Kathleen Thelen

About

Kathleen Thelen is a professor associated with the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at MIT. The provided page text does not include specific details about her research focus, background, or key contributions. Therefore, a detailed biography cannot be extracted from the given information.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Economics
• Political economy
• Law
• Gender studies
• Business
• Economic system
• Marketing
• Geography

Selected publications

• Are We All Amazon Primed? Consumers and the Politics of Platform Power

  Comparative Political Studies · 2019-06-11 · 348 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This article articulates a distinctive source of political influence of some technology firms, which we call platform power. Platform power inheres in companies of economic scale that provide the terms of access through which large numbers of consumers access goods, services, and information. Firms with platform power benefit from a deference from policymakers, but this deference is not primarily a function of direct influence through lobbying or campaign contributions, nor does it come from the…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The American Precariat: U.S. Capitalism in Comparative Perspective

  Perspectives on Politics · 2019-01-16 · 158 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The address situates the rise of “gig” work in the context of a much longer-term trend toward more precarious forms of employment. It explores the forces that are driving these developments and discusses the problems they pose at both the individual level and the national level. By situating the United States in a comparative perspective, it identifies the structural factors that exacerbate the problem of precarity and intensify its effects in the American political economy.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Institutional Sources of Business Power

  World Politics · 2020 · 97 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT Recent years have seen a revival of debates about the role of business and the sources of business power in postindustrial political economies. Scholarly accounts commonly distinguish between structural sources of business power, connected to its privileged position in capitalist economies, and instrumental sources, related to direct forms of lobbying by business actors. The authors argue that this distinction overlooks an important third source of business power, which they conceptuali…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Transitions to the Knowledge Economy in Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands

  Comparative Politics · 2019-01-01 · 82 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The "digital revolution" that began in the late 1960s has transformed product markets and production processes in rich democracies.Observers depict the changes underway as a transition from the Fordist industrial economy to a new "knowledge economy," characterized by rapid technological innovation and associated with a heightened premium on higher education. 1Although the challenges of this transition are broadly similar across the rich democracies, individual countries have navigated the course…

  PublisherDOI

• The American Political Economy: Markets, Power, and the Meta Politics of US Economic Governance

  Annual Review of Political Science · 2021 · 49 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  This article provides an overview of the emerging field of American political economy (APE). Methodologically eclectic, this field seeks to understand the interaction of markets and government in America's unequal and polarized polity. Though situated within American politics research, APE draws from comparative political economy to develop a broad approach that departs from the American politics mainstream in two main ways. First, APE focuses on the interaction of markets and governance, a peri…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Sheri Berman

  64 shared

• Tarek Masoud

  64 shared

• Kathleen Thelen Is Ford

  University of Iowa

  64 shared

• Sara McLaughlin Mitchell

  University of Iowa

  64 shared

• Luis Ricardo Fraga

  64 shared

• Christopher Gelpi

  The Ohio State University

  64 shared

• Paul Gronke

  Reed College

  39 shared

• Kenneth J. Meier

  Cardiff University

  38 shared

Awards & honors

• Nobel Laureates: 11
• Pulitzer Prize winners: 6
• Guggenheim Fellows: 54
• John Bates Clark Medal winners: 15
• MacArthur Fellows: 20

Similar researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Kate Brownh-23
• Caitlin Talmadgeh-14
• Meicen Sunh-1