Highlights

New book just out on 10 April 2025 by AxPo postdoctoral researcher Ulysse Lojkine 

Le fil invisible du capital: Déchiffrer les mécanismes de l'exploitation

Ulysse Lojkine

Abstract:

The economic relationships of capitalism cannot be observed with the naked eye. The intertwined circulation of goods, the use of monetary units of account, the indirect mechanism of price interactions and the international division of labor make them illegible. The Moroccan worker, the French cashier and the big banks are caught up in rigorous but opaque links, which create ambiguity about fundamental questions: who works for whom, who decides for whom?
Provided we accept abstraction and a break with immediate experience, it is possible to answer these questions and, against the liberal illusion of contractual equality, highlight the relations of appropriation and power that run through our society. As Marx said, these relationships are inherent to the very workings of the capitalist system. But, particularly in an age of international production networks, finance and rents, exploitation cannot be analyzed solely in terms of the face-to-face relationship between employer and employee. It unfolds in cascades, on several scales, creating a structure that is also that of economic coordination.
The horizon for socialist emancipation is not a return to local communities, nor a general mobilization at the service of the state, but institutions for large-scale synchronization of individual ends and capacities.

****

Congratulations to Catarina Leão, 2025 Prize for the Best Doctoral Dissertation awarded by the Portuguese Political Science Association. She defended her dissertation, « Autocratic Legacies and Immunisation Against Extremism: A Rational Choice Approach », in 2023 at the University of Oxford. 

****

Joint PhD seminar 10-12 January 2024 at Sciences Po

Co-sponsored by the UFA-DFH, AxPo, & the MPIfG 

The Sociology of Markets

Dr. Olivier Pilmis and Dr. Timur Ergen

Seminar description

Markets are the core organizational mechanisms of capitalist economies. From a sociological perspective, markets are not just an economic device for the allocation of goods but are institutions inseparably interwoven with the political, social, and cultural environments in which they operate. The seminar aims at providing students with the analytical and conceptual tools to study markets. The conceptual texts and case studies read in the seminar provide insights into different approaches in economic sociology. The seminar features sessions that reflect on recent developments in the economy— algorithmic control, distributional struggles, powerful firms, and state intervention—and their impact on the role devoted to market organization in contemporary capitalism. The seminar will rely on extensive readings of classical and contemporary literature, and on presentations by instructors, students, and guest speakers.

****

Congratulations to Lukas Arndt, dual-degree PhD candidate from Sciences Po (MaxPo) and the University of Cologne and MPIfG, who successfully defended his doctoral dissertation in Sociology on 26 June 2023! His PhD dissertation project Linking Wealth and Power: Unity and Political Action of the World’s Wealthiest Capitalist Families drew on ideas from the sociology of elites, corporate governance, corporate political action, as well as (neo-)Marxist class analysis to develop a framework for an analysis of capitalist classes in the 21st century. In a first step, global super-rich individuals and the corporate elite were mapped in corporate networks. Second, the relationship was analyzed between control over capital and different forms of individual and firm political action in the U.S. and Germany. The following research questions were pursued: Can we meaningfully understand super-rich capitalist families and the corporate elite as taking political class action?

****

Congratulations to former-MaxPo PhD candidate Alexis Baudour, who successfully defended his doctoral dissertation in Sociology on 15 May 2023! His PhD dissertation project What kind of economic relation impacts right-wing populist vote? under the supervision of Olivier Godechot (AxPo/CRIS, Sciences Po) explores the relationship between the right-wing populist vote, economy, and status decline. It proposes a relational model linking the right-wing populist vote and economic transformations, as well as between inter-generational status decline, downward mobility, gender, and the right-wing populist vote.

****

Congratulations to former-MaxPo PhD candidate Andrés Chiriboga, who successfully defended his doctoral dissertation in Sociology on 11 May 2023! His PhD dissertation project The Ecuadorian Securities Market: a sociological account of an apparent failure under the supervision of Olivier Godechot (AxPo/CRIS, Sciences Po) explains the peculiar evolution of Ecuador’s securities market—an inefficient but functional market—by examining how a set of business and regional ties influence economic transactions and their outcomes.

****

Congratulations to former-MaxPo PhD candidate Andreas Eisl for defending his dissertation in Political Science on January 30th, 2023! His doctoral dissertation project The politics of budgetary constraints. An ideational explanation for the variation in national fiscal frameworks in the eurozone shows how dominant national macroeconomic idea-sets influence the variation in the stringency and design of national fiscal frameworks across eurozone member states. The research findings are helpful in understanding the dynamics of the current reform debate on the European fiscal framework and can be tested against new empirical materials as soon as member states have to adapt their national systems to a reformed set of European requirements.

His PhD supervisors are Emiliano Grossman (Center for European Studies and Comparative Politics (CEE), Sciences Po) and Martin Höpner (MPIfG).