Dustin Voss Wins Socio-Economic Review’s 2025 Best Paper Prize

Dustin Voss, a senior researcher at the MPIfG, was awarded the Best Paper Prize by the journal Socio-Economic Review in April 2025. In “Sectors Versus Borders: Interest Group Cleavages and Struggles Over Corporate Governance in the Age of Asset Management,” published in 2024 in Socio-Economic Review 22 (3): 1071–94, Voss examines the role of global asset managers such as BlackRock in the context of a reform to co-determination in Germany. Using qualitative content analysis of over 100 stakeholder statements, he shows that international asset managers, commonly regarded as passive investors, form coalitions with activist investors to weaken industrial co-determination. A broad coalition of German interest groups representing finance, industry, and trade unions nevertheless succeeded in preventing far-reaching institutional change. Voss’s study shows how coalition-building is a crucial determinant of the political power of international financial actors and how corporatist institutions still act as a shield against financialization. Dustin Voss joined the MPIfG in 2022 and works in international and comparative political economy, where he is particularly interested in wealth distribution, housing, and intergenerational conflict in aging societies.