The Political Economy of Legislative Favouritism

The goal of this project is to identify the patterns of legislative favouritism across different European political economies. We are motivated by various research questions within this broad agenda – in an overall attempt at determining whether legislative favouritism has followed broad developments of capitalist economies. Combining large-scale micro-level datasets with emerging Big Data methods, this project has recently received a three-year support from the Open Society University Network (PI: Mihály Fazekas, Central European University).

Legislators in the Regulatory Order

Over the last thirty years, advanced capitalist democracies of Western Europe have seen the massive spread of independent regulatory agencies. What has been the level of implication of legislators in this process? What is their concrete involvement in the monitoring of regulatory decisions now that independent agencies are firmly entrenched in the governance of advanced economies? On the basis of this twofold research question, the project intends to characterize political-economic interdependences under regulatory capitalism, and the various forms of re/de-politicization processes they entail. It mixes quantitative analysis of legislative design and oversight of regulatory agencies and semi-structured interviews with regulators. The project is funded by a Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques – SAB Research grant. 

Financial Regulation, the Insurance Industry and the Politics of Welfare State Reform

A small yet significant share of social expenditures of Europe’s corporatist political economies is covered by private insurers that are usually strongly integrated to domestic Welfare State institutions. In several countries however, these typically non-profit firms have been increasingly integrated to financial markets and have adopted business practices similar to those of larger and for-profit insurance companies. The goal of this project is to elucidate the causes of these changes in a comparative perspective, and to evaluate their broader implications or side-effects on the marketization and privatization of Welfare regimes. Specifically, the project examines their linkages with the integration of social insurers in the EU regulatory framework for insurance undertakings (Solvency II), as well as to more discrete, yet increasingly important technological changes of the insurance industry as a whole (which notably includes the rise of data science and data analytics in the sector). Involving in-depth qualitative interviews, the project is funded by a grant from the Chaire PARI, a multidisciplinary research program supervised by Pierre François and Laurence Barry.