Photo Credit: Astrid Duenkelmann, MPIfG
Research
My research is in comparative politics with a substantive focus on market regulation and a regional focus on Europe and North America. I am interested in the regulatory role of the state within capitalism: how and why regulatory regimes develop historically; how state institutions shape the organization of market economies; and how domestic regulatory systems evolve in response to globalization and pressures toward convergence.
Empirically, much of my work focuses on the political economy of competition law, including the relationship between competition law and varieties of capitalism; the role of courts in shaping enforcement regimes; the global diffusion of competition law; and the political and economic dynamics of transnational and extraterritorial enforcement. More recently, I have expanded this research agenda to include industrial policy, with a particular focus on the politics of state aid.
I have particular interests in European politics and public policy, especially the politics of European integration, the socio-economic determinants of support for the EU and the relationship between welfare reform and support for populist political parties.
1. The Political Economy of Competition Law
I am writing a book on the comparative political development of competition law. I have written several papers on the politics of competition policy. In collaborative projects, I am currently examining competition law and varieties of capitalism in Europe and the politics of EU state aid rules.
2. European Politics and Public Policy
I have published articles about the effects of the Euro-crisis on public trust in government and the role of the economy in shaping public support for European integration. I have also written working papers on policy implementation in the EU and the relationship between labor market reform and public support for European populism.
The Politics of Industrial Policy
With a collaborator, I have received an external grant to support the development of a new project on the comparative politics of business investment subsidies. We have written a working paper that develops a typology of the diverse socio-economic logics underpinning investment subsidy programs. I recently presented our findings at the "New Thinking in Industrial, Innovation & Technology Policy" held at Columbia University.
Trust on Trial
In my current book project, Trust on Trial: Coordination Rights, Competition Law and the Making of Modern Capitalism, I examine the lasting ways that competition law has shaped the development of capitalism during the long 20th century. One of the first book-length comparative studies of European and American competition policy outside the fields of law or economics, the manuscript offers a distinct contribution on both the origins of the Atlantic divide in antitrust as well as its consequences for the organization of the political economy. Drawing from extensive qualitative and quantitative evidence, the book traces the historical evolution of regulatory regimes on both sides of the Atlantic and highlights the central role of courts and legal institutions in structuring economic governance. At the same time, it explores the central ways that democratic contestation has altered these rules over time as workers, farmers and small businesses have sought to expand their coordination rights and create fairer terms of competition. Finally, Trust on Trial explores how the evolution of coordination rights and competition law have shaped the organization of markets, firms, and systems of industrial coordination on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Political Economy of Competition Law
I have expanded upon the themes explored in the book project through several articles. In an article recently published in Regulation & Governance, Kathy Thelen (MIT) and I analyse the ‘Brandeisian’ features of EU competition law and identify the institutional factors that contributed to their development over time. In another article, published in Comparative Political Studies, we develop an original comparative coordination rights typology that proposes concrete links between competition rules and the organization of capitalism. In joint work with Sebastian Kohl (Freie Universität Berlin) that is forthcoming in Governance, we quantitatively test the framework using long run indicators of competition law stringency, economic coordination, and party manifesto data. Together this work demonstrates that antitrust rules systematically differ across capitalist system types, that antitrust rules correlate with objective measures of economic coordination, and that LME and CME competition regimes are rooted in distinct political coalitions.
In one article, published in Socio-Economic Review, I explain why anti-dominance rules are now more intensively enforced in the European Union compared to the United States. I argue that American and European antitrust policy is structured by distinct competition paradigms which have been institutionalized by courts through case law. In the United States, a laissez-faire jurisprudential regime has blocked or discouraged anti-monopoly enforcement. In Europe, an ordoliberal jurisprudential regime has facilitated a more intensive enforcement program. In highlighting how case law structures regulatory paradigms, the analysis shows that courts can contribute to both ideational continuity and change in economic policy.
In another article, published in Regulation & Governance, I show that the diffusion of adversarial legalism in Europe has been moderated by the the organization of EU institutions and the inertia of European legal and bureaucratic traditions. Analyzing EU legislation and the pattern of public and private enforcement in the competition and securities fields, I show that European directives and regulations rely primarily on administrative enforcement through vertically coordinated networks of independent regulatory agencies, a regulatory style closer to bureaucratic legalism. In practice, public enforcement through administrative action has grown much more rapidly than private enforcement, which remains infrequent in most European jurisdictions. The paper points to the limits of global policy diffusion in heavily judicialized areas of the law.
In a new working paper I investigate whether foreign corporate prosecutions are used to promote local prerogatives in integrated markets. Examining more than 5,000 cartel fines by 74 domestic regulators, I show that foreign corporate prosecutions have become a diffuse and increasingly reciprocal instrument of regulatory enforcement as more regulators have investigated and sanctioned multinational corporations. At the same time, these enforcement actions are systematically biased against foreign-domiciled companies. Multi-level regression models of several thousand cartel sanctions demonstrate that foreign firms receive fines that are more severe than similarly sized domestic firms that were members of the same cartel. Judicial review, independent competition agencies, and transnational regulatory networks do not moderate, and may even exacerbate, this bias. The findings suggest that foreign corporate prosecutions are a tool that a variety of jurisdictions can use to hold multi-national corporations accountable to global norms; however, the effectiveness of foreign corporate prosecutions may depend on enforcement remaining tied to territorial politics.
European Politics and Public Policy
European politics at the supranational and national levels is another area of interest.
In an article published in European Union Politics, Jeff Frieden and I investigate the effects of the Euro-crisis on Europeans’ confidence in government. We find that Europeans’ trust in political institutions has dropped precipitously since the onset of the Euro-crisis, and that trust has declined the most within the countries and among workers most adversely affected. Drawing from an extensive analysis of 600,000 responses to 23 waves of the Eurobarometer, we show that economic, more than cultural or political factors, explain the acute, asymmetrical decline in citizen trust observed over the last decade. The most cited article published in European Union Politics over the last three years, the research has been used by the European Commission and Brookings Institution.
In another article for European Union Politics published in 2021, we have conducted a more in-depth analysis of the economic determinants of support for the EU regime. Examining a quarter century of Eurobarometer responses, we find that utilitarian considerations at both the national and individual levels remain important predictors of support for the EU regime even as national identity has also played an increasingly important role. Where macro-economic conditions are favorable compared to historical patterns, and where individuals have occupational positions that experienced more relative benefit from integration, citizens express more support for membership and more satisfaction with EU democracy. The findings point to the continuing relevance of economic interests in explaining public support for the European project as well as the difficulty of disentangling utilitarian and identitarian explanations.
In working paper with Jeffry Frieden, I examine whether labor market spending affects support for populist political parties opposed to European integration and globalization. Using election results from 16 Western European countries (1990–2021) and individual-level survey data, we show that more generous labor market policies are associated with lower support for populist parties, while cuts driven by labor market reforms and austerity are linked to higher populist voting. The effects are strongest among people who have experienced unemployment and among current and former trade union members. The findings suggest that the erosion of income protection since the early 2000s has had important political consequences, and that how governments cushion economic risk matters for democratic stability.