakers, and books and articles for non-technical audiences. Africa's rapid growth and political liberalization over the past decade has led to increasing business interest in Africa as a trade and investment destination. Therefore, insightful research on African development patterns is increasingly important for US businesses and US policymakers.
Working Group in African Political Economy (WGAPE) 2013-2014 This project funded two meetings of the Working Group in African Political Economy (WGAPE), the first was held on May 16-17, 2014 at U.C. Los Angeles and the second was held on December 19, 2013 at U.C. Berkeley. Each meeting featured presentations by leading scholars in African political economy from Economics, Political Science, and Public Policy. NSF funding allowed us to enhance WGAPE activities, issue a general Call for Papers for the national meeting, and expand attendance beyond previous core WGAPE members. There were a total of 37 participants at the first meeting and 46 participants at the second meeting. The meetings drew scholars from the West Coast, across the country, and abroad who research African development and political economy issues, including research on ethnic politics, civil conflict and violence, decentralization and democratization, and corruption and local governance. In terms of intellectual merit, we believe the NSF funding continued to make WGAPE the leading venue for U.S. based scholars focused on issues of African development and political economy to share novel findings and advance research in the field, as well as collaborate on new research. Founded in 2002, WGAPE brings faculty and advanced graduate students in Economics and Political Science who combine deep field research experience in Africa with training in political economy methods. The group has met semi-annually to discuss the work-in-progress of its core members and invited guests. It has been co-led by Edward Miguel (Department of Economics, UC Berkeley) and Daniel Posner (Department of Political Science, UCLA). The two-day long national meetings are built around in-depth discussions of seven to eight papers. Papers presented at WGAPE meetings have been published in many of the leading journals in both Economics and Political Science, including Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Political Science Review, World Politics, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Review of Economic Studies, as well as in many edited volumes. WGAPE has important broader impacts. A special effort is made to identify new scholars who are producing interesting research and would benefit most from attending WGAPE meetings, and give them extra financial help to attend. This outreach to newer members of the Economics and Political Science professions gives them opportunities to meet more senior scholars as well as other young researchers in their fields. The leading role of Ph.D. students in all WGAPE meetings is noteworthy. Attending WGAPE meetings helps these young scholars build their professional networks, and receive constructive feedback from leading scholars in a small and collaborative workshop setting. The stellar placement record of former WGAPE Ph.D. attendees on the academic job market (in both Economics and Political Science) is a proud accomplishment. The research that comes out of WGAPE meetings is also likely to have large impacts beyond academic Economics and Political Science. WGAPE members have presented the results of their research to policymakers and researchers in literally dozens of African countries, at the World Bank, and at economics and political science conferences and seminars both in the U.S. and abroad, and have also actively disseminated their research findings through books aimed at non-technical audiences, essays and op-ed articles for popular media outlets.
