EUI MWP Newsletter 16
Winter 2019

Welcome to the Winter 2019 Issue of the
Max Weber Programme Newsletter

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Feature Articles

Antonio AloisiThe European labour market is experiencing radical change, fuelled by digitalisation, “platformisation”, and demographic dynamics. Think of pioneers such as the ride-hailing company Uber, the on-demand delivery multinational corporations Deliveroo and Foodora, the cleaning services firm Helpling or the professional freelancing dispatcher UpWork. How many times do you use their apps to get a ride, order a pizza, clean your room or translate your articles? These novel infrastructures have a strong impact on the organisation of firms’ work and, above all, on the relationships between employers and employees (or between clients and workers). Platform firms engage with “providers”, invariably classified as self-employed workers, on a hyper-volatile basis. Despite this, many of these self-proclaimed intermediaries exert some degree of managerial power, albeit in a sophisticated form, while avoiding the obligations of direct employment.
The European Union institutions have shone a spotlight on the phenomenon of working in the so-called “collaborative economy”, unanimously described as the most visible portion of a broader trend towards de-standardisation of employment relationships and de-mutualisation of risk. Interestingly enough, platform-mediated arrangements are particularly significant sites for investigating how classical legal notions and formats can adapt to new templates. A recent report by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the in-house scientific service of the European Commission, focuses on a major subset of questions raised by the spread of platform work across industries and Member States: is the existing legal framework appropriate and suited to accommodate new organisational formats in the gig-economy? If not, is there a need for new legislation?
This JRC report maps a kaleidoscopic array of platform-mediated arrangements, by clustering the findings into three selected subsets (passenger transport services, professional crowdsourcing, on-demand work at the client’s premises) [Figure 1 below]. Scrutinising the concrete operation of platforms might help scholars, practitioners and policymakers address complex issues concerning the scope of employment law and, broadly, the state of play of the social compact. Before assessing the relevant regulatory framework, the study describes the operation of a set of European as well as global platforms throughout five different phases. In doing so, it takes into consideration the relationship between workers and platforms in key phases: (i) access and registration, (ii) selection process and hiring, (iii) performance execution and command power, (iv) rating and ranking, monitoring power (and deactivation), (v) payment rewards for completed tasks.

Against this background, the JRC paper focuses on the European initiatives aimed at promoting decent work in the “collaborative economy”, namely (i) the European Commission’s Communication COM(2016) 356, (ii) the principles enshrined in the European Pillar of Social Rights, and (iii) the ruling by the European Court of Justice on the nature of the service provided by Uber. Moreover, the report investigates in depth existing regulatory schemes, ranging from European Directives on atypical employment to casual work templates, such as zero-hours or voucher-based contracts. After exploring the existing legal models in several European countries, this study goes into the issue of the legal status of platform–based or –mediated workers by analysing what is at stake in pending litigations on the proper classification. Standard methods of social science research and legal analysis are combined to outline normative and contractual templates, which can easily be used to regulate modern organisational patterns.

Figure 1. Typologies of digital labour platforms

Main findings, key conclusions and policy pointers
Digitally mediated working templates blur boundaries between traditional classifications, such as work and rest periods, amateurism and professionalism, subordination and autonomy. By taking into account this significant heterogeneity, which may entail contrasting juridical implications, a common business model could be traced consisting in the “instant” matching of demand and supply of labour, facilitated by digital tools that make it easy to manage a large and “low-cost” workforce, by dropping transaction costs and easing barriers to entry and information asymmetries. This alternative model touches on the foundation of traditional employment protection legislation and social security systems.
The (new) world of work is characterised by an increased tendency towards relationships that are not based on direct employment contracts. Available research reveals pervasive directives, reinforced surveillance, constant assessment, arbitrary disciplinary action and very little or no margin to decide how to complete a task. The model does not contain any entitlement, such as overtime, paid holiday leave, maternity leave, sickness payments and statutory minimum wages. Furthermore, workers are excluded from fundamental principles and rights at work, such as freedom of association, collective bargaining or protection against discrimination or unfair dismissal.
In brief, the JRC paper shows how it is feasible to temper the impulse to digital distinctiveness with actions to safeguard workers’ rights. Contrary to what is often said, the authors argue that the standard employment relationship and, more generally, current legal formats are not undergoing an irreparable crisis. In addition to this, it cannot be denied that the lack of compliance with labour-related, fiscal and social security duties constitutes platforms’ main competitive advantage vis-à-vis their competitors. This regulatory arbitrage results in an aggravation of existing conceptual tension and, what is worse, in an exacerbation of social precariousness as platform workers have very limited access to labour protection.
Only a few European States have adopted specific regulations to address the numerous issues stemming from the advent of the platform economy: the model is mercurial in nature and a hefty intervention may provoke its premature asphyxiation. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, “surgical” regulatory interventions could help the collaborative economy companies to improve their business model. In this sense, the current European attitude is perceived as a fair balance between supporting entrepreneurs’ confidence and implementing workers’ protections, but considerable efforts need to be made in order to ensure a stable and sustainable future.
If the goal is to develop sustainable digital ecosystems and social institutions where high-quality employment and competitiveness are mutually reinforced, the application of existing regulation must be strengthened, in order to avoid the risk that platform workers are considered, by default, to fall in a normative vacuum. Therefore, reaffirming the major binary divide between genuinely self-employed workers and those in an employment relationship would be helpful in the attempt to reduce labour market segmentation and rising inequalities. Understandably, another answer might be to close legal loopholes that incentivise the exploitative conduct of a marginal group of deceitful companies.
By contrasting the sense that new realities of work have outgrown legal concepts, the report validates the effectiveness of existing labour law regulation, since until very recently little systematic effort has been made to establish how common statutory rules and standards should apply. Accordingly, it intends to “normalise” the discourses surrounding the digital transformation of work and the rise of non-standard forms of employment. In the end, creating a level playing field between the traditional and the digitally enabled companies is the only way to reap the full benefit of the on-going digital transformation. Indeed, platform workers do not necessarily need new regulations, but instead more effective enforcement and an unambiguous legal framework.

De Stefano V. and Aloisi A., European Legal framework for digital labour platforms, European Commission, Luxembourg, 2018, ISBN 978-92-79-94131-3, doi:10.2760/78590, JRC112243.

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León Castellanos-JankiewiczThe genealogical and conceptual affinities between nationality and rights have created a tension in the contemporary human rights regime from its inception. Since the French Revolution, the formulation of many claims has been attached to the possession of citizenship. This association has persisted in its most extreme forms with the creation of rules on migration, refugee status and statelessness, all of which lie outside the general human rights regime. After World War One, as migratory flows increased and nationalism hardened into statism, the legal status of non-citizens became highly regulated. Therefore, most of the rules applicable to migrants, refugees and stateless persons precede the existence of human rights treaties, further complicating their complementarity.

In addition to the global migration crisis, this problem has recently resurfaced with the Windrush scandal in the UK, where de facto British citizens were threatened with deportation. Other incidents include President Trump’s initiative to deny citizenship to US-born children and Israel’s controversial nation-state law, which relegates non-Jews to second-class citizenship. Further east, the government of Myanmar has weaponized statelessness to destroy the livelihoods of Rohingya minorities, while Gulf states enable the exploitation of foreign workers under conditions likened to modern slavery. These examples illustrate how the failure to belong to the dominant nation within a state can result in discrimination. Nationality, therefore, can have an exclusionary role whose effects are not altogether captured by international human rights law, which usually presumes a political relationship between individual-subject and the state. To grasp these challenges, is important, then, to understand the connections between nationality and rights.

Twenty years ago, exploring the role of nationality in the making of human rights was anathema to moral universalists. But the rise of ethno-national populism today warrants engagement with how states define their political communities, enfranchise their members and recognize otherness. The mainstream emphasis on teleological justifications for rights based on human dignity has long overshadowed these enquiries. But early observers understood the importance of anchoring equal treatment in the political community. Hanna Arendt stated the position succinctly when she said that “we are not born equal; we become equal as members of a group on the strength of our decision to guarantee ourselves mutually equal rights” (Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951). The poignancy of Arendt’s statement cannot be missed, considering it was made shortly after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

A new stream of scholarship argues that rights claims are more meaningful when fastened to national political communities as opposed to moral universals, echoing Hanna Arendt’s critique of the Universal Declaration (Moyn, 2010; Hoffmann, 2010; Duranti, 2017; DeGooyer et al., 2018). Until now, the history of human rights has not been approached though the lens of nationalism and nationality because these concepts are seemingly at odds with universalist ideas. And yet, nineteenth-century nationalism projected the rights of aliens to the international sphere, as witnessed during the Italian and German unifications, and in the wave of codification ushered in by the Napoleonic Code through standards of reciprocal treatment and private international law. Despite this extensive practice and jurisprudential tradition, the impact of the possession and lack of nationality on the enjoyment of rights over time remains understudied.

The identification of citizenship with rights was a gradual process. With the rise of nationalism during the nineteenth century, the natural rights that developed during the eighteenth became identified as belonging to states that could make claims on behalf of their nationals under international law. Thereafter, domestic constitutions extended basic rights and freedoms exclusively to citizens. In turn, states relied increasingly on the minimum standard of treatment of aliens and other international rules such as national and equal treatment to protect the interests of their citizens abroad. We must therefore engage with Marx’s intuition that modern rights attach to individuals as citizens, and not as members of humankind (Marx, On the Jewish Question, 1844).

Viewed thus, the nineteenth-century jurisprudential traditions of private international law and comparative law should be reinstated as the first modern arenas where the rights of individuals were cast as being spatially independent from their state of nationality. Thus revisited, the early standards of treatment applicable to non-nationals paved the way for an international baseline of individual entitlements because they inaugurated modern debates about dislocating rights from territory. Non-Western legal scholars and diplomats would later appropriate these legal standards and techniques to neutralize their exclusionary devices, thus also contributing to the global projection of status equality.

The focus on the history of rights through nationality has special implications for contemporary debates in the context alien, refugee and migrant status. In particular, it can clarify the nature and historical trajectory of the acquired rights of non-nationals, their extraterritorial applicability and the extent of their (non-) derogability over time. Finally, developing a nexus between nationalism and the conferral of extraterritorial entitlements reveals the paradoxical role that nationalist politics played in formulating the plural and universal ideas they portend to destroy today. This ultimately allows us to recognize that nationalism has an inbuilt inclusionary dimension that enfranchises otherness.

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Dr León Castellanos-Jankiewicz is a Researcher at the Asser Institute for International and European Law, The Hague, where he is member of the project on Memory Laws in European and Comparative Perspective (melaproject.org). Previously, he was Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence, and Lecturer in the Law of International Organizations at Bocconi University, Milan. In 2018, he was awarded the inaugural David D. Caron Prize for Best Paper by the American Society of International Law during the ASIL Research Forum. He obtained his PhD in International Law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva.

León was awarded the inaugural David D. Caron Prize by the American Society of International Law during the Society’s Annual Research Forum held in UCLA School of Law. The Prize recognizes the best paper submitted to the Forum by a current student or recent graduate. The paper he presented was entitled ‘Nationality, Alienage and Early International Rights’. It emphasises the role of private international law in the development of standards of individual protection during the nineteenth century, particularly as regards the treatment of aliens. According to Castellanos-Jankiewicz, his paper’s originality resides in accounting for the fluid disciplinary boundaries between public and private international lawyers at the time.
David D. Caron (1952-2018) was President of the American Society of International Law from 2010-12. He was a judge, lawyer and scholar who, at the time of his passing, was a member of the Iran-US Claims Tribunal in The Hague and served as a judge ad hoc on the International Court of Justice. Susan L. Spencer presented the Prize on behalf of the Caron family at the launch of the David D. Caron Fund, which has been established to support the professional development of young international lawyers and to expand the participation of non-US nationals in the Society.

Photo credit: T.M.C. Asser Institute for International and European Law, The Hague

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Chris ColvinLessons from economic history provide invaluable insights into the big global challenges of today’s world—whether it is trade wars, financial crises, migration pressures, climate change or extreme political uncertainty.

Our new book An Economist’s Guide to Economic History brings together some of the world’s top economic historians to explain what economists need to know about the past—whether they are working as academic researchers, journalistic commentators or government policy advisers. The book contains 50 chapters on a selection of the most important areas in economic history and is written by experts across the fields of economic, financial and business history.

We were motivated to start our pedagogical project by the failure of economics as a discipline to foresee and adequately respond to the various global economic and financial crises since 2008. We argue that this failure was precipitated partly by a lack of awareness about our economic past among academic and professional economists.

The gap in the education of economics educators in particular has severe consequences. It means that economics students graduate with very limited knowledge and understanding of the real-world economy.

Typically, economics students spend practically no time at all studying the important historical events and developments which shape the modern world. We are convinced that studying the past would help them to become better economists.

The study of economic history was virtually eliminated from economics programmes in most UK universities. We advocate for its re-insertion across the curriculum in various different ways, and our book provides readers with a how-to guide.

Our central point is that many of the most pressing issues facing contemporary society, such as immigration and climate change, could be better understood and addressed by economists if economic history was taught as a core part of their training. This training can be delivered as a stand-alone economic history module in a student’s final year of study, or alternatively embedded across diverse field courses such labour, development, finance or macro.

For example, if you want to learn about challenges in modern-day China, south Asia or any resource-dependent developing economy, then a good starting point would be Britain or parts of historical Germany, France or Belgium in the early industrial period.

Likewise, the social and political issues with migration which we are experiencing today are nothing new. There are many phases of world economic history when large populations migrated across international boundaries. Economic history allows us to look at the consequences of immigration and emigration, to see how long the assimilation of migrants takes and measure their overall economic impact on society.

We designed our book to help non-experts. Policy advisers can use the book as a desk reference when preparing briefing notes to government ministers and designing new policy initiatives. University lecturers can use the book as a teaching resource by integrating relevant chapters into their syllabi. And economics students without access to economic history teaching in their own universities can take inspiration from the book when looking for research ideas.

All our current crises have historical parallels and precedents. Although the past can never be mapped perfectly onto the present, the lessons from economic history are nevertheless loud and clear.

An Economist’s Guide to Economic History,published by Palgrave Macmillan in December 2018, is available in paperback and eBook formats. It can be purchased online and in all good bookshops. Check whether your university library may already have a subscription to the eBook version through SpringerLink.

Further information about the book and its contributors is available on our website (www.blumandcolvin.org). We have big plans for this website; we hope to host additional teaching and learning resources that can be freely downloaded, including lesson plans, assessment ideas and datasets. We will keep you informed about our progress through the Max Weber Programme Newsletter.

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Giuseppe MartinicoThis edited collection gathers together Canadian and non-Canadian scholars to reflect on and celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Quebec Secession Reference, delivered by the Canadian Supreme Court in 1998. It opens with two Canadian scholars exchanging thoughts on the legacy of the reference from a domestic perspective as one of the most questioned decisions of the Canadian Supreme Court. To follow, non-Canadian scholars discuss the impact of this reference abroad, reflecting upon its influence in European and non-European contexts (Spain, Scotland, the EU, Eastern European Countries, Ethiopia, and Asia). Two final chapters, one by a lawyer and one by a political scientist, explore the democratic theory behind that reference. The readers could wonder why two non-Canadian scholars have decided to engage in an enterprise like this. There are several reasons of course, let us recall just three of them. First of all, the recent revival of secessionist movements in Europe and elsewhere has definitely given new lifeblood to a long-standing debate gathering the attention of scholars from all around the world. In some cases – the Catalan one perhaps being the most striking example – the secession strategy has been employed together with other arguments in order to present a broader identity question. This is nothing new; quite frequently secession has been invoked to address identity questions and indeed, as Mancini pointed out, “under prevailing circumstances, secessionist movements operate in the context of multinational states inhabited by autochthonous, territorially concentrated minorities which share a national or quasi-national identity” (Mancini 2012). In this, the Canadian Reference has represented a turning point thanks to the incredible effort made by the Supreme Court to frame secession from a legal point of view, by showing this way the added value of the legal dimension and the not-exclusively political flavour of secession.

Second, this Reference contains incredible anti-populist potential. As Giuseppe Martinico argues in his chapter, the Reference resulted in giving a series of guidelines that are very useful to govern the relationship between referendum and representative democracy and because of its complex notion of democracy. This should not come as a surprise, since generally speaking Canada has been traditionally seen as a laboratory for comparative lawyers and this Reference does not represent an exception.

Third, secession – or, better said, the fear of secession – is a typical concern in federal orders and poses a formidable intellectual and political challenge to their stability. The Reference was a turning point in framing the internal balance of a multinational federation which is also a well-established constitutional democracy. In order to do so we have structured the book in three parts, mixing domestic, comparative and theoretical approaches to this landmark opinion. The collection of essays is opened by a foreword by Richard Albert, who makes some relevant points about the enduring influence of the Reference in Canada, paving the way for the first part of the volume.

In the first part, two Canadian scholars discuss the legacy of the Reference from a domestic perspective, exchanging thoughts in a sort of ideal dialogue, on one of the most questioned decisions ever of the Canadian Supreme Court. Errol Mendes focuses on some of the key political and legal reasons that led the Court to issue its Reference in 1998. Jean-François Gaudreault-DesBiens, in turn, provides an overview of the main political and legal challenges which the Quebec independence movement is currently facing.

In the second part, the influence of this reference abroad is explored by asking non-Canadian scholars to reflect upon its influence in European and non-European contexts (Spain, Scotland, Eastern European countries, Ethiopia, Asia). The contributions are ordered on the basis of the greater or lesser proximity of each case-study towards the Quebec Secession Reference and the Canadian scenario.

Constitutional orders in which a direct influence of the Reference is recognisable are considered first (chapters by Josep Maria Castellà Andreu, Luigi Crema, Alastair MacIver and Asanga Welikala).

The subsequent chapters in the second part deal with cases of indirect, implicit or even weak influence of the Quebec Secession Reference (chapters by Erika Arban, Giacomo Delledonne and Matteo Monti and Zoran Oklopcic).

Finally, there are three general contributions adopting a broader perspective. Roberto Castaldi and Giuseppe Martinico discuss the democratic theory behind that Reference from the distinct viewpoints of political theory and law. In the last chapter, Francesco Palermo studies the significance of the Reference in the emergence of a comparative constitutional law of secession.

In so doing, Palermo argues that a significant amount of law has been developed over the past 20 years in order to constitutionalise secession. The legal regulation of political phenomena, which is one of the chief missions of constitutionalism, is clearly also emerging with regard to secession, and several instruments are being or can be employed to achieve a more effective, legally guaranteed and democratic comparative constitutional law of secession.

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News

Facts and Figures About the Applications to the Max Weber Fellowships in 2018By 18 October 2018 the Max Weber Programme had received 1,052 applications from 91 different countries for the Max Weber Fellowships 2019-2020. This number is lower than the year before (1,151) yet not definitive as the Department of Economics is still accepting applications at the time of writing.
As in previous years the appeal of the Programme has reached out globally and applications came from around the world (Figure 1).

Figure 1:

The European region remains by a long shot the strongest contributor of applications (642), followed by North America and Asia.

Italy takes the lion’s share of applications (Figure 2), followed by the US, Germany and the United Kingdom

Figure 2:

The gender ratio among applicants is slightly in favour of males (56%). However, this is a slight improvement on the previous year when male applicants were 57%.
The gender distribution by department instead reveals a degree of disparity by discipline (Figure 3). Applications by women to the department of Economics are less than one third (31%). To a lesser extent History and Political and Social Sciences as well show a relevant gender gap whilst the Robert Schuman Centre instead seems to appeal more to women (59%) than men (41%) and Law is the most balanced.

Figure 3:

As in the past, the departmental share of applications is substantially uneven (Figure 4). The department of Political and Social Sciences leads over the others with 425 applications, followed by History and Civilization with 322. The Robert Schuman Centre lags behind with 70 applications in total.

Figure 4:

The data suggest that the Programme maintains its global appeal while the decline in applications and the gender gap in applications to some departments need some attention.

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A new year and a new cohort of MW Fellows will be off on a teaching mission abroad in the  Spring! Masaryk University is offering a teaching-training week to nine Fellows from 8th to 12th April followed in May, from 20th to 24th, by UCL, Humboldt University and UPF. In total, thirty-one Fellows are swapping the Fiesole hills for a classroom abroad this year.

Read more

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Facts and Figures About the Applications to the Max Weber Fellowships in 2018The year 2017-2018 was yet again a time of growth and success for the Max Weber Programme thanks to the positive synergy between a fantastic cohort of Fellows and the MWP Team.

Check how it went in the just published Annual Report 2017-2018

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13th MW Fellows June ConferenceThis conference aims at creating a cross-cultural and a cross-disciplinary dialogue on historical and contemporary social, economic, legal and political transformations. The goal is to reflect on driving forces and actors of past or current events shaping societal developments and their effects. Various dimensions of change will be explored, such as political transitions, social contestations, economic integration, cultural disjunctures, technological advancements, and socio-legal reforms.

We welcome contributions from MW Fellows, MW Alumni, current Jean Monnet and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellows that address transformation on a methodological, empirical or theoretical level.

Researchers from all disciplines are invited to submit their abstracts (200 words) followed by four key words by March 6.

Two types of submission are welcome:

  1. Regular presentations : a 10-15 minutes oral presentation
  2. Poster presentations (a limited number of posters to be displayed in the Badia’s Lower Loggia): participants can view it and discuss with the presenter during the first lunch break of the Conference

Organizers: Veronica Corcodel (LAW), Mirjam Dagefoerde (SPS), Andra Roescu (SPS), Pascale Siegrist (HEC), Alina Vranceanu (SPS), Aydin Yildirim (RSC)

More details on our website

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This year the MWP has been invited to take part to the State of the Union international conference organized by the European University Institute in Fiesole and Florence between 2 and 4 May 2019. The Conference is dedicated to ‘Democracy in Europe in the 21st Century’ and the Programme is showcasing two workshops organised by MW Fellows on themes related to this topic.
Draft programmes:

1. Exploring Democracy in the 21st Century from the Perspective of the Past: Can the Liberty of the Ancients be Combined with the Liberty of the Moderns?
In this panel, Max Weber Fellows from HEC and SPS who are scholars of political theory and intellectual history ask what we can learn from the European tradition of democratic theory to think about the future of democracy in Europe. In particular, how far are our inherited democratic norms compatible with an EU committed to the norms of the single market and the four freedoms, on the one hand, and ever closer political as well as economic integration, on the other? As we shall see, most past thinkers have been critical of elements of one or other or both, suggesting that we must either rethink democracy or rethink the Union if we wish to combine the two. The panel develops chronologically through three linked steps:

Chair: Richard Bellamy

On the Liberty of the Ancients
Eniola Anuoluwapo Soyemi (SPS) - Aristotle
Jared Holley (HEC) - Rousseau

On the Liberties of the Moderns
Bruno Leipold (SPS) - Marx
Alessandro Bonvini (HEC) - Mazzini

On Combing the Liberties of the Ancients with that of the Moderns in the EU
Danilo Scholz (HEC) - Kojev
Jens van 't Klooster (SPS) - The Rawls-Van Parijis Debate

2. Non-Majoritarian Institutions under Political Pressure
Since the 1980s, Europe has witnessed widespread delegation of powers from governments directly elected by citizens to Non-Majoritarian Institutions (NMIs) that are neither directly elected nor directly managed by elected politicians. The institutional forms taken by NMIs include independent regulatory agencies tasked to oversee and facilitate competition, central banks charged to conduct monetary policy, specialized courts and the European Commission. Functional rationales for explaining delegation to NMIs centred on the outputs that unelected bodies were expected to deliver better than elected politicians, including providing longer-term commitments that are more credible to investors, enhancing the efficiency of policymaking, and better dealing with highly technical areas. However, rather than Pareto-efficient decisions (where some benefit and no one is made worse off), NMIs have increasingly taken political decisions with clearly distributive implications and both winners and losers. Furthermore, today, NMIs are accused often of having failed to deliver on their promises, having frequently led to rather unpopular consequences (e.g., price rises). This discussion will therefore explore how directly elected politicians, often riding waves of popular dissatisfaction, are challenging the institutional form or at least the operation in practice of NMIs, as well as how NMIs are in turn responding to these political pressures.

The workshop will bring together five speakers among whom Bernardo Rangoni (MWF-LAW), Mark Thatcher (LSE-LUISS), Anna Tzanaki (MWF-LAW) and two more to be confirmed.

For the final programme of these workshops please refer to the programme of the SoU2019 website

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MWP Alumni’s Corner

Alumni Events in BrusselsThe MWP Alumni Society will join the EUI Alumni Association at a number of events in Brussels starting soon.

18 FEBRUARY 2019, 17:30 - 20:30 - BRUSSELS, RESIDENCE PALACE

What role can Europe play in the domain of AI?

The EUI Alumni Association is delighted to announce its next Brussels-based event  ̶  based on the recent Commission communication 'Artificial Intelligence for Europe' and its Coordinated Action Plan  ̶  and to invite its members and friends to an EUI Alumni panel discussion to debate the three pillars highlighted by the Commission’s Communication:

  1. being ahead of technological developments and encouraging uptake by the public and private sectors
  2. ensuring an appropriate legal and ethical framework
  3. and preparing for socio-economic change

The focus of the panel debate will be that of digital transformation and artificial intelligence (AI) & robotics in Europe. The larger question will, however, be: what role can Europe play in the domain of AI? 

In the last couple of years, we have seen several EU countries as well as the European Commission publishing AI strategies, planning new investments in research in the area, facilitating uptake from industry, and looking at how to ensure an inclusive and socially responsible development in AI. Moreover, different stakeholders have called for a specific European approach, different from the market-dominated approach of the US and the control-oriented approach of China. However, the question about the role to be played specifically by the European Union remains. Should the EU, for instance, promote development of AI through investments, coordinate national policies, or engage in regulation?

The European University Institute Alumni Association is inviting its members and other interested people to a discussion about these issues followed by a drink.

The event will take place in Brussels at the Residence Palace (Rue de la Loi 175, Brussels) on Monday 18 February from 17:30 until 20:30.

DRAFT PROGRAMME

17:30-17:45 Arrival

17:45-18:00 Welcome from the EUI Alumni Association – Alessandra Chirico (AA Vice President)

18:00-19:00 Panel Discussion
Mario Mariniello (EPSC)
Koen Jonkers (JRC)
Claudia de Castro Calderinha (Redscope Consulting)
Alexandre de Streel (CRIDS/Namur Digital Institute / University of Namur)

19:00-19:30 Q&A and common discussion

19:30-20:30 Networking reception

Further details and updates will be posted on the MWP Alumni Society Facebook page

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Another gathering of MW alumni will be organised in Brussels in the Spring of 2019. More details will be published via the MW Alumni Facebook group. Should you have any query about this please do contact garvanwalshe@gmail.com or diane.fromage@eui.eu

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Is there life after the Max Weber Fellowship? There is indeed, as the chart representing the present position of all MW Fellow cohorts since 2006 shows. Unsurprisingly perhaps they populate mostly academic institutions (86.93%). A sparse crowd instead brings its sparkle to private or public institutions here and there.

Where Did The MW Fellows Go?

 

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Upcoming Events

Just a reminder of the impressive line-up of future Max Weber Lecturers this year!

Thomas Christiano20 February 2019
Vivien Schmidt – Boston University
Jean Monnet Chair of European Integration and Professor of International Relations

About the speaker: Schmidt received her Bachelor of Arts from Bryn Mawr College, and both her Masters and PhD from the University of Chicago. She taught at the Sciences Po in Paris, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, European University Institute in Florence, Max Planck Institute in Cologne, the University of Paris and Lille, and is visiting scholar at Nuffield College, Oxford University and at Harvard University, where she is an affiliate of the Center for European Studies. She headed the European Union Studies Association in the United States. She was the founding Director of the Center for the Study of Europe at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. Her research has focused on political economy, democracy and discourse. In 2017 she was awarded the Society of Women in International Political Economy (SWIPE) Award for mentoring women in international relations

Catherine Schenk20 March 2019 
David Soskice – London School of Economics
Professor of Political Science and Economics and Fellow of the British Academy

About the speaker: David Soskice has been School Professor of Political Science and Economics at the LSE since 2012. He taught macroeconomics at Oxford (Mynors Fellow emeritus, University College) from 1967 to 1990, was then research director/professor at the Wissenschaftzentrum Berlin (1990-2005), and subsequently Research Professor of Comparative Political Economy at Oxford and senior research fellow at Nuffield College, and Research Professor of Political Science at Duke. He has been visiting professor in the economics department at Berkeley, the government department at Harvard, the Industrial Relations School at Cornell, and the Scuola Superiore St Anna, Pisa, and held the Mars Visiting professorship at Yale and the Semans Distinguished Visiting professorship at Duke. He is currently working with Wendy Carlin (UCL) on tractable macroeconomic models; with Nicola Lacey on the comparative political economy of crime and punishment; with Torben Iversen on advanced capitalist democracies; he gave the 2013 Federico Caffѐ lectures in Rome on Knowledge Economies: Winners and Losers. He was President of the European Political Science Association from 2011 to 2013; he is a Fellow of the British Academy (Politics and Economics groups); and he is an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford.

Neil Walker17 April 2019
Nancy L. Green - École des hautes études en sciences sociales
Director of Studies, CRH, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales

About the speaker: Nancy L. Green is professor (directrice d’études) of history at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, where she is a member of the Centre de Recherches Historiques. She received her doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1980 and a doctorat d’état from the Université de Paris VII in 1996. A specialist of migration history, comparative methods, and French and American social history, her major publications include: Ready-to-Wear and Ready-to-Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York (Duke University Press, 1997); Repenser les migrations (Presses Universitaires de France, 2002); Citizenship and Those Who Leave (co-ed. with François Weil) (University of Illinois Press, 2007); Histoire de l’immigration et question coloniale en France (co-ed. with Marie Poinsot) (La documentation française, 2008); The Other Americans in Paris: Businessmen, Countesses, Wayward Youth, 1880-1941, 2014 (University of Chicago Press, 2014); and A Century of Transnationalism: Immigrants and their Homeland Connections (co-ed. with Roger Waldinger (University of Illinois Press, 2016).

Annelien De Dijn15 May 2019 
Helen Milner – Princeton University
B.C. Forbes Professor of Politics and International Affairs

About the speaker: Helen V. Milner is the B. C. Forbes Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and the director of the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. She was the chair of the Department of Politics from 2005 to 2011. She was president of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) from 2012-14. She has written extensively on issues related to international and comparative political economy, the connections between domestic politics and foreign policy, and the impact of globalization on domestic politics. She is currently working on issues related to globalization and development, such as the political economy of foreign aid, the ‘digital divide’ and the global diffusion of the internet, the resource curse and non-tax revenues, and the relationship between globalization and democracy, in Africa and the Middle East.

For more details closer to the date of the event go to the MWP website

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Multidisciplinary Research Workshop 2019

European Transnationalism between Successes and Shortcomings: Threats, Strategies and Actors under the Microscope
Organizers: Silvia D’Amato (RSC), Athina Sachoulidou (LAW)
Date: 17 May 2019, Emeroteca

Rethinking Methodological Approaches to Islamic Movements
Organizers: Margot Dazey (SPS), Rémi Dewière (HEC), Mathilde Zederman (RSC)
Date: 29-30 April 2019, Emeroteca

Roots of Human Altruism and of Others Forms of Pro-social Behavior
Organizers: Pascale Siegrist (HEC), Tatyana Zhuravleva (ECO)
Date: 7 June 2019, Emeroteca

Institutional Complexity in Global Governance
Organizers: Oliver Westerwinter (RSC), Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni (Jean Monnet Fellow)
Date: 28 May 2018, Villa Schifanoia, Sala Triaria 

State-building in Non-democratic Societies
Organizers: Per Andersson (SPS), Rémi Dewière (HEC), Benoît Maréchaux (HEC), Corina Mavrodin (HEC), Andrea Papadia (RSC), Christopher Roberts (LAW)
Date: 6 May 2019, Emeroteca

Effectiveness in Early Childhood Education
Organizers:Tatyana Zhuravleva (ECO)
Date: 10 May 2019, Emeroteca

Fixing the moves? Maps, State and Mobility in Social Sciences
Organizers: Rémi Dewière (HEC), Igor Rogelja (SPS), Pascale Siegrist (HEC)
Date: TBC

Independent Regulators Under Pressure?
Organizers: Bernardo Rangoni (LAW), Anna Tzanaki (LAW)
Date: TBC

For more details closer to the event go to the MWP website

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Past Events

17 October 2018, 17:00-18:30
Badia, Refettorio
Chair: Jared Holley (HEC)
Introduction: Richard Bellamy (Director MWP)

Abstract:In this lecture Thomas Christiano defends a conception of fairness in labour markets.  He argues that we should take a procedural approach to the evaluation of fairness in markets. 

The procedural approach defended here goes beyond the traditional procedural view that requires only the absence of force and fraud.  But it avoids the pitfalls of the other classical conception of fairness in the market: the idea of a just wage or just price. 

Fairness in markets is analogous to fairness in the democratic process, he contends.  Christiano lays out a conception of fairness that is based on the analogy with democracy.  The basic procedural idea is that of equal power, understood in markets as a robust form of equality of opportunity and equal cognitive conditions.

The procedural idea of equal power can be given an interpretation in perfectly competitive markets. He then develops the idea further in imperfectly competitive markets. 

He shows how this approach has implications for conceiving of how firms ought to be organized and for defining a fair process of wage setting in the essentially highly imperfect conditions of the labour market.

About the speaker: Thomas Christiano is a philosopher at the University of Arizona. He writes books and articles on moral and political philosophy and regularly teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses. Christiano's current research is mainly in moral and political philosophy with emphases on democratic theory, distributive justice and global justice.

Thomas Christiano in conversation with Jens van’t Klooster (SPS)

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14 November 2018, 17:00-18:30
Badia, Refettorio
Chair: Elsa Massoc (MWF-SPS)
Introduction: Youssef Cassis (HEC-RSC Professor)

Abstract: The Global Financial Crisis (or North Atlantic Financial Crisis) appeared to catch most international institutions by surprise.

A decade of monetary policy orthodoxy focused on inflation had lulled regulators and central banks into confidence in the resilience of global financial markets.

The initial reaction to the crisis by major advanced economies was swift and effective, prompting a coordinated fiscal and monetary response.  This reaction drew on the understanding of the causes and consequences of the depression of the 1930s, as Eichengreen and others have noted.

But after 10 years, the system has yet to return to 'normal' and there are fears that the prolonged low interest rate environment is creating new financial risks.  As we enter the next phase of reversing unconventional monetary policy, it is time to reflect on what we learned from previous crises and what historical lessons we failed to understand that might be useful for future policymaking.

To explore these themes, there will be a particular focus on the governance and structure of the international monetary system and the development of the global financial safety net in historical perspective.

About the speaker: Catherine Schenk FRHS, FRSA is Professor of Economic and Social History at Oxford University and Professorial Fellow at St. Hilda's College Oxford. After completing  undergraduate and Masters degrees at University of Toronto in Economics, International Relations and Chinese Studies, she completed her PhD in Economic History at the London School of Economics. 

Since then she has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, Royal Holloway, University of London and University of Glasgow.  She has also been visiting professor at Nankai University, China, and Hong Kong University.

Outside academia she has spent time as a visiting researcher at the International Monetary Fund and at the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research and in 2018-19 will be Lamfalussy Fellow at the Bank for International Settlements.

She is an Associate Fellow in international economics at Chatham House, London and on the Academic Council of the European Association of Banking and Financial History.

Catherine Schenk in conversation with MW Fellows Elsa Massoc (SPS) and Andrea Papadia (RSC).

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5 December 2018, 17:00-18:30
Badia, Refettorio
Chair: Emily Hancox (MWF-LAW)
Introduction: Joanne Scott (EUI-LAW Professor)

Abstract: Richard Tuck’s recent study of Thomas Hobbes’ famous depiction of the ‘Sleeping Sovereign’ offers a reminder  of the 17th century philosopher’s contribution to the political imaginary within which our modern conception of constitutional democracy would later emerge. Central to that imaginary is Hobbes’ distinction between sovereignty and government – anticipating the division between the constitutional ‘rules of the game’ established by the ‘people’ or popular sovereign, and the day-to-day conduct of government under these rules.  In these terms, the ‘people’ remain ‘asleep’ except in the event of revolutionary renewal, or, more often, under strict conditions of constitutional amendment.

The Hobbesian metaphor, extended to cover the ‘stirring’ of new forms of sovereigntist consciousness and practice, continues to offer a powerful perspective on the strengths and the limitations of a sovereignty-centred approach to the contemporary global political condition. We can illustrate these new stirrings, and how they are related, through the four ‘R’s.

The Reassembling of sovereignty refers to how increasingly elaborate and inclusive procedures going beyond the normal menu of amendment techniques are being used today to achieve constitutional settlement or galvanize constitutional change.
The Raising of sovereignty refers to new claims or the resurrection of old claims by sub-state or trans-state populations  who dispute the present pattern of sovereign authority.

The Rationing of sovereignty refers to the process by which certain supra-state entities, such as the EU, seek to split the sovereignty atom amongst overlapping and interacting and so no longer omnicompetent states. Finally, 

The Reassertion of sovereignty involves the reaffirmation of existing sovereign claims, often in response to and reaction against the challenges associated with reassembling, raising and rationing; and often, too, articulated in populist terms, downplaying many of the protections of political pluralism and individual rights that mark the modern constitutional condition. 

About the speaker: Neil Walker holds the Regius Chair of Public Law and the Law of Nature and Nations at the University of Edinburgh. His main area of expertise is constitutional theory. He has published extensively on the constitutional dimension of legal order at sub-state, state, supranational and global levels. He has also published at length on the relationship between security, legal order and political community. He maintains a more general interest in broader questions of legal theory as well as in various substantive dimensions of UK and EU public law. Previously he was Professor of Legal and Constitutional Theory at the University of Aberdeen (1996-2000), and Professor of European Law at the European University Institute in Florence (2000-8), where he was also the first Dean of Studies (2002-5). He has also held various visiting appointments - including Eugene Einaudi Chair of European Studies, University of Cornell (2007); Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law, University of Toronto (2007), Global Professor of Law, New York University (2011-12), Sidley Austin-Robert D. McLean Visiting Professor of Law, Yale University (2014-5), International  Francqui  Chair, University of Leuven, (2017). He has an LLD (Honoris Causa) from the University of Uppsala, is a fellow of the British Academy, and is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His most recent books are the monograph,  Intimations of Global Law (Cambridge, 2015) and the edited collection,  The Scottish Independence Referendum: Constitutional and Political Implications (co-editor, Oxford, 2016). He is presently completing a study of the EU as an ‘experimental project’.

Neil Walker in conversation with MW Fellows Claire Bright (LAW) and Emily Hancox (LAW)

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16 January 2019, 17:00-18:30
Badia, Refettorio
Chair: Pascale Siegrist (MWF-HEC)
Introduction: Ann Thomson (HEC EUI Professor)

Abstract: In this lecture, Annelien De Dijn shows that the Atlantic Revolutions of the late eighteenth century were not just democratic revolutions, as R.R. Palmer put it; they were also egalitarian revolutions. American, Dutch and French revolutionaries were convinced that their experiment with democratic government could only succeed in societies with a more or less equal distribution of property. Hence, they introduced a host of laws designed to create or maintain greater social equality.

Second, she explains why the social egalitarianism of the Atlantic Revolutions has been more or less forgotten by historians and the broader public. De Dijn concludes by reflecting on the extent to which the Atlantic Revolutions constitute a ‘usable past’ for contemporary egalitarians.  

About the speaker: Annelien de Dijn is a Professor of Modern History at the University of Utrecht. She focuses on the history of political thought, in particular the history of republicanism and liberalism. She is currently finalizing her second book, Freedom: An Unruly History, which is under contract with Harvard University Press and which traces the history of freedom from Herodotus to the present. Her first book, French Political Thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville: Liberty in a Levelled Society, appeared in 2008.

Annelien De Dijn in conversation with MW Fellows Jared Holley (HEC) and Bruno Leipold (SPS).

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6 November 2018, 17:00-18:30
Badia, Emeroteca
Chair: Bruno Leipold (MWF-SPS)

The first Max Weber Occasional Lecture this year was the occasion to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx. Aptly, to celebrate the anniversary in Florence was William Clare Roberts, author of Marx’s Inferno.

Abstract: This talk examines and evaluates Marx’s commitments to three notions of freedom: (1) freedom as non-domination, (2) freedom as open-ended self-development, and (3) freedom as self-determination or autonomy.

Roberts argues that the first notion, freedom as non-domination, motivates Marx’s mature critique of capitalism and his embrace of the international workers’ movement. His commitment to the second notion, freedom as self-development or self-realization, is fundamentally a vision of ethical perfection, and plays only a tightly circumscribed role in Marx’s political thought. Finally, the notion of freedom as self-determination is, despite a long interpretive tradition, at odds with Marx’s understanding and endorsement of democracy.

Contrary to 150 years of Marx reception, Marx’s most distinctive and powerful contributions are not to the theorization of “positive liberty,” but to the pursuit of freedom from domination. 

About the speaker: William Clare Roberts is associate professor of political science at McGill University. His book,  Marx's Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital (Princeton, 2017), won the 2017 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize for exemplifying the best and most innovative new writing in or about the Marxist tradition

William Clare Roberts in conversation with MW Fellows Bruno Leipold (SPS) and Pascale Siegrist (HEC).

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The Archipelago? Writing a History of Post-War Italy

20 November 2018, 17:00-18:30
Badia, Sala del Capitolo
Chair: Lucy Riall (HEC Professor) 

About the speaker: How can we understand and tell the story of post-war Italy? How can we transmit our academic learning and expertise to a wider, non-specialist audience? Is there a master-key for understanding individual countries and their trajectories since 1945?

This talk will aim to address these questions through an analysis of the methodologies and analyses adopted for the book The Archipelago. Italy since 1945 (Bloomsbury, 2018. Laterza (Forthcoming) 2019). It will look at typical tropes used when trying to understand Italy: Italy as 'backward', Italy as 'marginal', Italy as 'lacking' various aspects often attributed to other states  ̶ legality, national identity, efficiency, unity.

The talk will also look at the debates between micro- and macro- history, and at academic and non-academic forms of writing and communication. A further key area will be that of chronologies, when are the 'breaks' in national histories and when are the moments of continuity?

The talk will be in the context of an understanding of previous attempts to write histories or studies of post-war Italy, and the dominant influence of Gramscian theory within the formation of many historians both within Italy and abroad.

Academic pressures in many universities preclude or even punish general works aimed at a wider public, and these institutional features drive research and publication. Thus, one of the key ways in which academics and the wider world have been able to interact is being closed down, institutionally, despite emphasis on 'impact' and 'public engagement'. This talk willl also provide some reflections on these trends and their influence on academic research.

About the speaker: John Foot is a British historian specialised in Italian History. His research covers a number of aspects of Italian social history. 

He has published on the Italian Labour Movement after WWI, popular culture relating to sport (football and cycle racing), the history and memory of the radical psychiatry movement in Italy which eventually closed down the asylums, and more.

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All the Demagogue’s Men Introduction: Richard Bellamy (MWP Director)
8 January 2019, 17:00-18:30
Badia, Emeroteca

Abstract: In previous work, Nili has argued that a liberal democracy can have its own morally important integrity, paralleling the integrity of an individual person. In this talk, he discusses the relationship between a liberal democracy’s collective integrity and the individual integrity of elected leaders of a particular sort.

These leaders, whom Nili labels ‘media demagogues,’ are distinguished by their combination of dangerous populism, systematic lies and manipulation, and an overwhelming reliance on media activity as a substitute for substantive government work.

Using Donald Trump, Silvio Berlusconi, and Binyamin Netanyahu as his running examples, Nili begins by arguing that the language of integrity – and the charge of lacking even minimal integrity – is extremely well-suited to characterizing, and condemning, media demagogues.

He then lays out multiple, media-driven connections, between media demagogues’ glaring failures of personal integrity, and the predictable threats they pose to the liberal polity’s integrity. Having a clear picture of these integrity connections is important in and of itself, as a way of obtaining a holistic understanding of the kinds of moral dangers brought about by the ‘mediatization’ of politics. But these links are also important as a way of understanding the moral stakes involved in the decisions of those who are considering whether to serve or ally with media demagogues.

About the speaker: Shmuel Nili is an assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University and a research fellow at Australian National University’s School of Philosophy (Research School of the Social Sciences). His current work explores the moral value of integrity in politics, and the practical role of political philosophy in the face of obvious moral failures in public policy. Nili’s first book, The People’s Duty (forthcoming with Cambridge University Press), examines the sovereign people as an owner of public property, and as an agent with its own moral integrity. Nili's scholarly articles have been published in a wide range of leading journals in political science (including The American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and The Journal of Politics), contemporary political philosophy (including Ethics and Journal of Political Philosophy)and the history of ideas (History of Political Thought, Review of Politics). Nili earned a PhD in political science at Yale University (2016).

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MWP-ACO National and European Funding OpportunitiesThe annual conference organized by the 
Academic Careers Observatory of the Max Weber Programme
12 December 2018
Badia Fiesolana, Theatre

The MWP-ACO conference on research funding opportunities is open to young researchers in the Social Sciences and Humanities at the Institute.

It brings together representatives of European and national agencies and research funding charities as well as young academics, who provide Max Weber Fellows and EUI researchers with up-to-date information on research funding schemes in countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Poland, Luxembourg and Finland. Delegates explain their programmes and offer advice and insight on the application process.

The second morning session of the conference focuses on top tips for grant-writing. The presenters, Jacob Leveridge and Henrietta Bruun, share with the audience details about application procedures and some practical tips to successfully apply for research funding.After the presentations, there is time for individual consultations with the speakers.

Programme (PDF)

Conference presentations:
Frank Marx (Research Executive Agency, European Commission)
Jelena Dzankic (EUI RSCAS)
Henriette Bruun and Jacob Leveridge (UCL)
Berry J. Bonenkamp (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research)
Sönke Bauck (Swiss National Science Foundation)
Ken Emond (The British Academy)
Tinne Jacobs (Research Foundation Flanders - FWO)
Joël Groeneveld (Fund for Scientific Research - FNRS)
Jolanta Palowska (National Science Centre, Poland)
Päivi Pihlaja (Academy of Finland) 
Kim von Hackwitz (Swedish Resarch Council) 

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We are glad to receive and announce former and current MW Fellows’ publications. Due to restricted space this is but a selection of publications received in the last few months.

  • Sylvanus Kwaku Afesorgbor (RSC 2015-2016),‘The impact of economic sanctions on international trade: How do threatened sanctions compare with imposed sanctions?’,European Journal of Political Economy, Volume 56, January 2019, Pages 11-26, free on line until March 2019
  • Antonio Aloisi (LAW 2018-2019): ‘With great power comes virtual freedom’. A review of the first Italian case holding that (food-delivery) platform workers are not employees. 2018, Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal, Dispatch, online version
  • Antonio Aloisi (LAW 2018-2019): ‘A critical examination of a third employment category for on-demand work’ (with Miriam A. Cherry), 2019, Davidson N., Finck M. and Infranca J. (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Law of the Sharing Economy, Cambridge University Press, pp. 316-327
  • Antonio Aloisi (LAW 2018-2019): (with Valerio De Stefano), 2018, commissioned by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission
  • Antonio Aloisi (LAW 2018-2019): ‘National context analysis: Italy. Employment and working conditions of selected types of platform work’ (with Valerio De Stefano), 2018, commissioned by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound)
  • Per Andersson (SPS 2017-2019), with Johannes Lindvall, ‘Crises, investments, and political institutions’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Vol 30, Issue 4, 2018
  • Philip Ayoub (SPS 2013-2014): ‘Migration and Queer Mobilizations: How Migration Facilitates Cross-Border LGBTQ Activism’ (with Lauren Bauman), Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, forthcoming
  • Philip Ayoub (SPS 2013-2014): ‘Intersectional and Transnational Coalitions during Times of Crisis: The European LGBTI Movement,’ Social Politics, forthcoming
  • Philip Ayoub (SPS 2013-2014): ‘Movement/Countermovement Interaction and Instrumental Framing in a Multi-Level World: Rooting Polish Lesbian and Gay Activism’ (with Agnès Chetaille), Social Movement Studies, forthcoming
  • Philip Ayoub (SPS 2013-2014): ‘Protean Power in Movement: Navigating Uncertainty in the LGBT Rights Revolution.’ In Peter Katzenstein and Lucia Seybert (eds.) Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics, New York: Cambridge University Press, 79-99, 2018
  • Zsofia Barta (SPS 2011-2012), ‘"In The Red”: The Politics of Public Debt Accumulation in Developed Countries', University of Michigan Press 2018
  • Giulia Bonazza (HEC 2016-2017), Abolitionism and the Persistence of Slavery in Italian States, 1750–1850, Palgrave 2019
  • Mauricio Bucca Olea (SPS 2018-2020) ‘Lasso Regularization for Selection of Log-Linear Models: An Application to Educational Assortative Mating’ forthcoming in Sociological Methods and Research
  • Ludivine Broch (HEC 2013-2014): Ordinary Workers, Vichy and the Holocaust: French Railwaymen and the Second World War (London: Cambridge University Press, 2016, paperback issue February 2019
  • Ludivine Broch (HEC 2013-2014): ‘The Resistance in Colour: Race, Racism and the French Resistance’, French Politics, Culture & Society, special issue on Transnational Approaches to the French Resistance, forthcoming in 2019
  • Adriana Bunea (SPS 2013-2014), 'Regulating European Union lobbying: in whose interest?’ published in the Journal of European Public Policy.
  • Laura Cabeza Peres (SPS 2018-2019) and Stefano Ronchi (SPS 2018-2019): with Sabina Haveric, ‘Closer to the state, closer to the polls? The different impact of corruption on turnout among public employees and other citizens’, doi.org
  • Sayaka Chatani (HEC 2014-2015), Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies, Cornell University Press 2018
  • Chris Colvin (ECO 2011-2012), An Economist’s Guide to Economic History, Palgrave 2018
  • Ayca Cubukcu (SPS 2009-2010), For the Love of Humanity: The World Tribunal on Iraq, University of Pennsylvania Press 2018
  • Marina Henke (SPS 2017-2018), ‘Tony Blair’s gamble: The Middle East Peace Process and British participation in the Iraq 2003 campaign’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Vol 20, Issue 4, 2018
  • Daniel Hershenzon (HEC 2011-2012): The Captive Sea: Slavery, Communication, and Commerce in Early Modern Spain and the Mediterranean (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018)
  • Rasmus Hoffman (SPS 2008-2009) : with Kröger H, Tarkiainen L, Martikainen P 2017  ‘Comparing Observed and Unobserved Components of Childhood: Evidence From Finnish Register Data on Midlife Mortality From Siblings and Their Parents’, Demography, 55(1):295-318
  • Ignacio de LaRasilla (LAW 2011-2012): Experiments in International Adjudication. Historical Accounts Cambridge University Press (2019) 
  • Ignacio de LaRasilla (LAW 2011-2012): International Law and Islam. Historical Explorations Brill/Nijhoff (2018)
  • Sophie Lemière (SPS 2015-2017): ‘The Downfall of Malaysia’s Ruling Party.’ Journal of Democracy 29, no. 4 (2018): 114-128
  • Tobias Lenz (SPS 2015-2016) (with Hooghe, Liesbet and Gary Marks. 2018). ‘Contested World Order: The Delegitimation of International Governance.’ Review of International Organizations. Online first, DOI: 10.1007/s11558-018-9334-3
  • Sophie Lemière (SPS 2015-2017): Illusions of Democracy: Malaysian Politics and People, Amsterdam University Press, 2018
  • Zsófia Lóránd(HEC 2015-2016),The Feminist Challenge to the Socialist State in Yugoslavia, Palgrave 2018
  • Giuseppe Martinico (LAW 2010-2011): with Giacomo Delledonne (eds), The Canadian Contribution to a Comparative Law of Secession Legacies of the Quebec Secession Reference, Palgrave, 2019
  • Giuseppe Martinico (LAW 2010-2011): ‘History of a (Limited) Success: Five Points on the Representativeness of the Committee of the Regions’, Perspectives on Federalism, Vol. 10, Issue 2/2018, E- 96-116
  • Giuseppe Martinico (LAW 2010-2011): ‘Constitutional Conflicts and Agonistic Pluralism: What Can We Learn From Political Theory?’, in M. Avbelj- G. Davies (eds), Research Handbook on Legal Pluralism and EU Law, Elgar, Cheltenham, 2018, 78-94
  • Giuseppe Martinico (LAW 2010-2011): ‘Overcoming False Dichotomies: Constitutionalism and Pluralism in European and International Studies’, in M. Belov (ed.), Global Constitutionalism and Its Challenges to Westphalian Constitutional Law, Hart, Oxford, 2018, 55-78
  • Alessia Paccagnini (ECO 2011-2012): ‘Did Financial Factors Matter During The Great Recession?Economics Letters, Volume 174, January 2019, Pages 26 - 30
  • Alessia Paccagnini (ECO 2011-2012): ‘Identifying Noise Shocks: A Var With Data Revisions’ (with Riccardo M. Masolo) Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, forthcoming, 2018
  • Nuno Palma (HEC 2014-2015), has a regular on political and economic history Blog at nofuturepast.wordpress.com
  • Roman Petrof (LAW 2007-2008) (with Peter Van Elsuwege) Post-Soviet Constitutions and Challenges of Regional Integration, Routledge
  • Wessel Reijers (RSC 2018-2019) (with Iris Wuisman, Morshed Mannan, Primavera De Filippi, Christopher Wray, Vienna Rae-Looi, Angela Cubillos Vélez, Liav Orgad) ‘Now the Code Runs Itself: On-Chain and Off-Chain Governance of Blockchain Technologies’, Topoi: link.springer.com
  • Athina Sachoulidou (LAW 2018-2019), Unternehmensverantwortlichkeit und –sanktionierung, Mohr Siebeck 2019
  • Alessandro Spiganti (ECO 2018-2020), 'Can Starving Start-Ups Beat Fat Labs? A Bandit Model of Innovation with Endogenous Financing Constraint' forthcoming in The Scandinavian Journal of Economics
  • Aydin B. Yildirim (RSC 2017-2019) with  Arlo Poletti  J. Tyson Chatagnier  Dirk De Bièvre, ‘The Globalization of Production and the Politics of Dispute Initiation at the World Trade Organization’, Global Policy
  • Philip Ayoub (SPS 2013-2014) is now Associate Professor of Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College
  • Adriana Bunea (SPS 2013-2014), as of February 2019, is Associate Professor in the Department of Comparative Politics, University of Bergen
  • William Carruthers (HEC 2014-2015) is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Art History and World Art Studies at the University of East Anglia
  • Ayça Cubucku (SPS 2009-2010) is now Associate Professor in Human Rights and co-Director of LSE Human Rights at the London School of Economics and Political Science
  • Daniel Hershenzon (HEC 2011-2012) is now Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut
  • Swen Hutter (SPS 2012-2013), as of October 2018, is Lichtenberg-Professor in Political Sociology at Freie Universität Berlin and Vice Director of the Centre for Civil Society Research, a joint initiative of Freie Universität and WZB Berlin Social Science Centre.
  • Heather Jones (HEC 2007-2008) moved from the London School of Economics to University College London where she is Professor of Modern and Contemporary European History
  • Masanori Kashiwagi (ECO 2010-2011) was promoted to a full professor at his current institution, Gakushuin University
  • Sophie Lemière (SPS 2015-2017) is a Visiting Scholar, Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow in Contemporary Southeast Asia
  • Magdalena Malecka (LAW 2013-2015) is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Fellow at Stanford University and the University of Helsinki from 2018 to 2020
  • Kyriaki Nanou (SPS 2010-2011) is now Associate Professor in European Union Politics at Durham University
  • Jed Odermatt (LAW 2015-2016) is Lecturer in Law at The City Law School, City, University of London.
  • Antonio Aloisi (LAW 2018-2019)  in October 2018 received the award “Young Academic Talent”,  Associazione dei Benemeriti del Comune e della Provincia di Milano.
  • Ludivine Broch (HEC 2013-2014), in March 2018,  was awarded a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant for her next major project, 'The Gratitude Train, 1949: French Citizens, Transatlantic Objects and the Early Cold War'. The grant will run from 2018 to 2020.
  • Adriana Bunea (SPS 2013-2014) was awarded a 5 year ERC Starting Grant for a project entitled CONSULTATIONEFFECTS –‘Effects of stakeholder consultations on inputs, processes and outcomes of executive policymaking’. She will implement the project at the University of Bergen, in the Comparative Politics department starting in April 2019.
  • Leon Castellanos-Jankiewiz (LAW 2016-2018) was awarded the inaugural 2018 David D. Caron Prize for best paper at the American Society of International Law Research Forum in Los Angeles. The paper is titled 'Nationality, Alienage and Early International Rights' and it was one of his projects during the Max Weber fellowship.
  • Giullemette Crouzet (HEC 2015-2016), was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (Horizon 2020 programme), which she will take up in April 2019 at Warwick University UK.
  • Julian Garritzmann (SPS 2018-2019), was awarded the Deutsche Vereinigung Für Politikwissenschaft prize for his PhD dissertation
  • Magdalena Malecka (LAW 2013-2015) has been awarded a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Fellowship for her research project 'Behaviour, knowledge, policy. The philosophy of science perspective on the applications of the behavioural sciences to policymaking'.
  • Giuseppe Martinico (LAW 2010-2011): June 2018-September 2018 Confucius China Studies Program-Understanding China Fellow at the China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing.
  • Camille Simon was welcomed by Ludivine Broch (HEC 2013-2014) on 11 January 2018
  • Noria Hedi  was welcomed by Rasmus Hoffmann (SPS 2007-2008) and his wife Janina on 21 October 2018
  • Lucio Emiliano was welcomed by Pablo Kalmanovitz (SPS 2013-2015) and Aurora Pellizzi on 24 October 2018 in Mexico City.
  • Andrea Bunea (SPS 2013-2014): Bunea, A. & Ibenskas, R. (2018) "Explaining Yin-Yang Mergers and Lifetime Coalitions: A CEU Approach to Love and European Integration." Journal of Domestic Bliss, 7(8): 1-11.
    (a very academic wedding announcement!)

The MWP Newsletter is a platform for current and former Fellows to share their news and short articles about their academic experience. Please send them to valeria.pizzini@eui.eu