AxPo Seminar

Past AxPo seminars

Abstract:

Dormant societal conflicts can rapidly escalate into violent outbreaks when aggregators of private opinion and discontent, such as election results, alter norms of tolerance that sustain mutually beneficial market exchanges. We examine India’s shift towards Hindu majoritarianism post-2014, a period marked by a burst of violent attacks by cow-protection vigilantes on minorities engaged in the informal cattle market, thereby disrupting it. Using a Regression Discontinuity Design, we find that violence more than doubled in regions where the Hindu majoritarian party won the election. We show that the market disruption increased cattle abandonment — stemming from rural households’ inability to sell unproductive cattle. Abandoned cattle led to large social costs, including human fatalities from road accidents involving stray cattle. Our unique dataset integrates electoral outcomes, a high-frequency household panel, livestock censuses, road accident statistics, media coverage of vigilante violence, and records of Hindu-Muslim conflicts. Through an event study design informed by a model of interlinked markets, we document a decline of over 10% in cattle holdings in affected areas and a 200% rise in road accidents, leading to human deaths and injuries. Primary survey data further highlight substantial crop damage from stray cattle in rural regions. The study highlights the staggering social costs incurred when mirrors of public opinion disintegrate a culture of tolerance.

Abstract:

The war in Ukraine has put EU enlargement on the agenda after years of stagnation. It has highlighted the strategic importance of the neighbouring region to the EU, and enlargement is now framed as a geopolitical necessity. As such, enlargement is expected to be a key issue for the new European Parliament of 2024-29. The European Parliament, which is traditionally seen as the most pro-enlargement EU institution, is playing an increasing role in the enlargement process. Yet, its role in the process remains largely unexplored. To address this shortcoming, the paper analyses the internal dynamics and divisions of the European Parliament in relation to enlargement. Against the background of increasing political polarisation, both in the EU and the candidate countries, it explores the extent to which enlargement has become politicised, and it demonstrates that despite the European Parliament’s overall pro-enlargement stance, and the recent framing of enlargement as a geo-political necessity, there are significant internal differences. Using cleavage theory, the paper identifies the divisions between, as well as within, the political groups and analyses how these translate into parliamentary positions and influence during the enlargement process. 

Abstract:

The election of Donald Trump and the sharp rise in partisan polarization have reignited scholarly interest in the urban-rural divide in U.S. political behavior. While increasing attention is paid to the differences between rural and urban residents, we contribute to this debate by exploring how partisan affiliation intersects with urban-rural identities in shaping policy priorities over time. Using a new dataset of over 1.1 million respondents from 1939 to 2020, our analysis reveals that although modest but consistent urban-rural gaps exist in several key policy areas, partisan affiliation significantly overshadows place-based identities in shaping policy priorities. Moreover, we find that urban-rural divides in most policy areas remain stable across time and geographic regions, which suggests that both urban and rural populations are similarly responsive to elite partisan cues. These findings underscore the importance of partisan polarization in shaping political attitudes and challenge the notion that place-based identities contribute significantly to representational inequalities. Our study contributes to the broader literature on polarization and political representation by emphasizing the central role of policy priorities.

Authors:

Edoardo Cefalà, Sylvia Kritzinger, Melis Kartal and Jean-Robert Tyran 

Abstract:

How is sorting fact from fiction and updating from news shaped by motivated reasoning, cognitive ability, and overconfidence? In an online experiment, we present subjects with news items on immigration, inequality, climate change and science that (to the best of our knowledge) are true or false. As predicted by our model, we find that motivated reasoning reduces acknowledging “inconvenient truths” (i.e., news that are counter to one’s identity), while cognitive ability promotes it. Motivated reasoning and overconfidence limit updating after fact checking (i.e. subjects receive informative but noisy signals about the veracity of the news), cognitive ability promotes updating. Surprisingly, higher cognitive ability is strongly negatively related to accuracy in news discernment on science and (to a lesser degree) on climate change. The reason seems to be that those with higher cognitive ability are more motivated to believe that anti-science and anti-climate change news are false.

Abstract: 

This talk is based on my latest book, The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World (Princeton 2024), a study of how systematization – in the form of data analytics, efficiency campaigns and automation – shapes humane interpersonal work.  Research on such systems attests to their dehumanizing effects, their benefits (such as improving access, performance and efficiency), or their incomplete/uneven implementation. Less attention has been paid to the social impacts of imposing industrial logics on emotion-based service work, which recent advances in socio-emotional artificial intelligence make particularly urgent. Based on in-depth interviews with 110 people (including therapists, teachers, and physicians, as well as other workers) and 300+ hours of observations, I analyze what happens when we try to standardize what I term “connective labor,” or the mutual emotional recognition that underlies these jobs.  At stake in the automation of connective labor is dignity, belonging and inclusion: the building blocks of social cohesion and belonging.

Abstract:

Deindustrialization has been one of the defining economic and political processes of the last 50 years. However, while existing literature systematically explores variations in the timing and intensity of deindustrialization, it largely remains silent on the potential long-term influence of differences in the preceding industrialization process. We argue that the timing, speed, and shape of the original industrialization are an important determinant of the political effects of deindustrialization. This argument builds on a rich tradition in economic history and political science, where scholars have long emphasized the lasting economic and political legacies of industrialization. Against this background, we develop a theory on the long-term effects of (de)industrialization on political alignment, proposing the guiding thesis that variations in the industrialization process lead to important differences in the political responses to deindustrialization. We test our theory using detailed historical and fine-grained geographical data from the Ruhr area. The region experienced notable variation in industrialization and deindustrialization, driven by the geography of coal deposits: the South developed earlier thanks to the easier accessibility of coal, while the North, with larger sites and more (migrant) workers, followed later, resulting in more disruptive deindustrialization.
This geographical variation offers a unique opportunity to explore differences in industrialization and deindustrialization within a largely homogenous institutional and cultural context. Empirically, we match the geolocation of nearly 1,000 historical mining shafts with polling station level electoral data in fourteen cities from the interwar period to the present. First, exploiting the varying depth of coal deposits for cross-sectional causal identification, we study if communities historically shaped by coal mining exhibit higher support for the radical right and lower voter turnout in recent federal elections. Second, we build a neighborhood-level panel and use staggered difference-in-differences to examine whether the gradual closure of coal mines in the second half of the twentieth century triggered electoral realignment.

Abstract: 

Previous research has found that the rise of right-wing populist voting can be explained by the perceived loss of social status among voters (Gidron and Hall, 2017). At the same, voters who feel insecure about their ability to bear day-to-day expenses and who face insecurity in their work conditions are more likely to hold populist attitudes and vote for populist parties (Antonucci et al., 2021; Zhirnov et al., 2023). Yet, these studies have not clarified the respective role of social status, work insecurity and financial insecurity – and their interactions – in shaping the direction of populist support. This article proposes the first theoretical and empirical investigation of the interacting effect of social status and precarity on populist voting, also including objective measures of insecurity (e.g. income, status and financial shocks). To clarify the respective role of work conditions and social status, we use a cross-national survey dataset that contains measures of social status, subjective and objective insecurity related to work and finance and populist attitudes on a large sample of respondents in 10 European countries. The findings show that insecurity has both a direct effect on improving support for populist attitudes and an indirect effect on populism by influencing social status. The findings demonstrate the importance of considering subjective and objective insecurity in research on status threat.

Abstract:

How does residential mobility – having control and choice over where you live – influence electoral choices? A growing literature has examined how spatial inequalities, residential choices, and housing markets shape political preferences, emphasizing how place, local attachments, and sorting and self-selection shape contemporary political cleavages and resentment towards the established status quo across rich democracies. To date, however, scholars have treated residential mobility as a given and thereby overlooked the fundamental role that residential mobility constraints play in structuring social identities, societal attitudes, and political choices. This study develops and tests a theory of how residential choices and constraints contribute to electoral realignment and growing support for radical right parties. To do so, it first brings to light how the flexible knowledge economy simultaneously places strong emphasis on individual mobility while powerfully constraining it. In societies where social safety nets have weakened, “flexible,” non-standard employment become increasingly commonplace, and spatial inequalities in opportunity, economic activity, and prosperity grown ever wider, citizens’ capacity to access opportunities and respond to changing circumstances -- and by extension their well-being and (in)security -- heavily depends on their residential mobility. Yet, for many, the skyrocketing of housing and living costs in high-opportunity agglomerations renders such places and the opportunities they provide increasingly out of reach. 

Uncovering this dynamic, this study further argues that residential mobility and the lack thereof have wide-reaching socio-psychological and political consequences. By generating a deep sense of what I call “stuckness” and an inability to respond to the demands of the knowledge society, mobility constraints serve as a central lens through which individuals make sense of themselves, their opportunities, and the social and political environments they inhabit. Drawing on analyses of original surveys, fine-grained local-level data, and extensive ethnographic research across Western Europe, I demonstrate how this sense of “stuckness” evokes deep symbolic meaning and concern over social recognition, status anxiety, and stagnation. In so doing, it renders the radical right -- with its protectionist, nationalist agenda and populist rhetoric on the rootless “cosmopolitan” elites and the “ordinary,” “left-behind” populations -- particularly well-placed to capitalize on the economic and cultural concerns this sense of “stuckness” generates. Taken together, this study offers important novel insights into contemporary political divides, the politics of place, and the political-economic roots of electoral realignment. 

Abstract: 

Drawing on ethnographic research in five central banks, I have explored how an inchoate politics operates within the field of monetary affairs.  This paper is concerned with the distributional impact of monetary policy regimes by focusing on members of the public—and not solely markets—as agents of policy interventions. Central bank objectives—as a statutory matter—are codified as a function of specific macroeconomic aggregates: most notably, inflation, deflation, employment, growth, savings and investment.  In this analytical realm, policy is understood to be ‘data driven,’ its aims—notably regarding interest rates—legible to businesses and financial institutions. In practice, however, there is adjacent policy framework within which economic and financial conditions are modelled linguistically and communicatively to speak to various strata and segments of society, to address predicaments which operate outside of the data series and the stochastic models typically employed by these institutions.  As diverse segments of the public assimilate policy intentions as their own personal expectations, they do the work of the central bank. Their anticipation, expectancy, and planning impel or impede the ‘leaps of faith’ which underwrite economic action prospectively.  These protagonists employ what I term ‘responsive knowledge’ to further (or not) policy which can sustain a tractable future for themselves and others.  From this perspective members of the public are not merely served by policy, they enact it.  

Abstract:

An antagonistic political culture has long been thought to pose a threat to liberal democracy. More recently, many scholars have proposed a link between political polarization and democratic breakdown, yet causal evidence for this prominent theory remains thin. I present a broadly comparative analysis of the relationship between mass polarization and democratic backsliding, the modal form of autocratic reversion in the post-third wave era. Panel estimates of ideological and affective polarization from as many as ninety-two countries and forty-nine years indicate that both ideological and affective polarization exert negligible causal effects on levels of electoral and liberal democracy. To the contrary, results suggest that democratic decline may actually foment mass polarization. Despite widespread concern over the fate of democracy in polarized polities, comparative evidence since the start of the third wave suggests that mass polarization itself poses little threat to democratic regimes.

Abstract:

This paper analyses the spatial segregation in political voting behavior at the voting district (“neighborhood”) level in Germany. The degree of segregation versus integration is gauged by the extent to which local voting patterns diverge from overall, national-level voting patterns. If a neighborhood’s voting pattern resemble Germany's overall pattern, there is no segregation; conversely, if the neighborhood’s pattern strongly deviates from national trends, segregation is deemed high.

Small-scale political segregation matters because those residing in politically segregated areas are less likely to experience and “feel” the country’s general, political climate in their everyday life. This could lead to a sense of alienation from politics.

I analyze voting district-level results from the German federal elections from 1983 to 2021. With ~65,000 voting districts in 2021, this allows an extremely granular perspective.

Findings uncover two main patterns. Firstly, Eastern German neighborhoods typically exhibit higher levels of local segregation compared to those in Western Germany. Secondly, the relationship between segregation and the rural-urban continuum is U-shaped. Local voting patterns in rural areas and in large cities strongly deviate from national patterns. On the contrary, the voting patterns in mid-sized towns, ranging from 20,000 to 100,000 inhabitants, better represent Germany’s overall voting patterns. Further, the analyses identify additional patterns and deviations from these broader trends, such as differences between Bundesländer or outlying city-clusters like traditional university towns.

This paper contributes to broader discussions on social cohesion, political polarization, and the urban-rural divide. Notably, it puts a spatial category at the center, which is often overlooked in urban-rural discussions: mid-sized towns.

Abstract: 

This research project aims to look at the changing forms of state sovereignty amidst the booming crypto mining business in Georgia. It analyses motives, power struggles and dimensions behind crypto mining from a political economic state theory perspective. National currencies have historically been related to the idea of the nation state and national identity, and public monopoly over money has been an inseparable part of statehood over the centuries. While crypto currencies limit monetary sovereignty and state capacities in terms of monetary policy, the key question is: why does a sovereign state enable and facilitate crypto mining on its territory? Therefore, this study analyses crypto currency - state sovereignty nexus, embedded within geopolitics and North-South power relations, as well as a (re)configuration of relations among the government, central bank, crypto industry, banks and the society.

Abstract:

Concerns about the outsized influence of wealthy donors in the United States gives hope that the surge in small donors to political campaigns might improve the political system. In this paper we assess which candidates for the US Congress are likely to benefit from the population of small donors. We explain both the structural features of the political system and candidate characteristics associated with increases in small donations.  Our analysis highlights the expressive nature of making political contributions. Candidates benefit from small donors to the extent they can attract media attention and evoke strong emotions linked to identitarian loyalties, including partisanship, ideology, and gender. This dynamic applies to all donors, but is especially true for small donors because they are less embedded in elite partisan networks, which push contributions toward candidates favored by the party leadership. One consequence is that ideologically extreme candidates tend to benefit disproportionately from small donations. In the Democratic Party, women candidates tend to benefit due to a very high proportion of women small donors.

Abstract:

When do politicians moralize, and what consequences does moralization have? I combine language analysis techniques and experimental manipulations to measure the moral rhetoric of U.S. political elites and test the consequences of this moral rhetoric. I draw upon the literature on Moral Foundations Theory and social identity theory and use techniques from natural language processing to measure the moral rhetoric expressed in language on Twitter and in Congressional speeches. I demonstrate that politicians moralize more in Congress when they are in the political minority, and that moral rhetoric, particularly negatively valenced moral rhetoric, diffuses more widely on Twitter. I also present experimental evidence that moral rhetoric can affect affective polarization and motivate political actions, and that positive and negative moral rhetoric may have distinct downstream consequences on attitudes and beliefs.

Abstract:

What is the connection between capitalism (a system characterized by the presence of wage labor and private ownership of the major means of production) and democracy (a political structure in which state managers can be ejected from power through elections)? Generations of scholars from a wide variety of political and theoretical perspectives have claimed that they are internally connected. Through a comparative/historical analysis of Germany and the US (the two most dynamic capitalist powers of the late nineteenth century) I challenge this view. I claim instead that industrial capitalism and democracy were compatible only where the country in question had access to land and markets of sufficient scale to thwart otherwise powerful pressures toward authoritarianism created by worsening class conflict. Accordingly, theories of geopolitics must be fully integrated into theories of political regime type.

Dylan Riley is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He studies capitalism, socialism, democracy, authoritarianism, and knowledge regimes in broad comparative and historical perspective and is author, most recently, of Microverses: Observations from a Shattered Present (Verso 2022). He has also published articles in the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Catalyst, Comparative Sociology, Contemporary Sociology, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Social Science History, The Socio-Economic Review, Theory and Society and the New Left Review (of which he is a member of the editorial committee). His work has been translated into German, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

Abstract:

Social tipping can accelerate behaviour change consistent with policy objectives in diverse domains from social justice to climate change. Hypothetically, however, group identities might undermine tipping in ways policy makers do not anticipate.  To examine this, we implemented an experiment around the 2020 U.S.~elections.  Participants faced consistent incentives to coordinate their choices.  Once participants had established a coordination norm, an intervention created pressure to tip to a new norm.  Our control treatment used neutral labels for choices.  Our identity treatment used partisan political images.  This simple payoff-irrelevant relabelling generated extreme differences.  Control groups developed norms slowly before intervention but transitioned to new norms rapidly after intervention.  Identity groups developed norms rapidly before intervention but persisted in a state of costly disagreement after intervention.  Tipping was powerful but unreliable.  It supported striking cultural changes when choice and identity were unlinked, but even a trivial link destroyed tipping entirely.

Abstract:

The process of financialization introduces financial ideas, logics and practices to non-financial and non-economic fields, yet little is known about the formation of expectations in non-financial contexts, and the factors that influence the variation of expectations. This study explores the formation of expectations in the context of the "social investment state" by studying new methods that enable policy actors to value social investments. The rise of the social investment policy paradigm represents a shift in the rationale and justification of social spending: from the neoliberal dictum that social spending for services and programs is undesirable, toward reframing specific forms of social spending as investments that are expected to yield future returns. Policymakers' ability to invest in new social programs requires a capacity to value such investments. The paper examines the development of such valuation capacities in the context of experimenting with the Social Impact Bond (SIB) model. SIBs are financial contracts in which private capital is invested in innovative social programs with governments providing a return depending on the degree of success. The production of SIBs requires policymakers’ intensive engagement, including many hours of studying financial rationales and techniques, and experimenting with them. As platforms of intense learning SIBs have broad policy implications. 

According to the valuation approach, the work of valuation entrepreneurs and the methodology they develop and apply determine what is of value. We follow valuation entrepreneurs and their accomplishments in two very different states: the United States and Finland. We ask how a financialized mode of valuation becomes re-embedded in the context of social policymaking? And what are the outcomes of this process in the United States and Finland? To answer these questions, the study analyzes textual sources (e.g. official documents, grey literature) as well as semi-structured interviews with key protagonists. We argue that the valuation of social investment represents a “soft” process of financialization leading to hybrid outcomes. In the context of financial diffusion, policy actors adopted a "Return on Investment" approach. Demonstrating non-financial professionals’ capacity to advance financialization from below, remote from financial markets, is an important contribution. And yet, the financialization process remains partial. The selective adoption of financial conventions demonstrates the path-dependent role non-financial fiscal state logics continue to play in states' calculations of social investment.

The study shows and explains variation in the valuation of social investment in the US and Finland by showing how different valuation methodologies were constructed and legitimized in each institutional context. In the US, the valuation of social investment developed with an over emphasis on statistic rigor, failing to value plausible returns in the long-term future. Moreover, the calculation of return on social investment was limited, considering only cost-savings for the Federal government, and thus ignoring and devaluing potential gains to state and local governments. In Finland, valuation methods included (and thus gave value to) the long-term future, and paid greater attention to intangible outcomes for actors other than central government. Although the calculated value of social investment remained committed to the state’s fiscal interests, the financialization of valuation went further in Finland at the expanse of neoliberal commitment to unburden the fiscal state which was prominent in the US.

Abstract: 

During the last two decades, there has been much scholarly and popular interest in the financialization of the American economy--why the turn to finance has taken place, what constituted it, and what has come out of it. In Disembedded, Basak Kus draws from the theories of Karl Polanyi--one of the greatest and most influential political economists of the twentieth century--to answer these questions. Focused primarily on the state's regulatory role in a dominantly financialized economy, Kus examines how neoliberal principles influenced the evolution of American regulatory policies, shaping the financial sector's operations and practices. Her narrative traces the trajectory of these interactions, highlighting critical junctures, policy decisions, and market outcomes that culminated in the financial crisis. Offering historical insights into the financial crisis spanning 2007-2010 and its ensuing influence on American politics and democracy, Disembedded provides a broad-ranging and systemic explanation of the American political economy, especially the regulatory landscape that shaped the patterns of financialization.

Reviews:

"Basak Kus has gifted us a sophisticated analysis of the twin currents of financialization and neoliberalism. Rejecting simple references to Ronald Reagan or Milton Friedman, Kus documents the fundamental political, ideological, and economic forces that have created a risk society, especially the risks generated by financialization. Economic theories were crucial in creating not only deregulation, but its evil siblings of policy drift in the face of financialization and neutered regulation. There is no room in the profoundly micro-economic regulatory model for systemic risk, so when the system became risky there was no way for the government to see it, much less regulate. This is a book worth reading." --Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

"Taking the Polanyian perspective, Basak Kus presents a persuasive account of the recent growth of what she terms 'disembedded financialization'-a financialized economy that lacks basic protections against mitigating risks, including industry-wide systemic risks, broader socio-economic risks and financial risks borne by individual consumers. Writing in a clear prose that makes the book accessible to a wider audience, Kus's lucid analysis underscores the social and human costs of financialization, and the real threat it can pose for the future of our democracy." -- Alya Guseva, Boston University

Abstract:

In democratic parliamentary monarchies, the royal family is sometimes perceived as a relic of the past. What is a constitutional monarch good for? The literature on monarchy and regimes has yet to provide an answer. In this paper, we argue that these monarchs’ apolitical nature unifies their subjects and encourages cooperation, trust, and consensus among citizens and elites. As such, citizens of democratic parliamentary monarchies are on average more satisfied with democracy than those of republics. To test our argument, we utilize the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) Surveys and the European Social Surveys (ESS) to measure citizens’ political attitudes and opinions on democracy. We also conduct a survey experiment to test our theory’s causal mechanism. The results from the observational studies support our hypotheses: democratic parliamentary monarchs reduce citizens’ perceived ideological distances with parties; this, in turn, raises citizens’ satisfaction with democracy. Our survey experiment results support our causal mechanism that it is the monarch’s apolitical nature that enhances citizens’ satisfaction with democracy. These results suggest that constitutional monarchies can reduce mass polarization and safeguard countries against the deterioration of democratic pluralism.

Abstract:

The controversies surrounding the heavily redacted contracts between the European Commission and COVID-19 vaccine producers have highlighted ‘transparency’ as a hotly debated concept in the European pharmaceutical market. In this presentation, we show that the intersection between the pharmaceutical market and concerns about affordable medicines has come to depend on variable meanings of the notion of transparency, as mobilized by diverse market organizers. While being a guiding principle behind the construction of the European pharmaceutical sector, market transparency was implemented through devices that enacted specific definitions of transparency and thus produced distinct market organizations over time. We identify three visions of transparency that became translated into distinct organizational arrangements of the pharmaceutical market: transparency for states (until 1990), transparency for corporations (1990-2010), and transparency for state coalitions (since 2010). Our article sheds light on how struggles over the definition of transparency play a crucial role in the organization of markets. We also discuss why engaging in such controversies has become increasingly important for those contesting the market status quo in a post-political context, emphasizing the ‘not-so-post-political’ potential of these debates.

Abstract:

Within current debates on the ‘return of the state’, the state is regarded as an almost absent actor in contemporary capitalism. In these debates, the state intervenes in the economy as an agent of regulation in a context of purported crisis of the neoliberal order, while its multiple role (direct and indirect) in tech-based urbanised economies remains overlooked. In this paper, I analyse the key role of the state in tech-driven economies. Drawing on my research, I explore the actually existing role of the state in urbanised knowledge economies, highlighting that the state does not intervene in a traditional Keynesian sense of regional economic planning, but through a ‘strategic urbanisation’ of its conduct. In recent years, mainstream urban economists have highlighted place-specific endowments such as cultural diversity, environmental amenities, and the clustering of talent as the main factors attracting competitive businesses and highly skilled human capital in one place rather than in another. In my paper, I attempt to show how entrepreneurial urban economies are strategically constructed through a complex ‘politics of operations’ (financial, cultural, logistics) enacted by both the local and the national states. In the concluding part of my talk, I discuss the implications of my conceptual perspective for the analysis of the French Tech Initiative.

Abstract:

What does a desirable economic future look like? By which economic ideal and traditions should it be governed? Based on Lisa Suckert’s previous work on economic imaginaries of the future, national economic identity and economic critique, she provides first insights into a new project. It explores how four major capitalist developments - globalization, financialization, digitalization and de-carbonization - have been discussed as opportunity or threat in different national European contexts. By capturing and comparing the explanations about why these developments need to be enabled or constraint, the analysis reveals the underlying economic ideals (e.g. growth, equality, employment,innovation, stability, national autonomy) that serve to evaluate, what a good economy is. As it depicts how these economic ideals have changed or remained stable over time and to what extent we can observe national varieties of “the good economy”, the analysis contours the potential and challenges for not only re-imagining but re-making the economy on a European scale. In this vein, the presented research contributes to understanding the ideational infrastructure of capitalism in the 21^st century. 

Abstract:

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the question of how to regulate banks effectively has received a great deal of scholarly attention. While economic research usually refers to cross-country comparisons, the long-term evolution of regulatory systems is rarely examined. This paper examines one of the longest regulatory cycles in history, triggered by the banking crisis of the 1930s. It explores financial regulation in 12 countries (Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Luxembourg, USA, Japan, Argentina, Greece) between 1920 and 1980. We combine a qualitative study of legal instruments with a quantitative approach, based on the reconstruction of an overall regulatory index. Moreover, we use balance sheet data from commercial banks to measure changing risk exposure of credit banks and financial markets over time. The insolvency risk of large commercial banks is measured with a calculation of the Z-score. Based on this empirical research, the project combines a comparative analysis of national regulatory regimes with a historical perspective. This will allow to answer a variety of fundamental questions: Was national financial regulation based on path dependencies? How important was regime competition? Did regulatory systems converge over time? Has international fragmentation increased risk exposure of banks? What are the political factors that drive regulatory cycles?

Abstract:

Lately, new chapters have been written on the seemingly endless history of “the end of neoliberalism”. Following the Global Financial Crisis and the covid public health crisis we now experience digital capitalism’s return to some industrial policy, some new focus on public services, some strategic protectionism, much if not all at least partly due to the geopolitics of the new rivalry with China. Does all this indeed signal the age of post-neoliberalism has begun at last? At the level of currently leading corporations furthermore, the control and even ownership of markets by the GAFAM+ companies (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft plus Chinese competitors like Alibaba) have been suggested by Philip Staab (2019) to break with neoliberal concepts of market neutrality and a commitment to market competition and market expansion (“free market movement”). In my talk I will try to unpack (some of) these claims by way of re-visiting the historical evolution and a variety of neoliberal approaches to markets and competition in order to assess the extent to which present developments need to be considered serious challenges to neoliberal order. I will also observe the strategies GAFAM+ corporations in opposition to new regulatory approaches (“strategy mobility”) in an effort to observe and better understand present (global) political contestations affecting and driven by these strategic actors.

Abstract :

The world of work has been severely afflicted by COVID-19. To deal with the immense employment crisis, unemployment benefits were extended in many countries. This raised the classical question of whether this support would decrease the motivation of the unemployed to search for work. The answer to this conundrum is deeply rooted in sociological thought about work centrality and the meaning of work in our life. Is the motivation to work limited to the quest to ensure livelihood, or is work a primary source of dignity, self-image, fulfillment, and self-realization? How has these factors been affected by the pandemic? This study takes advantage of the COVID-19 disruption to assess shifts in work centrality and work values during the extended coverage of unemployment benefits. The investigation consolidates pre-COVID-19 surveys of work orientations in Israel with a COVID-19-era assessment. The results demonstrate that this shock has been powerful enough to put individuals’ work orientation to the test and made them reconsider the meaning of work in their life. Overall, the surge in work centrality during the pandemic and the gravitation of values toward job security reflect the universal trauma caused by the sharp decrease in employment certainty.

Abstract: 

Algorithms shape culture, but how?  Algorithms are now so intertwined with markets, workplaces, and media that scholars describe them as part of our social systems of meaning-making.  This project examines how algorithms shape the practical work of making culture.  I draw from an immersive ethnography of content creators who engineer entertainment videos to go viral on social media.  Algorithms, I find, discipline creative workers into making attention-grabbing content, often transforming their artistic visions of authenticity.  First, creators learn to subjugate their own tastes to data; second, they adapt to algorithm changes; third, they simplify stories into visual, often stereotypically sexualized and racialized imagery; fourth, they copy what works; fifth, they experience thrills of a game of scoring metrics.  Ultimately, successful creators redefine their standards of quality with quantitative metrics they think algorithms will reward.  By documenting this labor process, and creators’ shift in values and authenticity, I arrive at a theory of algorithms as performative in the online cultural economy, and fundamentally at odds with social media platforms’ insistence that they prize and reward authenticity.

Abstract:

Multilingualism is an ever-present feature in political contexts around the world, including multilingual states and international organizations. Increasingly, consequential political decisions are negotiated between politicians who do not share a common native language. “The Language(s) of Politics” uses the case of the European Union to investigate how politicians’ reliance on shared foreign languages and translation services affects politics and policy-making. It not only shows that multilingualism is an inherent and consequential feature of EU politics, but also that it depoliticizes policy-making by reducing its political nature and potential for conflict. That is because both foreign language use and reliance on translation result in communication that is simple, utilitarian, neutralized, and involves commonly share phrases and expressions, which masks the national and political backgrounds, preferences, and priorities of EU actors. Policy-makers also tend to disregard politically charged language because it might not reflect what a speaker meant to say, and they are constrained in their ability to use vague or ambiguous language to gloss over disagreements by the need for consistency across languages. Multilingualism thus affects the EU’s political culture, by shaping perceptions of political differences, polarization of opinion, intensity of debate, and the resonance of arguments and evidence.

How is knowledge organized in American higher education? In recent decades, the adoption of market-oriented logics within universities and higher education research institutions has had profound implications on how the pursuit of knowledge is rewarded and shaped. This "commercialization of science" had profound consequences on how research programs are conceived and operationalized. But, how did this environment affect the production of knowledge beyond forms of science directly relevant to ideas of innovation? In this chapter, I explore the role of budget models in shaping and regulating how universities structure their instructional and research operations. Focusing on recent models of budgeting, this talk shows how budgeting techniques become means for implementing change in higher education as part of outwardly legitimate interventions that have direct consequences on the experience and outputs of knowledge-makers.