Institute News

Carola Westermeier will join the MPIfG in April 2025 as the leader of a new Lise Meitner Research Group on Technology and Sovereignty, which will begin in October 2025. The new group will research at the intersections of economic sociology, international political economy, and critical security studies. more

The MPIfG is taking part in ARTEMIS, the Max Planck Society’s mentorship program to promote scientific exchange with African universities and research institutions. Camilla Locatelli and Dustin Voss (both MPIfG) are mentoring two doctoral researchers, Endalcachew Bayeh from the Department of Political Science and International Studies at Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia, and Ngone Mirimi, a doctoral candidate in Development Economics at the Africa Research University of Zambia. more

Matthias Thiemann, professor for European public policy at Sciences Po in Paris, will be joining the MPIfG between April and June as this year’s Scholar in Residence. During his stay in Cologne, Thiemann will offer a three-part public lecture series, “Financial Stability, Shadow Banking, and the Conditions of Monetary Modernity: A Struggle in Three Acts.” more

The Volkswagen Foundation is providing around 940,000 euros in funding for a joint research project by Isabell Stamm (MPIfG) and Julia de Groote (WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management). Their project, “The Capital’s Shadow: Wealth Concentration in Startup Ecosystems,” will examine the role of influential investors in shaping the startup scenes in Paris and Berlin. more

On February 12, 2025, Fritz W. Scharpf, Emeritus Director at the MPIfG, will celebrate his ninetieth birthday. One of the most renowned political scientists in Germany, Scharpf’s research on joint decision making and multi-level governance in the European Union is internationally regarded as groundbreaking. more

For long-term stability, Germany should not only focus on exports, but also strengthen its own domestic market. more

Jens Beckert more

Arianna Tassinari more

Düzgün Arslantaş more

Lucio Baccaro, Björn Bremer, Erik Neimanns more

Institutstag 2024 more

Institutstag 2024 more

Institutstag 2024 more

Institutstag 2024 more

Institutstag 2024 more

The main cause of the climate crisis is the burning of fossil fuels. This talk will turn the question around and aim at identifying the social problems that were meant to be solved by burning fossil fuels, looking in particular at critical junctures in human history. more

What is trust and how should it be studied? In his talk, Gil Eyal argues against conventional approaches to studying trust in the social sciences and proposes an alternate strategy focused on “trust methods.” Instead of treating trust as a static property that can be measured by close-format survey questions, he conceptualizes trusting as a skillful act that is highly context-dependent and attuned to temporal variables such as speed, duration sequence, and timing. To illustrate this approach, Eyal draws on interviews with long Covid patients focusing on how they account for who, what, when, and how they distinguish responsible trust from blind faith. 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