Deadline: April 4, 2025
Democracies worldwide face mounting internal and external threats (Wolf 2023). Domestically, neoliberal reforms—particularly financial deregulation—have deepened inequality (Stockhammer 2013, Lin and Tomaskovic-Devey 2013), eroded social solidarity (Brown 2019), and depoliticized key distributional policies (Burnham 2001, Harvey 2011). Internationally, financial liberalisation has facilitated tax evasion (Palan et al. 2010, Shaxson 2011, Wojcik 2013) and pressured governments to cut social provision (Streeck 2017), further weakening social cohesion. Meanwhile, global finance has enabled autocratic regimes to reinforce one another and disrupt democratic societies through misinformation (Applebaum 2024). These trends took hold in democratic societies in the 1980s and accelerated while the former Eastern Bloc underwent its democratic transitions.
In this interdisciplinary workshop, we propose to investigate how financial interests shape democratic institutions, policymaking, and accountability in Central Eastern Europe. The workshop will examine financial sector reforms during the democratic transition and beyond, tracing their institutional origins and democratic implications with the aim to illuminate broader mechanisms through which financial interests and elites shape and potentially constrain democratic governance and how their influence can be reined in. The aim of the workshop is to develop the starting point of a joint research grant proposal.
We are particularly interested in research tackling the following questions:How did domestic institutions and political economy constellations influence the democratic transition in Central Easter Europe countries and what role finance played in this?How have financial elites formed and changed during the democratic transition and beyond?How did domestic financial interests and international financial actors interact during the democratic transition?How did institutional decisions (especially in the areas of central banking and sovereign debt management) during the democratic transition shape democratic governance going forward?
The first half of the workshop will be public-facing and allow speakers to present their research to a broad audience. The second part will be a closed event among potential grant collaborators. We welcome contributions from heterodox perspectives, including but not limited to heterodox economics, (international) political economy, political sciences, economic history and economic geography. The workshop will take place in a hybrid format to allow for remote participation on 17 June 2025 at King’s College London, (Strand Campus, Bush House NE1.02). To participate please send an abstract (max. 500 words) of your potential contribution to Ewa Karwowski (ewa.karwowski@kcl.ac.uk) and Ia Eradze (i.eradze@gipa.ge) by 4 April 2025.