Dustin Voss Awarded MPIfG Alumni Association’s Best Paper Prize

Dustin Voss, a senior researcher at the MPIfG, has received the 2025 Journal Article Prize of the Society of Friends and Former Associates of the MPIfG. The award was presented during the Institute’s 40th anniversary celebrations in May for Voss’s article “Sectors Versus Borders: Interest Group Cleavages and Struggles Over Corporate Governance in the Age of Asset Management,” published in Socio-Economic Review (22 [3]: 1071–94) in 2024. His study examines the role of global asset managers such as BlackRock in the context of a co-determination reform in Germany. Based on a qualitative analysis of over 100 stakeholder statements, Voss traces how international asset managers form coalitions with activist investors to weaken industrial co-determination in Germany. At the same time, he shows how a broad coalition of German interest groups was nevertheless able to prevent far-reaching institutional change. Highlighting the scientific value of the single case study, the prize jury praised the article’s ability to carefully examine a specific reform debate in a specific country while developing insights that go far beyond the single case. Voss’s clever choice of case study had allowed him to draw out phenomena that are otherwise difficult to access and to reach conclusions with broad theoretical implications, the jury said. It commended the article for itself representing both variety and commonalities in the MPIfG’s research agenda and connecting established with more recent research areas, such as the German economic model and corporate governance with financialization and asset manager capitalism. Dustin Voss has been a senior researcher in the Political Economy Research Area at the MPIfG since 2022. His research interests are in international and comparative political economy, with a focus on wealth distribution, housing, and generational conflicts in aging societies.