Upcoming Events
March 2019
On Morality and Street-Level Bureaucracy: A Perspective From Political Theory
4:30pm, March 26th, 2019
Strand Building S3.30
When citizens interact with the state, they encounter street-level bureaucrats—the welfare workers, police officers, counselors and educators responsible for implementing public policy and enforcing the law. By combining political theory with participant observation in a public service agency, Bernardo Zacka (MIT) argues that street-level bureaucrats are caught in a troubling predicament.
May 2019
Book Launch: Sheilagh Ogilvie on The European Guilds
6:30pm, May 9th, 2019
Bush House South East Wing 2.12
Guilds ruled many crafts and trades from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, and have always attracted debate and controversy. They were sometimes viewed as efficient institutions that guaranteed quality and skills. But they also excluded competitors, manipulated markets, and blocked innovations. Did the benefits of guilds outweigh their costs? REGISTRATION REQUIRED.
Larry Bartels: Political Inequality in Affluent Democracies
6:30pm, May 14th, 2019
Bush House (S) Lecture Theatre 2 (4.04)
Professor Larry Bartels (Vanderbilt) examines the relationship between public opinion and social spending in thirty affluent democracies over the past three decades. He finds that governments’ responsiveness to citizens’ preferences was highly skewed in favor of affluent citizens, who were generally less supportive of the welfare state than poor citizens were. REGISTRATION REQUIRED.
We Love You, We Love You Not? Foreign Investment Policy and the New Right in Post-Communism
4:30pm, May 23rd, 2019
Bush House South 2.06
How have post-communist nations in Central and Eastern Europe navigated the dual pressures of attracting FDI and keeping their anti-business and anti-FDI promises to their electorates? Roger Schoenman (UC Santa Cruz) explores the cases of the Polish Law and Justice Party (PiS), Hungary’s Fidesz, Slovakia’s Social Democrats under Robert Fico and Bulgaria’s GERB government.
June 2019
Gary Cox: Patent Disclosure and England’s Industrial Revolution
6:30pm, June 5th, 2019
Bush House (S) Lecture Theatre 2 (4.04)
Did the English patent system help spark the Industrial Revolution? Most scholars addressing this question have focused on whether patents improved the economic incentive to invent. Professor Gary Cox (Stanford) examines whether patents improved access to useful knowledge. REGISTRATION REQUIRED.