The Governance Podcast

Podcast - The Dispersion of Power: A Critical Realist Theory of Democracy

About the Talk

In this episode of the Governance Podcast, CSGS Director Mark Pennington speaks with Dr Samuel Bagg about his recent book - The Dispersal of Power: A Critical Realist Theory of Democracy, published by Oxford University Press. The book presents an in depth consideration of the problem of 'elite capture' and the possible strategies to address this. 

The Guest

Samuel Bagg is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at University of South Carolina, where he teaches courses in political theory. Before moving to UofSC, he taught at the University of Oxford, McGill University, and Duke University, where he received his PhD in 2017.His research aims to ground democratic theorizing in a realistic picture of the dynamics of social inequality and political power. Among other venues, it has appeared in the American Political Science Review; the American Journal of Political Science; the Journal of Politics; Perspectives on Politics; the Journal of Political Philosophy; the European Journal of Political Theory; Philosophy, Politics, and Economics; Social Philosophy and Policy; Social Theory and Practice; and Political Research Quarterly. 

Podcast: Liberal vs Paternalist Approaches to Economic Development Policy with Prof William Easterly

About the Talk

In this episode of the Governance podcast, our Director Mark Pennington speaks to Prof. William Easterly from New York University on liberal vs paternalist approaches to economic development policy.

The Guest

William Easterly is Professor of Economics at New York University and Co-director of the NYU Development Research Institute, which won the 2009 BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge in Development Cooperation Award. He is the author of three books: The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor (March 2014), The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (2006), which won the FA Hayek Award from the Manhattan Institute, and The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (2001). He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed academic articles, and has written columns and reviews for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Review of Books, and Washington Post. He has served as Co-Editor of the Journal of Development Economics and as Director of the blog Aid Watch. He is a Research Associate of NBER, and senior fellow at BREAD. Foreign Policy Magazine named him among the Top 100 Global Public Intellectuals in 2008 and 2009, and Thomson Reuters listed him as one of Highly Cited Researchers of 2014. He is also the 11th most famous native of Bowling Green, Ohio.

Podcast - Estonia and Socialist Reality with Matthew D. Mitchell

About the Talk

In this episode of the Governance podcast, our Director Mark Pennington interviews Dr. Matthew Mitchell on the socialist reality in Estonia’s history. This episode is part of Matthew’s co-authored publication as part of the Realities of Socialism series run by the Fraser Institute.

The Guest

Matthew D. Mitchell is a Senior Fellow in the Centre for Economic Freedom. Prior to joining the Fraser Institute, Mitchell was a long-serving senior fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where he remains an affiliated senior scholar. He is also a senior research fellow at the Knee Regulatory Research Center at West Virginia University. Mitchell received his PhD and MA in economics from George Mason University and his BA in political science and BS in economics from Arizona State University. His writing and research focuses on economic freedom, public choice economics, and the economics of government favoritism. Mitchell has testified before the U.S. Congress and several state legislatures. He has advised federal, state, and local government policymakers in the United States on both fiscal and regulatory policy. His research has been featured in numerous national media outlets, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, National Public Radio, and C-SPAN.

From Panmure House to State Capitalism: Adam Dixon on the relevance of Adam Smith

About the Talk

In this episode of the podcast, Prof. Mark Pennington interviews Prof. Adam Dixon on the contemporary relevance of the Scottish philosopher and political economist Adam Smith.

The Guest

Adam D. Dixon holds the Adam Smith Chair in Sustainable Capitalism at Adam Smith’s Panmure House, the last and final home of moral philosopher and father of economics Adam Smith. Professor Dixon is recognized as a world-leading scholar on the political economy of sovereign wealth funds, theories of state capitalism, and the intersection of markets and the state in the sustainability transition.

His books include The Specter of State Capitalism (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2024), Sovereign Wealth Funds: Between the State and Markets (Agenda, 2022), The Political Economy of Geoeconomics: Europe in a Changing World (Palgrave 2022), The New Frontier Investors: How Pension Funds, Sovereign Funds, and Endowments are Changing the Business of Investment Management and Long-Term Investing (Palgrave Macmillan 2016), The New Geography of Capitalism: Firms, Finance, and Society (Oxford University Press 2014) Sovereign Wealth Funds: Legitimacy, Governance, and Global Power (Princeton University Press, 2013), and Managing Financial Risks: From Global to Local (Oxford University Press, 2009).

Trained as an economic geographer and political economist in the United States, Spain, France, and the United Kingdom, Adam brings an interdisciplinary perspective to this work. Previously, Adam worked at the University of Bristol and Maastricht University in the Netherlands, where he led a large European Research Council project on sovereign wealth funds.

He holds a D.Phil. in economic geography from the University of Oxford, a Diplôme (Master) de l’Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, and a BA in international affairs and Spanish literature from The George Washington University in Washington, DC. 

The Life and Times of F.A. Hayek: A Conversation with Bruce Caldwell

About the Talk

In this episode of the podcast, Prof. Mark Pennington interviews Prof. Bruce Caldwell, one of the co-authors of this recently published book Hayek: A Life.

Few twentieth-century figures have been lionized and vilified in such equal measure as Friedrich Hayek—economist, social theorist, leader of the Austrian school of economics, and champion of classical liberalism. Hayek’s erudite arguments in support of individualism and the market economy have attracted a devout following, including many at the levers of power in business and government. Critics, meanwhile, cast Hayek as the intellectual forefather of “neoliberalism” and of all the evils they associate with that pernicious doctrine.

In Hayek: A Life, historians of economics Bruce Caldwell and Hansjörg Klausinger draw on never-before-seen archival and family material to produce an authoritative account of the influential economist’s first five decades. This includes portrayals of his early career in Vienna; his relationships in London and Cambridge; his family disputes; and definitive accounts of the creation of The Road to Serfdom and of the founding meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society.

The Guest

Bruce Caldwell is research professor of economics and the director of the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University.

Professor Caldwell's research focuses on the history of economic thought, with a specific interest in the life and works of the Nobel Laureate economist and social theorist F. A. Hayek. He is the author of Hayek's Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F. A. Hayek (2004) and since 2002 has served as the general editor of the book series The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek. In 2022 he published Mont Pelerin 1947: Transcripts of the Founding Meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society as well as Hayek: A Life, 1899-1950, the first of a two-volume biography that he is writing with Hansjoerg Klausinger. In 2019-2020 he was a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He has also held research fellowships at NYU, the LSE, and Cambridge University. At Duke he is the Director of the Center for the History of Political Economy, a center whose purpose is to promote research in, and the teaching of, the history of economic thought. 

Podcast: Liberty and Complexity in Liberalism and Conservatism with Dr. Greg Collins

About the Talk

Can a moral or divine law independent of contingency accommodate the social and economic complexities of circumstance? Does a defense of custom necessarily repudiate the idea of immutable law applicable to all peoples and cultures? Is transcendent universality and spontaneous order reconcilable?

This episode explores this age-old tension with reference to the intellectual origins of liberalism and conservatism. These ideologies are often said to derive from the French Revolution, but their roots trace back even further to the tension between reason and custom in the early modern period. Thinkers and jurists such as Richard Hooker, Edward Coke, and Matthew Hale defended custom for embodying the distilled wisdom of the generations, while the social contractarian tradition placed heavy stress on universal rationality and legislative sovereignty to instantiate the principles of individual autonomy and equality in civil society based on abstract reason. During the pamphlet wars in England over the Revolution, Edmund Burke, considered to be the godfather of conservatism, expanded on such early endorsements of custom to defend the cultural inheritance of European civilization. On the other hand, Richard Price and Thomas Paine, among various adversaries of Burke, intensified the early contractarians’ emphasis on abstract reason to support the Revolution and attack Burke’s defense of custom and just prejudice.

This episode thus examines whether proto-conservatives, spanning from Hooker to Burke, and proto-liberals, spanning from Hobbes to Paine, persuasively harmonized their embrace of a universal moral law with their recognition of the complexity of social life. This inquiry will illustrate how the intellectual origins of conservatism and liberalism were premised on varying presuppositions about the sinful nature of man and the epistemological constraints of individual knowledge.

The Guest

Gregory M. Collins is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and Program on Ethics, Politics, and Economics at Yale University. His book on Edmund Burke’s economic thought, titled Commerce and Manners in Edmund Burke’s Political Economy, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. Greg’s scholarly and teaching interests include the history of political thought, the philosophical and ethical implications of political economy, American political development, constitutional theory and practice, and the political theory of abolition. He has published articles on Burke’s economic thought in Review of Politics; Adam Smith’s imperial political and economic thought in History of Political Thought; Burke’s and Smith’s views on Britain’s East India Company and monopoly in Journal of the History of Economic Thought; Frederick Douglass’ constitutional theory in American Political Thought; Burke’s plan for the abolition of the slave trade in Slavery & Abolition; and Burke’s intellectual relationship with Leo Strauss and the Straussian political tradition in Perspectives on Political Science.

Greg won the 2020 Novak Award, awarded annually by the Acton Institute to one young scholar who conducts research on the intersection of liberty and virtue. His current book project is a study of the idea of civil society in African-American political, social, and economic thought.

Podcast: When Law sends the Wrong Message: Understanding What Laws Communicate About ‘Socially Acceptable Behavior’ with Shubhangi Roy

About the Talk

Lawmakers, activists, and academics, often, presume that enacting a law sends a (powerful) message about what is socially desirable and acceptable. At worst, it is presumed that it will stay as ink on paper and not create any change. Therefore, it is considered as a cost-less endeavor with potential for creating great change at low costs. This has led for increase in demand for legislation, even ones that may be hard to enforce and even in countries which have limited state capacity, for their ‘symbolic value’. In this workshop, we will consider this claim by understanding the social and institutional conditions under which laws can have such a symbolic power to send the right message and, more importantly, when it can send the wrong one. No individuals interact with any law in isolation. Individuals’ decision to comply with a law, their understanding of what it means and how others will respond to it are all shaped by past experiences (theirs and of those within their reference network) with the law. In fact, the strength of the claim that laws send a message, itself, relies on the fact that there is a social expectation that laws (in general) do, in fact, provide information about what is socially acceptable behavior. What happens when this social expectation is not in place? Utilizing examples of legislations prohibiting behaviors deeply rooted in social and cultural norms as well as in institutional contexts with generally low compliance and trust in state, this workshop discusses the limits and costs of legal expression. Using a dialogic approach, this workshop will explore what law can successfully communicate in different contexts.

 

About the Speaker

Shubhangi Roy is a legal academic at Universität Münster.

Complexity and the Politics of Regulation: A Discussion with Andrew Haldane

On this week’s episode of the Governance Podcast, Mark Pennington, the Director at the Study of Governance and Society here at King College London, interviews Andy Haldane. This episode is titled 'Complexity and the Politics of Regulation’, and discusses the governance of financial risk in conditions where it's hard to predict how agents will respond to a given situation and the possibility of error, whether by private agents or by those who regulate their behavior.

The Guest

Andy was formerly Chief Economist at the Bank of England and a member of the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee. Among other positions, he is Honorary Professor at the Universities of Nottingham, Manchester and Exeter, Visiting Professor at King’s College, London, a Visiting Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford and a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Academy of Social Sciences. Andrew is Founder and President of the charity Pro Bono Economics, Vice-Chair of the charity National Numeracy and Chair of the National Numeracy Leadership Council. Andrew was the Permanent Secretary for Levelling Up at the Cabinet Office from September 2021 to March 2022 and chairs the Government’s Levelling Up Advisory Council. He has authored around 200 articles and 4 books.

 

‘Too much’ and ‘too little’ content moderation: Internet governance as a case study in advanced liberal modes of government: In Conversation with Terry Flew

On this week’s episode of the Governance Podcast, Mark Pennington, the Director at the Study of Governance and Society here at King College London, interviews Professor Terry Flew. This episode is titled "‘Too much’ and ‘too little’ content moderation", and discusses the question of content moderation on digital platforms as a case study in Foucauldian approaches to governmentality.

The Guest

Terry Flew is Professor of Digital Communication and Culture at the University of Sydney. He is the author of 16 books (seven edited), 71 book chapters, 118 refereed journal articles, and 20 reports and research monographs. His books include The Creative Industries, Culture and Policy (SAGE, 2012), Global Creative Industries (Polity, 2013), Media Economics (Palgrave, 2015), Understanding Global Media (Palgrave, 2018), Regulating Platforms (Polity, 2021), and Digital Platform Regulation: Global Perspectives on Internet Governance (Springer, 2022).

He was President of the International Communications Association (ICA) from 2019 to 2020 and is currently an Executive Board member of the ICA. He was elected an ICA Fellow in 2019. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA), elected in 2019. He has advised companies including Facebook/Meta, Cisco Systems and the Special Broadcasting Service, and government agencies in Australia and internationally, including the Australian Communication and Media Authority and the Singapore Broadcasting Authority.

He has held visiting professor roles at City University, London and George Washington University, and is currently a Distinguished Professor with Communications University of China. He currently holds two Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery grants, on Trust and Distrust in News Media, and Valuing News: Aligning Interpersonal, Institutional and Societal Perspectives, and heads the International Digital Policy Observatory, funded by the ARC in partnership with the Australian Information Industries Association.

The data that is and that data the isn’t: the pitfalls of using big data: In conversation with Diane Coyle

On this week’s episode of the Governance Podcast, Mark Pennington, the Director at the Study of Governance and Society here at King College London, interviews Professor Diane Coyle. This episode is titled "The data that is and that data the isn't: the pitfalls of using big data", and discusses the various uses and implications of big data in society, and the many pitfalls that may arise. 

The Conversation

‘Big Data’ fuels AI models like ChatGPT and the machine learning systems that are generating much debate about their promise – and peril – for decision-making. The impact of the technology will depend on the character of the data used. While the issue of data bias is well-understood (although not solved), less attention has been paid to other aspects such as data quality (is the data an accurate measure of the underlying object?), missing data (do we have only part of the picture?), and the meaning of data (how are the underlying concepts represented by the data constructed and interpreted)? As AI models are advancing fast enough to be deployed increasingly widely in society, there is a pressing need to reflect on the perspective on our social world created for them through the data on which they are trained and updated.

The Guest

Professor Diane Coyle is the Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. Diane co-directs the Bennett Institute where she heads research under the themes of progress and productivity. Her latest book is ‘Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be‘ on how economics needs to change to keep pace with the twenty-first century and the digital economy. Diane is also a Director of the Productivity Institute, a Fellow of the Office for National Statistics, an expert adviser to the National Infrastructure Commission, and Senior Independent Member of the ESRC Council. She has served in public service roles including as Vice Chair of the BBC Trust, member of the Competition Commission, of the Migration Advisory Committee and of the Natural Capital Committee. Diane was Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester until March 2018 and was awarded a CBE for her contribution to the public understanding of economics in the 2018 New Year Honours.

Politics and Expertise: In Conversation with Zeynep Pamuk

Our ability to act on some of the most pressing issues of our time, from pandemics and climate change to artificial intelligence and nuclear weapons, depends on knowledge provided by scientists and other experts. Meanwhile, contemporary political life is increasingly characterized by problematic responses to expertise, with denials of science on the one hand and complaints about the ignorance of the citizenry on the other.

Politics and Expertise offers a new model for the relationship between science and democracy, rooted in the ways in which scientific knowledge and the political context of its use are imperfect. Zeynep Pamuk starts from the fact that science is uncertain, incomplete, and contested, and shows how scientists’ judgments about what is significant and useful shape the agenda and framing of political decisions. The challenge, Pamuk argues, is to ensure that democracies can expose and contest the assumptions and omissions of scientists, instead of choosing between wholesale acceptance or rejection of expertise. To this end, she argues for institutions that support scientific dissent, proposes an adversarial “science court” to facilitate the public scrutiny of science, reimagines structures for funding scientific research, and provocatively suggests restricting research into dangerous new technologies.

Through rigorous philosophical analysis and fascinating examples, Politics and Expertise moves the conversation beyond the dichotomy between technocracy and populism and develops a better answer for how to govern and use science democratically.

Use of Algorithms in Society: In Conversation with Cass Sunstein

On this week’s episode of the Governance Podcast, Mark Pennington, the Director at the Study of Governance and Society here at King College London, interviews Professor Cass R. Sunstein. This episode is titled "The Use of Algorithms in Society", and discusses the various ethical and moral dilemmas and implications of increasing AI us in society, and its impact on both social and economic factors. 

 

The Guest

Cass R. Sunstein is currently the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard. He is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. In 2018, he received the Holberg Prize from the government of Norway, sometimes described as the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for law and the humanities. In 2020, the World Health Organization appointed him as Chair of its technical advisory group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health. From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and after that, he served on the President’s Review Board on Intelligence and Communications Technologies and on the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board. Mr. Sunstein has testified before congressional committees on many subjects, and he has advised officials at the United Nations, the European Commission, the World Bank, and many nations on issues of law and public policy. He serves as an adviser to the Behavioural Insights Team in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Sunstein is author of hundreds of articles and dozens of books, including Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Richard H. Thaler, 2008), Simpler: The Future of Government (2013), The Ethics of Influence (2015), #Republic (2017), Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide (2017), The Cost-Benefit Revolution (2018), On Freedom (2019), Conformity (2019), How Change Happens (2019), and Too Much Information (2020). He is now working on a variety of projects involving the regulatory state, “sludge” (defined to include paperwork and similar burdens), fake news, and freedom of speech.

UK Pensions Crisis and Central Banking: Dr. Steven Klein interviews Prof. Martin Weale

On this week’s episode of the Governance Podcast, Dr. Steven Klein interviews Prof. Martin Weale from the Department of Political Economy at King's College London. This episode is titled “UK Pensions Crisis and Central Banking”. This episode discusses the pension funds sell-off that occurred following the UK government's mini-budget in early October 2022 and which led to the Bank of England's intervention. 

 

The Guest

Martin Weale is Professor of Economics at King's Busines School. Martin graduated in 1977 in Economics from Clare College, Cambridge. On graduating he took up an Overseas Development Institute Fellowship at the National Statistics Office in Malawi. He returned to Cambridge in 1979 to work on economic modelling projects directed by Sir Richard Stone and Professor James Meade, before becoming an Assistant Lecturer in 1987 and subsequently a Lecturer in the Faculty of Economics and Politics. He was elected a Fellow of Clare College in 1981.

 

Martin is an applied economist with an interest in macro-economic and micro-economic problems. Recent work includes exploring the effects of the Bank of England’s asset purchase programme and an exploration of the relationship between the education of parents and that of their children. In 2016 he joined the Office for National Statistics Panel of Economics Experts and he is currently developing work on democratic measures of economic performance. 

 

Bettering Humanomics: A Conversation with Deirdre McCloskey

This episode explores Prof McCloskey’s criticism of the way the discipline of economics has unfortunately been separated from matters of ethics, the importance of liberal values for human progress, and her calls for a human-centered approach to economics called ‘humanomics’.

Cultures of Expertise in Economics: In Conversation with Dr. Danielle Guizzo

On this week’s episode of the Governance Podcast, our Director Mark Pennington interviews Dr. Danielle Guizzo from University of Bristol. This episode is titled “Cultures of Expertise in Economics”. This episode explores the way in which the discipline of Economics has evolved over the years, the way economists achieved their status as scientific experts, and how pluralism and diversity may be promoted within the wider discipline.

Governing Markets as Knowledge Commons with Dr. Erwin Dekker

On this week’s episode of the Governance Podcast, our Director Prof. Mark Pennington interviews Dr. Erwin Dekker from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

This episode is titled “Governing Markets as Knowledge Commons”, which features Erwin’s recently co-edited volume with Cambridge University Press, Governing Markets as Knowledge Commons.

The Guest

Dr. Erwin Dekker is senior fellow with the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

He has recently published Jan Tinbergen (1903-1994) and the Rise of Economic Expertise (2021) and The Viennese Students of Civilization (2016), as well as the edited volume Governing Markets as Knowledge Commons (2021) all with Cambridge University Press.

He has published in professional journals regarding history of economics, methodology of economics, cultural economics and economic sociology. He is currently working on a history of the intellectual descendants of the German Historical School as well as a project on markets at the margins of society, so-called grey zones.

He has previously worked as assistant professor of cultural economics at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam.

Counterfactual History with Niall Ferguson

On this week’s episode of the Governance Podcast, our Associate Director Dr. Samuel DeCanio interviews historian Niall Ferguson from the Hoover Institution. This episode is titled “Counterfactual History with Niall Ferguson”.

Sovereignty and International Law: In Conversation with Carmen Pavel

On this week’s episode of the Governance Podcast, our Director Prof. Mark Pennington interviews Prof. Carmen Pavel from the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. This episode is titled “Sovereignty and International Law”, which features Carmen’s recently published book with Oxford University Press Law Beyond the State.

How Neo-Liberal are Contemporary Modes of Governance? In Conversation with Will Davies

On this week’s episode of the Governance Podcast, our Director Prof. Mark Pennington interviews Prof. Will Davies from Goldsmiths, University of London. This episode is titled “How Neo-Liberal are Contemporary Modes of Governance?”

Culture, Science, and the Predicament of Climate Change: In Conversation with Michael Hulme

On this week’s episode of the Governance Podcast, our Director Prof. Mark Pennington interviews Prof. Michael Hulme from Cambridge University. This episode is titled “Culture, Science, and the Predicament of Climate Change”, where he suggests looking at climate change challenges as predicaments for human societies to cope with.