News Archive

On January 24, 2019, in front of an audience of around 100 participants, economist Thomas Piketty discussed his paper Brahmin Left versus Merchant Right: Rising Inequality and the Changing Structure of Political Conflict (WID.world Working Paper No. 2018/7) Piketty showed a striking long-run evolution in the structure of political cleavages. In the 1950s–1960s, the vote for left-wing parties was associated with lower education and lower income voters. It has gradually become associated with higher education voters, giving rise to a “multiple-elite” party system in the 2000s–2010s: high-education elites now vote for the “left,” while high-income/high-wealth elites still vote for the “right.”

Piketty argues that this can contribute to explain rising inequality and the lack of democratic response to it, as well as the rise of “populism.” He sees the rise of globalization or educational expansion as the origins of this evolution and for the future he predicts a “multiple-elite” stabilization and a return to class-based redistributive conflict. The lecture was organized by MaxPo, and co-sponsored by the Sciences Po Center for European Studies and Comparative Politics (CEE) and Sciences Po CEVIPOF. Discussants were Martial Foucault (CEVIPOF), Nonna Mayer (CEE), and Jan Rovny (CEE/LIEPP).

• Watch video podcast of the lecture
• Download paper (PDF)

MaxPo’s new doctoral researcher Alexis Baudour received his PhD in Mathematics from the Université Nice Sophia Antipolis. He holds a Master’s degree from the École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay and received a Master’s degree in Economic Sociology at LSE in 2018. In January 2019, Alexis joined MaxPo to start his PhD in Sociology at MaxPo under the supervision of Olivier Godechot. Alexis will study the influence of economic factors on the right-wing populist vote in Europe. In particular, his project seeks to better understand the relationship between immigration concerns and the influence of the local economic environment (unemployment, median income, inequality) or the personal financial history of individuals. To achieve this, he compares income distribution evolutions and successive election outcomes using statistical methods such as instrumental variables or first-difference.

Since spring 2018, Marie-Laure Djelic has been a member of the Joint Council of MaxPo. Djelic is Professor at the Centre de sociologie des organisations at Sciences Po, Paris, and serves as Dean of the School of Management and Innovation at Sciences Po. Her research addresses the complex interactions between Business and Society. She has replaced Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier, who was a member of the Council since 2015. The Joint Council advises MaxPo directors on work at the Center as well as on the selection of research projects and staff.

Anne van der Graaf was awarded her doctorate at Sciences Po on September 14, 2018. Her thesis "Managing Financial Risks: Protecting the Organization" explores the internal workings of large organizations that take financial market risks, especially banks and insurance companies. It follows their risk managers and analyses their work and output. While EU regulation and the literature on financial risk state that risk managers control risk-taking of their organizations, Anne van der Graaf shows that this is not the case. Risk managers rather focus on keeping the organization alive: by handling the communications to resourceful outsiders, i.e., regulators, shareholders, and counterparties, they prevent negative consequences from happening to their organization. Regulators, shareholders and counterparties all have the power to bring down a financial organization. With the help of their risk assessments, they want to avoid the negative impact an outsider could have. While accounting rules and mathematical standards restrict the malleability of the risks, risk managers juggle the different limits to show an organization in good health. From 2013 to 2018, Anne van der Graaf was a doctoral fellow at the Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo) in Paris.

In September 2018, MaxPo welcomed its newest PhD student, Tirzah Jensen. Using Foucault’s work on neoliberalism and governmentality, Tirzah’s research at MaxPo examines the management of unemployed citizens in Denmark to study how the neoliberalization of the welfare state affects the relationship between the citizen, the state, and the market. Tirzah holds an MA in Social and Political Thought from University of Warwick and an MA in Comparative Literature from Aarhus University. At MaxPo, Tirzah is pursuing a doctoral degree in Political Science under the supervision of Dr. Jenny Andersson.

Throughout the long post-war period, crisis was a conjectural phenomenon, exceptional in a normalcy of growth and social progress. Many key concepts of the social sciences – indeed, our understanding of democracy, embedded markets, enlightened electorates, benevolent political elites, and problem-solving progressive alliances – seem inapt for understanding current societal upheaval. In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, we have witnessed the breakdown of majority alliances; the return, on a grand scale, of populism both in the Western world and globally; and the eruption of new patterns of social mobilization into chaotic and sometimes violent protest. The forces that underpinned the foundations of welfare capitalism seem obsolete in the face of financial and political elites that are paradoxically both disconnected from national territory and sometimes in direct alliance with nationalist and populist movements. Politics of resentment, politics of place, and new politics of class interact in ways that we do not yet understand. In what is perhaps the greatest paradox of all, neoliberalism has spawned authoritarianism. At the same time, these processes are not at all new but must be placed in the context of the socioeconomic and cultural cleavages produced by the shift to neoliberalism since the 1970s.

The MaxPo 5th Anniversary Conference addressed the different facets of social destabilization that we observe today. It marked the fifth anniversary of the founding of MaxPo, the Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies. Presentations from accomplished scholars in the fields of economic history, sociology, political science, and economics analyzed different aspects of the overarching phenomenon of social destabilization, identifying common challenges in the diverse developments currently observed.

Presenters focused on specific arguments within six broad themes: Financial Markets Between Stability and Instability; Inequalities of the Western World; Colliding Geographies: Class, Place, and Identity after Brexit and Trump; Political Economy in an Age of Permanent Austerity; Political Elites and Experts; and Social Science at the Crossroads, discussed in a concluding round table that explored the question of "Where do we go from here?"

Presentations touched on a wide and impressive range of topics, including: an increase in individuation and social stratification across the developed world, workplace inequalities, a critical examination of global income inequality, the peculiar mix of plutocracy and populism in the U.S., contrasting fascism with "Trumpism," Brexit, resentment within neoliberalism, the poor political representation of lower-income populations, austerity agenda-setting and political party contestation as they relate to the recent rise of populism, the role of partisan policy professionals, the destabilization of Social Democracy over time, and the role of progressive experts in steering the level of public progressivism.

The conference concluded with a discussion of the contribution that social sciences are poised to make in terms of policy recommendations, fueling public debate, and educating future generations of leaders and active citizens in a post-neoliberal world order.

• • Jenny Andersson
• • Lucio Baccaro
• • Jens Beckert
• • Mark Blyth
• • Lucas Chancel
• • Will Davies
• • Marion Fourcade
• • Dorit Geva
• • Olivier Godechot
• • Adam Goldstein
• • Jacob Hacker
• • Colin Hay
• • Chris Howell
• • Donald MacKenzie
• • Gerassimos Moschonas
• • Stephanie L. Mudge
• • Dylan John Riley
• • Marie Laure Salles-Djelic
• • Armin Schäfer
• • Wolfgang Streeck
• • Stefan Svallfors
• • Adam Tooze
• • Cornelia Woll

For his "Critique of the economic concept of resilience," the Austrian Geographical Society has awarded Andreas Eisl the Leopold Scheidl Prize for economic geography 2015. In his MA thesis, Eisl analyzes explanatory factors for the resilience of economies in times of crisis. The 1,000 euro prize is awarded for excellent achievement in the area of economic geography. The awards ceremony took place in December 2016 in Vienna. Andreas Eisl is a doctoral researcher in the cotutelle program of the École doctorale de Sciences Po and MaxPo, both in Paris, and the IMPRS-SPCE in Cologne. He is currently spending the academic year at the MPIfG in Cologne.

The Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo), which was inaugurated in 2012, will continue its research work through 2022. After an evaluation process, MaxPo's funding was enthusiastically renewed for a further five years. An outgrowth of many years of collaboration between the MPIfG in Cologne and Sciences Po in Paris, MaxPo examines the impact of increasing liberalization, technological advances, and cultural change on the stability of industrialized Western societies. The center is funded in equal parts by the Max Planck Society and Sciences Po and was originally funded for five years. With its Max Planck Centers, the Max Planck Society aims to facilitate exchange between Max Planck Institutes and their international partners and achieve research results with a combination of complementary methods and new topics.

Troels Magelund Krarup was awarded his doctorate at Sciences Po on November 4, 2016. His dissertation, entitled "Economic Discourse and European Market Integration: The Problem of Financial Market Infrastructures," argues that processes of European financial market integration – exemplified by a major project to integrate financial market infrastructures by the European Central Bank called Target2 Securities (T2S) – are structured around problems of economic theory, such as the roles of money and government in markets and the distinction between inside and outside the market. This illuminates how seemingly different controversies (technical, legal, economic, and political) around integration processes are structured in parallel ways since they all concern the same conceptual problems of the economic theories motivating European market integration efforts in the first place. For this purpose, he discusses the principles of post-Hegelian social theory, notably in Foucault, and develops a distinct problem analysis approach within this tradition. From 2013 to 2016, Troels Krarup was a doctoral student at the Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo).

Allison Rovny joined the staff of the Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies in Paris (MaxPo) as its new Administrative Director in October 2016. She succeeds Vincent Morandi, who held this position since MaxPo’s founding in 2012 and is now Secretary General in the office of the Vice President for Research of Sciences Po.
Allison Rovny holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In her doctoral dissertation, she examined new social risks, social policies, and dualization in the contemporary welfare state. Before coming to MaxPo she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for European Research (CERGU) at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Rovny has published in several peer-reviewed international journals, participated in numerous academic conferences, and researched and taught courses in European Politics in different countries including the United States, Germany, and Sweden. In France, she taught at Sciences Po campuses in Reims and Paris.

MaxPo is starting its sixth year of activities and is pleased to announce the arrival of Apolline Taillandier and Andrés Chiribogar-Tejada as new doctoral students within the program. Both are enrolled in Sciences Po's PhD program in sociology. Apolline Taillandier's research focuses on transhumanist networks and predictions about a "posthuman" era. Within the framework of MaxPo's research project "The Power of the Future: Conditions of Political Possibility for a Post-Crisis Era," she will investigate the sociohistorical emergence and transnational evolution of contemporary transhumanist ideas and movements and seek to understand how economic actors and academics contribute to the legitimation of transhumanism and to the construction of "posthuman" futures.
Andrés Chiribogar-Tejada's research explores how economic, social, political, and cultural factors interact and have influenced the (under)development of the Ecuadorian Securities Market, contributing to a concentration of power among traditional economic and political actors and to inequality in access to financing in the country.

Lisa Kastner received the 2016 PADEMIA Research Award for her dissertation Restraining Regulatory Capture: An Empirical Examination of the Power of Weak Interests in Financial Reforms in which she examines the role of civil society in the governance of finance after the financial crisis in 2008. The award was presented to Kastner on May 19, 2016, at the PADEMIA annual conference in Brussels. PADEMIA is a Europe-wide network of academic institutions that promotes research and teaching on parliamentary democracy in Europe. It confers its Research Awards to scholars whose excellent work in the field of European integration has contributed substantially to the state of the art of research in this field. From 2012–2015, Lisa Kastner was a doctoral student in the cotutelle program offered jointly by Sciences Po, Paris, and the MPIfG in Cologne. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at MaxPo, Paris.

Lisa Kastner was awarded her Franco-German doctorate from the University of Cologne and Sciences Po Paris. Her dissertation "Restraining Regulatory Capture: An Empirical Examination of the Power of Weak Interests in Financial Reforms" analyzes how non-state actors influence international finance. Lisa Kastner was a doctoral student from 2012–2015 at MaxPo under the supervision of Cornelia Woll. She completed her Franco-German doctorate from the University of Cologne and Sciences Po Paris as part of a "cotutelle," the Franco-German doctoral program.

Since November 2015, Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier has been a member of the Joint Council of MaxPo. Dubuisson-Quellier is a professor of sociology and deputy director of the Centre de sociologie des organisations (CSO), Sciences Po, Paris. Her research focuses on the social construction of consumers and markets. The Joint Council advises MaxPo directors on work at the Center as well as on the selection of research projects and staff.

The jury of the Society of Friends and Former Associates of the MPIfG awarded Lisa Kastner this year's journal prize for her article "Much Ado about Nothing?" Transnational Civil Society, Consumer Protection and Financial Regulatory Reform (Review of International Political Economy 21, 2014). The 750 euro prize is awarded for the best article by a researcher at the MPIfG to be published in a refereed journal. Lisa Kastner was a doctoral student from 2012–2015 at MaxPo under the supervision of Cornelia Woll. She completed her Franco-German doctorate from the University of Cologne and Sciences Po Paris as part of a "cotutelle," the Franco-German doctoral program.

Jenny Andersson is the new co-director of the Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo) in Paris. Taking up her work in November 2015, she succeeds former co-director Cornelia Woll and will direct the Center together with Olivier Godechot.

Jenny Andersson is an economic historian and CNRS Research Professor at the Centre d'études européennes (CEE) in Paris. She is an ERC Principal Investigator of FUTUREPOL, a Sciences Po project on the political history of the future, knowledge production, and future governance in the postwar period. At MaxPo, she will continue her research on the role of the future for economic action and the conditions of political action for a post-crisis age, investigating forms of forecast, scenarios, and future anticipation in extending key forms of interests and value orders into time, and the role of forecasting expertise in this process. She will establish an interdisciplinary research group between history and political science examining the conditions of political action for a post-crisis age, focusing in particular on the effects of austerity on the Left–Right divide.

Jenny Andersson holds a PhD in Economic History from Uppsala University (2003). Before joining Sciences Po in October 2009, she was a postdoctoral fellow and a visiting scholar at the European University Institute, Florence, and at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University. Her dissertation Between Growth and Security: Swedish Social Democracy from a Strong Society to a Third Way about the transformations of the Swedish social democracy after World War II was published in 2006 by Manchester University Press. Her second book, The Library and the Workshop: Social Democracy and Capitalism in an Age of Knowledge, was published in 2009 by Stanford University Press. Jenny Andersson was awarded the CNRS bronze medal for her research in 2015.

• Nouvelle co-directrice du MaxPo (French)
• Personal Homepage: Jenny Andersson

In September 2015, Cornelia Woll will take up the position of Vice President for Studies and Academic Affairs at Sciences Po (Direction des études et de la scolarité). In doing so, she joins the four-strong Executive Committee. She will take responsibility for undergraduate and graduate studies at Sciences Po, overseeing the curricula of the college and the eight professional schools, their strategic development, admissions and examination procedures as well as student life of Sciences Po's 13,000 students. Cornelia Woll is Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po and has been Co-Director of the Max Planck Sciences Po Centers on Coping with Instability in Market Societies since 2012.

MaxPo is starting its fourth year of activities and is pleased to announce the arrival of Shi-Rong Lee and Andreas Eisl as new doctoral students within the program. Both are enrolled in Sciences Po's PhD program in sociology. Shi-Rong Lee's research interests include political economy, work and organizations, social networks, health, and life course studies. Lee's dissertation explores how financialization and the discourse of shareholder value influence labor market inequality in China and Taiwan. Andreas Eisl's research investigates the interplay between the political and the economic sphere, focusing on the role of public debt and fiscal policies.

In July 2015, Sebastian Kohl received the European Network of Housing Research's Bengt Turner Award as first runner up.

His paper "Urban History Matters: Explaining the German-American Homeownership Gap" examines why the differences in homeownership rates between the USA and Germany have remained constant since the nineteenth century. As a graduate student of the International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy (IMPRS-SPCE), Kohl completed his Franco-German doctorate from the University of Cologne and Sciences Po Paris in June 2104 as part of a "cotutelle," the Franco-German doctoral program.

Sebastian Kohl is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the MPIfG.

On 21 November 2014, the Franco-German University (FGU) awarded Sebastian Kohl the 2014 Dissertation Prize for his remarkable Franco-German dissertation in the field of sociology. His work is titled “Homeowner Nations or Nations of Tenants? How Historical Institutions in Urban Politics, Housing Finance and Construction Set Germany, France and the US on Different Housing Paths”.
Sebastian Kohl, is a graduate student from the dual PhD degree between Sciences Po and the International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy (IMPRS-SPCE).
The prize for the best Franco-German dissertation is targeted at post-docs who have earned their doctoral degree through an individual Cotutelle de thèse process (binational PhD programme) or have successfully completed a Franco-German doctoral training programme. His research was supervised by Jens Beckert at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne (MPIfG) and Pierre François at the Centre de sociologie des organisations at Sciences Po.

Eileen Keller was awarded her doctorate in political science from the Humboldt University Berlin on 10 December 2014. Her dissertation "Negotiating the Future of Banking" investigated financial reform in France and Germany after the crisis, in particular regulation concerning the funding sources for the real economy. Eileen Keller spent the spring semester 2013 at MaxPo under the supervision of Cornelia Woll. She is currently a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence.

MaxPo is starting its third year of activities and is pleased to announce the arrival of Francesco Findeisen and Pablo Zamith as new doctoral students within the program. Both are enrolled in Sciences Po's PhD program in sociology. Francesco Findeisen studied Sociology, Political Science, and Philosophy at Humboldt University Berlin, New York University (NYU), and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Pablo Zamith holds a Bachelor in economics from the University of Lausanne and an interdisciplinary Master degree in social sciences from the EHESS and Ecole normale supérieure. Further information about their background and research interests is available here.

Stéphane Guittet was awarded his doctorate in political science from Sciences Po Paris in December 2013. His dissertation investigated financial reforms after the crisis by studying over-the-counter derivative market regulation in the US and the EU. A member of an Otto Hahn Research Group directed by Cornelia Woll, Stéphane Guittet spent the fall of 2010 at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne and subsequent stays at the London School of Economics and Columbia University in New York. His thesis received a "mention très honorable".

MaxPo's doctoral student Anne van der Graaf graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a Master of Science in Research Sociology. Since September she has been enrolled in Sciences Po's PhD program in sociology. Further information about Anne's background and research interests is available here.

MaxPo is delighted to announce the appointment of Olivier Godechot as its new Co-Director. A CNRS research fellow, he is joining Sciences Po in October 2013, in all likelihood through an affiliation with the Observatoire sociologique du changement. He succeeds Marion Fourcade as the holder of the AXA-Sciences Po Chair of Economic Sociology.

An economic sociologist, his primary research interests are in finance, labor markets, academia and network sociology. He has studied the division of labor and ordinary rationalities within a trading room and compensation mechanisms within the financial industry. Extending his interest in labor markets to academia, he has also examined university hiring, in particular the impact of networks on recruitment. He has published five books on finance, labor markets and traders, most recently Working Rich. Wages, Bonus and Appropriation of Profits in the Financial Industry (Chicago University Press, forthcoming).

At MaxPo, he will direct a research group on the issue of financialization in modern societies, with a special interest in mobility in financial labor markets and their effects on broader inequalities.

Olivier Godechot also serves as deputy director for the master’s degree Sociology and Statistics at ENS-EHESS. Previously, he was a member of the Centre Maurice Halbwachs from 2005 to 2013 and an associate member of the Quantitative Sociology Laboratory (LSQ-CREST) from 2006 to 2013. A former student of École normale supérieure, he holds a master’s degree from ENS-EHESS, a PhD in Sociology from the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (2004) and a Habilitation from Sciences Po (2013). In 2013, he was awarded a CNRS Bronze medal for his research.

• Personal Homepage: Olivier Godechot

MaxPo is starting its second year of activities and is pleased to announce the arrival of Anne van der Graaf and Troels Magelund Krarup as new doctoral students within the program. Both are enrolled in Sciences Po's PhD program in sociology. Further information about their background and research interests is available here.

In July 2013 the Franco-German Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo) published the first paper in its MaxPo Discussion Paper series, which presents research in economic sociology, political economy, economic history, and related fields. In MaxPo Discussion Paper 13/1, "Moral Categories in the Financial Crisis," Marion Fourcade, Philippe Steiner, Wolfgang Streeck, and Cornelia Woll offer different perspectives on the role of moral judgments in the economy and call for broader and more systematic scholarly engagement with this issue. The contributions build on a roundtable discussion held at the opening of MaxPo last November.

• MaxPo Discussion Paper 13/1

On May 7, 2013 Germany and France celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Franco-German Financial and Economic Council. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and French Minister of the Economy and Finance Pierre Moscovici issued a joint political declaration stating: “France and Germany agree that stability, competitiveness and growth in the Economic and Monetary Union are of crucial importance for the future of our two countries and the European Union.” Additionally, they committed themselves to promoting scientific cooperation between France and Germany, citing the MaxPo Center as a successful example of this type of cooperation (paragraph 37).

• Press release German Federal Ministry of Finance (English)
• Press release German Federal Ministry of Finance (French)
• Franco-German Financial and Economic Council declaration (German)
• Franco-German Financial and Economic Council declaration (French)

The Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo) is offering its scholars and students, and the interested public, a new service: the MaxPo Newsletter. From Spring 2013 onwards a the MaxPo Newsletter will provide information on people and upcoming events at MaxPo. It is published three times a year.

You can download the MaxPo Newsletter from our website, or subscribe to it by email by writing to info@maxpo.eu.

• MaxPo Newsletter - Spring 2013

The Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo) officially opened its doors on November 29, 2012. The opening ceremony of the Center at Sciences Po in Paris was followed by a reception at the residence of the German Ambassador. A panel discussion on “Moral Categories in the Financial Crisis“ rounded off the ceremony. The panelists included Marion Fourcade, MaxPo, Philippe Steiner, University of Paris-Sorbonne, Wolfgang Streeck, MPIfG, and Cornelia Woll, MaxPo. The discussion was chaired by Christine Musselin, Center for the Sociology of Organisations.

Videos of the opening ceremony:
• Presentation of MaxPo (French)
• Panel discussion (Full Length)
• German embassy video of the opening ceremony
• Website of the German Embassy

Culminating many years of collaboration in research and teaching between the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG) in Cologne and Sciences Po in Paris, the Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo) will open its doors at Sciences Po on October 1, 2012. In jointly founding the Center, the MPIfG and Sciences Po, a university specializing in the humanities and social sciences, are taking a major step toward working together more closely. At MaxPo, they will investigate the impact of increasing liberalization, technological advances, and cultural change on industrialized Western societies.

• MaxPo Profile (pdf)
• MaxPo Research Agenda (pdf)

From January 7–11, 2013, a week-long PhD seminar on the "Sociology of Markets" will be held at Sciences Po Paris. Taught in English by Professor Jens Beckert (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne) and Professor Pierre François (Sciences Po Paris), the seminar is open to PhD students currently enrolled in a PhD program at a French or German university.

Participating students must have prior knowledge in the field of economic sociology or adjacent fields (such as economic history, political economy or economic anthropology).

The Franco-German Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo) has succeeded in recruiting two outstanding international scholars for its faculty, the sociologist Marion Fourcade and the political scientist Cornelia Woll.

Fourcade and Woll will each head a research group at the Center as of fall 2012 and be instrumental in launching the Center's research program. Run jointly by Sciences Po Paris and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne the Center's research concentrates on investigating how individuals, organizations and politics are coping with the new forms of instability that have developed in Western societies during the last forty years. MaxPo is located in Paris.

At a joint conference in Paris on December 15 and 16, 2011, the MPIfG and Sciences Po presented the subjects that will be investigated at the future Franco-German Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies. The Center will study how Western societies are handling the growing instability of their economies. Markets are increasingly dominating many areas of life, which has led to a culture of individualization that is destabilizing traditional social structures.

How can states, organizations and individuals cope with increasingly unstable economic, social and political environments? The Center, which is being run jointly by the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne and Sciences Po, will be located in Paris. Currently two research groups are being set up.

• Inaugural conference: program and presenters