State and Capital: Old Problems, New Trajectories

The relationship between the state and capital is neither fixed nor neutral, but has been continuously renegotiated through historical conflict, crisis, and compromise. From the mercantilist era's direct fusion of sovereign power and commercial interest, through the putative liberal separation of the state from market forces, to the Keynesian welfare state's active management of aggregate demand, each epoch has produced a distinct institutional settlement between political authority and capital accumulation. Central to this evolution is the contested terrain of monetary policy: decisions over interest rates, currency regimes, and credit allocation are never merely technical, but encode distributional choices between creditors and debtors, finance capital and productive industry. The post-2008 turn toward quantitative easing, and more recently the "derisking" paradigm - in which states strategically mobilize public finance to crowd in private investment in priority sectors - marks a further mutation, blurring the public-private boundary while raising renewed questions about statecraft in the service of accumulation. These transformations often reflect the underlying imperative of maintaining conditions for capital valorization: the state absorbs systemic risk, disciplines labor, and underwrites investment, yet remains a contested terrain in which class forces contest its orientation and priorities. The aim of the conference is to address these and other aspects of the relation between state and capital from an historical, economic and philosophical perspective.  

PROGRAMME

DAY 1 - MONDAY, JULY 6 2026

9:00-9:20 AM - Welcome coffee

9:20-9:30 AM - Welcome Remarks, by David Todd, Professor at Sciences Po, Coordinator of the Center for History and Economics in Paris (CHEP)

9:30-10:45 AM
Katrina Forrester (Harvard)
The State in Capitalist Societies

10:45-11:00 AM - Coffee break

11:00 AM-12:00 PM
Samuel Hayat (CNRS / CEVIPOF-Sciences Po)
The Infrastructure of Inequality: Saint-Simonian Antipolitics and the Invention of State Capitalism (1830–1870)
                             
12:00-01:00 PM
Stefan Eich (Georgetown)
Keynes on socialisation

01:00-02:30 PM - Lunch break

02:30-03:45 PM
Eric Monnet (Paris School of Economics)
Hidden World of Banking Variety and State Intervention: The Origins andLegacies of the Savings Banks Movements in long-run global perspective

03:45-04:00 PM - Coffee break

04:00-05:00 PM
Daniela Gabor (SOAS)
Coercive Credit Regimes

05:00-06:00 PM
Leah Rose Downey (King's College London)
Governing money as a statal entity

                                                      **********************

DAY 2 - TUESDAY, JULY 7 2026

9:00-9:30 AM - Welcome coffee

9:30-10:45 AM
Pierre Charbonnier (CNRS / CEE-Sciences Po)
The Climate Coalition. Green states, fossil capital, and the social logic of climate politics

10:45 -11:00 AM - Coffee break

11:00 AM-12:00 PM
Martin O'Neill (University of York)
Climate Emergency, State Power, and the Expansion of Democratic Control

12:00-01:00 PM
Chiara Cordelli (University of Chicago / Sciences Po)
What's really wrong with derisking? The normative case for democratic planning

01:00–02:30 PM - Lunch break

02:30–03:45 PM
Lukas Muller-Wunsch (University of Chicago)
The Genealogy of Capital

03:45–04:00 PM - Coffee break

04:00–05:00 PM
Inés Valdez (Johns Hopkins)
Capitalism, Imperialism, and the Paradox of Dependent Democracy

05:00–06:00 PM
Alyssa Battistoni (Barnard / Columbia)
To be confirmed