Institute News

On June 28, the MPIfG’s sixth alumni reception took place at the annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) in Limerick. Away from the hectic activity of the conference, the reception was an opportunity for around 60 former and current MPIfG researchers to meet in a relaxed atmosphere, network, and make new connections. more

In August this year, Melike Arslan will take up a post as a lecturer at the Institute for International Management of Loughborough University London. A sociologist, who has been a postdoctoral researcher in Jens Beckert’s Economic Sociology Research Area since 2022, Arslan focuses in her research on the legal and regulatory infrastructure of market economies in comparative and international perspective. more

Mischa Stratenwerth successfully defended his doctoral thesis at the beginning of June. In “Interest Groups and Macroeconomic Policy in the Export-led German Growth Model: Business Associations, Trade Unions, and the Reproduction of the Undervaluation Regime,” Stratenwerth examines how national economic growth models are shaped by macroeconomic policies, institutions, and ideas. more

Elizabeth Soer was awarded her doctorate by the University of Cologne in June. In her dissertation project, “Imaginaries of Freedom: How Imagined Futures Shaped South Africa’s Transition from Apartheid, 1976–1996,” she examined the transition to democracy in South Africa. more

The MPIfG and the AxPo Observatory of Market Society Polarization of Sciences Po, Paris, jointly organized a workshop at the MPIfG in Cologne on June 6 and 7. A central theme of the event on the political economy of low-carbon transitions was the influence of economic and political choices on the persistence or transformation of carbon societies and the how the green transformation is shaped by balances of power between fossil and green interests and by party political strategies. more

Arianna Tassinari more

Düzgün Arslantaş more

Lucio Baccaro, Björn Bremer, Erik Neimanns more

Lisa Suckert, wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung, plädiert für eine differenziertere Wahrnehmung der Brexit-Kampagne und der ökonomischen Identität Großbritanniens. Doch auch die EU sei gefragt: Sie müsse sich verändern, um die Bedürfnisse von Austrittsbefürwortern innerhalb der EU besser zu verstehen, gegenzusteuern und den europäischen Zusammenhalt zu stärken. more

Seit jeher versuchen Menschen, die Zukunft vorherzusehen: aus Träumen, aus den Sternen oder mithilfe von Karten und Würfeln. Heute scheinen die Bedingungen für verlässliche Vorhersagen dank großer Datenbanken und computergestützter Auswertung besser denn je. Akos Rona-Tas warnt jedoch vor zu viel Vertrauen in die neuen Prognosetechniken. Der Soziologieprofessor an der University of California San Diego, der im Sommersemester 2018 Scholar in Residence am Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung in Köln war, befasst sich mit den Schattenseiten moderner Wahrsagung. more

SiR Lecture Series 2024 - 2 more

SiR Lecture Series 2024 - 1 more

Institutstag 2023 more

Institutstag 2023 more

Institutstag 2023 more

We live in an age of migration, and of migration control. Global mobility and the political responses it has engendered have impelled governments in many countries to strengthen border policing and crack down on unauthorized migrants. These practices offer a vantage point for analyzing the development and operation of state power. In her talk, Kimberly Morgen will discuss the extensive buildup of border policing and immigration enforcement in the United States since the start of the 2000s as an example of state expansion. She will analyze how and why governing power has been mobilized and deployed in this way, and what larger ramifications this has for how we theorize and study states. more

In his talk, Michael A. Wilkinson reflects on postwar Europe from the perspective of the long durée of European constitutional history and the interwar breakdown of liberal democracy. He suggests that far from “revolutionary,” as it has been characterized, postwar European constitutionalism is better understood as elitist and even counter-revolutionary in trajectory. more

The lecture will explain how rating agencies award sovereign ratings; why they impose penalties on certain political and policy choices; why they are in a position to interfere with politics and policy in the first place; and why it is unlikely that these unelected, unappointed, unaccountable profit-seeking institutions would be stripped of their power, which rivals that of institutions at the peak of global governance, like the IMF or the World Bank. more

There is broad consensus about the need for an effective climate policy. Based on a series of survey experiments across the EU and in Germany, Laura Seelkopf discusses the drivers of support for (or opposition to) climate taxation. more

The talk takes builds on the opportunity offered by of the first Max Planck Summer School for Women in Political Economy to reflect on the place of women in the field of CPE. more