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Jason Seawright

Professor; Director of Graduate Studies

B.S.: Brigham Young University, 1999; Ph.D.: University of California, Berkeley, 2006
Curriculum Vitae

Interests

Research Interest(s): Causal Inference; Multi-Method Research Design; Inequality and Political Representation; Political Parties; Political Behavior; Right-Wing Extremism

Program Area(s): Methods; Comparative Politics

Regional Specialization(s): Latin America

Subfield Specialties: American Political Economy; Experimental Methods; Political Parties; Public Opinion, Political Communication, and Political Participation

Biography

Dr. Seawright has written about issues in multi-method research design for the social sciences, with books and articles addressing issues such as case selection, concept formation, combining qualitative methods and experiments, and many more. Seawright's interests are directed toward issues of representation, especially in contexts of democratic decline. These have included studies of how persistent patterns of poor representation destroyed party systems in the South America of the 1980s and 1990s; how wealthy people and organizations act to distort representation in the U.S. and Latin America; and how institutions affect patterns of gendered representation. Currently, Seawright is researching the networks of right-wing extremism that enabled the Congressional invasions of January 6th in the US and January 8th in Brazil.

Select Publicationsmmss.jpg

  • Billionaires and stealth politics with Benjamin I. Page and Matthew J. Lacombe. University of Chicago Press, 2018.
  • Multi-method social science: Combining qualitative and quantitative tools. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
  • "Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans” with Benjamin I. Page and Larry M. Bartels. Perspectives on Politics, 2013, 11(1): 51–73. doi: 10.1017/S153759271200360X.
  • Party-system collapse: the roots of crisis in Peru and Venezuela. Stanford University Press, 2012.
  • “Case-Selection Techniques in Case Study Research: A Menu of Qualitative and Quantitative Options,” with John Gerring, Political Research Quarterly 61:2 Spring 2008, 294-308. doi: 10.1177/1065912907313077.

Courses taught

  • Political Science 250: Introduction to Comparative Politics
  • Political Science 312: Statistical Research Methods
  • Political Science 406: Quantitative Causal Inference
  • Political Science 459: Comparative Political Behavior
  • Political Science 490: Time Series and Panel Methods in the Social Sciences