Sub-Nationalism

The global move toward decentralization and the seeming retreat of social groups to their distinct corners imply that subunits (both states and local governments), sectors, and regions may have more explanatory value in our current world than previously. In this special issue, we embrace both large and small “N” sub-national analysis—as a means of understanding the uneven nature of specific transformations within and across countries. While sub-national analyses have often been used to understand economic and political conditions, we take a broader and more inclusive approach—which embraces all types of social transformations and encourages attention to a variety of phenomena in the interest of gaining better descriptive accuracy, and in order to bolster and enrich theory construction.