Scott Morgenstern, University of Pittsburgh, will speak about: Are politics local? Why? Where? When? How do we measure local versus national politics? And what are the effects?  Morgenstern’s book, “Are Politics local? The Two Dimensions of Party Nationalization around the World” provides answers to these questions, within an explicitly comparative framework, including both advanced and developing democracies.  It does so by using a statistically-based and graphical account of party nationalization to analyze district-level electoral data, providing a careful methodology applicable all types of democracies.  It applies the statistics to scores of parties across dozens of countries, thus providing descriptive comparisons as well as a database for theoretical tests.  The explanatory tests focus on institutional factors, such as executive and electoral systems plus federalism, but the account also considers ethnic fragmentation and other factors.  Then, to consider the effects of party nationalization, the book considers the accountability of political parties, retrospective voting, and legislative bill co-sponsorship patterns.