As a political scientist, I have come to see SASE as the premier forum for joining historical political economy to sociology, organizational behavior and related fields. Other SASE participants will see different intersections among SASE’s membership as particularly important, but we are all linked in the effort to address social science perspectives to problems of economic development and competition.
The construction of such intellectual bridges among complementary research approaches represents SASE central challenge. It also holds the organization’s greatest intellectual pay-off, because only through synthetic work across established disciplines can social scientists address such contemporary problems as inequality, identity conflict, and democratic erosion. SASE has broadened my own work in comparative politics, the professions, and economic policy in exactly these ways. Having taught at MIT, Berkeley, and now Brown University, I’ve watched SASE grow and have seen how many colleagues and students have had their work enriched by participating in the organization. It has been a privilege to serve for a term on SASE’s Executive Committee. If elected for another three years, I hope to help expand the organization’s membership and to help consolidate its role as a special place where all of us can move beyond narrow professional boundaries in order to pursue the important interdisciplinary work that has become SASE’s distinctive intellectual trademark.