Historiography of Historical Political Economy (HPE)

This page is designed to provide a list of works on Historical Political Economy (HPE) as a field. HPE is a burgeoning field comprised primarily of Political Science, Economics, and History (See Figure 1 of Jenkins and Rubin, “Historical Political Economy: What Is It?”, in the Oxford Handbook below). As it is interdisciplinary by definition, scholars have published HPE works in existing journals of those fields without necessarily labeling their works as such. In a recent development, they begin to delineate the contours of HPE as a scholarship more explicitly. Here is my attempt to tally review-article or survey-article types that describe the state of the art.

As of early 2023, there is very little “historiography.” But as a growing number of scholars contribute to HPE, it is expected to expand and gain greater recognition in social science.

For a starter, here is a list of journals dedicated to publishing HPE-type articles:

Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy (since March 2020)
Journal of Historical Political Economy (since June 2021)

See also a “statement of purpose” by Jeff Jenkins, the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the above two journals, in this chain of tweets on June 12, 2020.

Also check out a sister page on the historiography of economic history, whose substantive interests and methodologies have significant overlaps with those of HPE.

Syllabi

Beginning in Fall of 2023, I offer a graduate seminar in HPE. Here is the syllabus for 2023.

regularly-held seminar venues

Virtual Workshop in Historical Political Economy (since summer 2020)

Recent & Upcoming workshops

July 2024: Yale-UB HPE Workshop, Barcelona
June 2023: Yale-UB HPE Workshop, Barcelona
May 2023: FRESH Meeting, Cologne
May 2023: Summer Workshop in the Economic History and Historical Political Economy of Eurasia, Paris
April 2023: HPE Horizons, Chicago (University of Chicago)
- I presented: “Postal Growth: How the State-Sponsored Post Affected Growth in France, 1500-1850”
April 2022: Workshop on Historical Comparative Politics and Political Economy, Durham (Duke University)
February 2022: Danish Historical Political Economy Workshop, Odense (University of Southern Denmark)
2019: NYUAD Historical Political Economy Conference, Abu Dhabi (NYUAD)

Field-Wide

Edited Volumes (newest first)

Jenkins, Jeffrey A., and Jared Rubin, eds. 2024. Oxford Handbook of Historical Political Economy. Oxford University Press.

Journal Articles (newest first)

Charnysh, Volha, Eugene Finkel, and Scott Gehlbach. 2023. “Historical Political Economy: Past, Present, and Future.” Annual Review of Political Science 26. (Open Access)
Gailmard, Sean. 2021. “Theory, History, and Political Economy.” Journal of Historical Political Economy 1(1): 69-104.

Long-term Persistence

Cirone, Alexandra, and Thomas B. Pepinsky. 2022. “Historical Persistence.” Annual Review of Political Science 25: 241-59. (Open Access)
Abad, Leticia Arroyo, and Noel Maurer. 2021. “History Never Really Says Goodbye: A Critical Review of the Persistence Literature.” Journal of Historical Political Economy 1(1): 31-68.
Voth, Hans-Joachim. 2021. “Persistence — Myth and Mystery.” Alberto Bisin and Giovanni Federico, eds. The Handbook of Historical Economics. Academic Press.
Spolaore, Enrico, and Romain Wacziarg. 2014. “Long-Term Barriers to Economic Development.” Philippe Aghion and Steven N. Durlauf, eds. The Handbook of Economic Growth, Vol. 2A. North Holland.