It’s the second and final day of our SASE Mini-conference on The Welfare State in Financial Times. Today, we start with a panel on financialization and state transformation (see details below). We conclude our mini-conference with a panel on financialization and the changing face of welfare.
Panel: Financialization and State Transformation (15:00-16:30 CET)
Panel: Financialization and the Changing Face of Welfare (18:00-19:30 CET)
Filed under Events, Financialization, Out and About, Welfare State
Today, we’re kicking off our long-awaited SASE mini-conference on financialization and the welfare state. Organized by Jeanne Lazarus, Daniel Mertens and myself, the mini-conference aims to explore the complicated new ways in which social and financial policies have become entangled in contemporary welfare states. The contributions to the mini-conference map the ongoing financialization of the welfare state in contemporary political economies by focusing on the introduction and expansion of financial tools and mechanisms in public and private welfare provision. The contributions study how welfare states and other social groupings have debated and introduced new public policies and financial tools that promise to protect against growing financial risks in everyday life. Looking at these promises of protections through the market requires a fundamentally different understanding of the nature of the welfare state than the scholarship’s traditional focus on decommodification.
Even though we are not able to meet in person in Amsterdam this year, we have been able to put together an exciting online program covering multiple dimensions of financialization in the realm of social policy and the state. Today’s program includes a panel on the political economy of financial sector practices, regulation and macroeconomic functions; financialization and household debt; and financialization and pensions. For details, see below.
Panel “The Political Economy of Finance Sector Practices, Regulation and Macroeconomic Functions” (10:00-11:30 CET)
Panel “Financialization and Household Debt” (15:00-16:30 CET)
Panel “Financialization and Pensions” (18:00-19:30 CET)
Filed under Events, Financialization, Out and About, Welfare State
Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com
The corona crisis is posing unique challenges to teachers and students as traditional courses are redesigned for online teaching. Some students lack the time and resources to participate synchronously (e.g. attend live seminars), while others prefer the structure and sense of community that synchronous teaching brings. To make our course inclusive of both groups of students, my co-teacher Janna Goijaerts and I have chosen to combine synchronous and asynchronous forms of participation. So far, we have found that this combination helps students stay engaged and connected, even when at a physical distance from us and from each other.
On Wednesday, May 20, we will be hosting a webinar on how to improve student engagement through sychronous and asynchronous teaching tools. The webinar is organized by the Center for Innovation and the ICLON at Leiden University.
For information on how to join, click here.
Together with Jeanne Lazarus and Daniel Mertens, I am organizing a mini-conference on The Welfare State in Financial Times for the 2020 SASE conference in Amsterdam (July 18-20). Paper abstracts can be submitted from November 25, 2019 until January 10, 2020.
In this mini-conference, we hope to explore the complicated new ways in which social and financial policies have become entangled in contemporary welfare states. Particularly, we are interested in the question of how processes of financialization are shaping welfare state development. On the one hand, the contributions to the mini-conference would map the ongoing financialization of the welfare state in contemporary political economies, both historically and comparatively, by focusing on the introduction and expansion of financial tools and mechanisms in public and private welfare provision. On the other hand, we welcome contributions that study how welfare states and other social groupings have debated and introduced new public policies and financial tools that promise to protect against growing financial risks in everyday life. Looking at these promises of protections through the market requires a fundamentally different understanding of the nature of the welfare state than the scholarship’s traditional focus on decommodification.
This mini-conference has several aims. First, we hope to reintegrate scholarship on welfare and finance to come to a better understanding of how the welfare state and the financial system are mutually intertwined, both historically and comparatively. Second, we hope to approach the mini-conference theme using a broader conception of finance: to include not just financial actors and their interest organizations, but also financial ideas and narratives, norms and practices that interact at different scales of the modern polity. Third, we would like to reflect on how the use of financial tools can be considered as a tool to protect household living standards and economic stability. Finally, we hope our mini-conference forms the basis of new conceptualization of welfare state development under financialized capitalism.
We welcome papers with varied disciplinary backgrounds discussing the following issues:
More details can be found on the SASE website (scroll all the way down for our mini-conference).
Filed under Events, Financialization, Netherlands
Philip Mader and I will be presenting (for the first time!) the introductory chapter for the Routledge International Handbook of Financialization, which we wrote together with Daniel Mertens, on May 23 in London. Our talk is part of a one-day workshop at the Open University, organized by Pauline Gleadle and Stuart Parris, on the conceptualization and operationalization of financialization.
More information, including the possibility to register for the workshop, can be found here.
Filed under Events, Financialization, Handbook, Publications
I am back at the Institute of Public Administration as of this week, after an amazing stay at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study. And the new semester is immediately off to a good start: this week, I am giving two talks on the flipped classroom on research methods I have been developing and teaching with my colleague Alexandre Afonso.
On Wednesday, January 30, I will kick off the first of a series of upcoming LunchTalks on online education at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs (don’t believe the text posted on the university website, after the link; it won’t be boring).
And on Thursday, January 31, Alexandre and I will be presenting during the symposium “Best of both worlds: adding online experiences to on-campus education,” where we will be sharing our experiences with the flipped classroom format of teaching.
For more information on the flipped classroom, click here. Or otherwise, just enjoy this great “flipping” gif:
Our panel on financialization and inequality at the Harvard Law School conference on money as a democratic medium can now be viewed on YouTube or below. Hear Gerald Epstein, Rana Foroohar, Rebecca Spang and yours truly speak on this important topic, under the inspired chairpersonship of Sandy Brian Hager.
For a recap of the conference and all other video presentations, follow this link.
Filed under Events, Financialization, United States
Photo credit: Chiel Koolhaas on Skitterphoto.com
On January 25, Tobias Wiß (Johannes Kepler University Linz) and I will be presenting our paper “Pension Funds and Sustainable Investment: Comparing Regulation in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands” (with Karen Anderson, University College Dublin) during the Netspar International Pension Workshop in Leiden.
Our paper reports the first findings of a Netspar-funded research project on the regulation of sustainable investment by funded pension schemes. In this study, we use insights from comparative political economy and financialization studies to direct attention to the institutional underpinnings of pension schemes’ investment behaviour. The starting point of the paper is the assumption that regulation either incentivizes or discourages sustainable by pension funds. We furthermore assume that the type of regulation present in a pension system is influenced by institutional characteristics, such as the history of the pension system, the capitalization of the second pillar, the vehicles for pension provision, and the mode of governance. The paper employs a broad conceptualization of regulation, incorporating 1) national legislation, 2) regulatory activities by supervisory agencies and 3) self-regulation by the pension sector itself.
In all three countries, there is a growing sense that sustainability is related to (positive) return and that pension schemes, as other groups of politics, the society and the economy, need to take on responsibility for future sustainability, especially in times of climate change. Nonetheless, we do find substantial differences with regard to the regulation of sustainable investment by pension funds: highly developed in the Netherlands, moderately developed in Denmark and underdeveloped in Germany. In none of the cases, legal requirements for sustainable investment exist. Pension investments in all three cases are guided by the prudent person rule, although other rules may exist (e.g. ban on cluster munition in the Netherlands, quantitative restrictions in Germany). The Netherlands stands out as the only case, where 1) the industry has initiated self-regulation on sustainable investment and 2) where the regulator is developing a more all-encompassing attitude towards financial risk, that for instance also includes climate risk. Finally, we find that fund-level activities toward ESG investments are considerable in the Netherlands and Denmark and rather moderate in Germany.
In the coming months, we’ll be revising our paper before it will be published as a Netspar working paper. Keep on an eye on this website or our project page on ResearchGate for any updates.
Filed under Denmark, Events, Germany, Netherlands, Netspar, Pension Funds, Publications
Photo credit: Klearchos Kapoutsis
Together with Daniel Mertens, I am co-organizing one of the panels at the 2019 ECPR General Conference in Section 11: Changing Political Economies and Welfare States. Our panel aims to analyze comparatively how the welfare state and the financial system are mutually intertwined, adopting a broader conception of finance which includes not just financial actors and their interest organizations, but also financial ideas and narratives.
From the CFP: “Scholars of the welfare state have shown how traditional welfare arrangements are challenged by new kinds of risks that have emerged in the late twentieth century. Among these risks is the process of financialization. It refers to the growing influence of financial markets and financial actors over the productive economy and over society at large, affecting the welfare state in several ways. For instance, welfare provisions may rely on financial market investment for funding while financial arrangements have also been touted as alternative sources of welfare (e.g. through asset-based welfare) and governments have developed new financial activities in order to maintain current welfare provisions. Furthermore, several indirect effects of financialization affect the sustainability of mature welfare states, such as growing indebtedness and social-economic inequalities.
Against this background, the panel has two aims: First, it hopes to reintegrate scholarship on welfare and finance to come to a better understanding of how the welfare state and the financial system are mutually intertwined, both historically and comparatively. Furthermore, we hope to approach the panel theme using a broader conception of finance: to include not just financial actors and their interest organizations, but also financial ideas and narratives, norms and practices that interact at different scales of the modern polity.”
Check out the CFP here!
Filed under ECPR, Events, Financialization, Welfare State
Natascha van der Zwan 