EACES workshop “The Rise of State Capitalism: consequences for economic and political development”

A workshop: “The Rise of State Capitalism: consequences for economic and political development” organized by ICSID and  the European Association for Comparative Economic Studies (EACES) was held at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow on April 10-11, 2019.

The workshop was a part of the 20th Annual HSE April International Conference on Economic and Social Development.

The event attracted researchers from different universities and research institutes, e.g. the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, University of Picardy Jules Verne, Paris Diderot University, Brasília Institute of Public Law, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University.

The participants presented their papers pertaining to the topic of state capitalism and discussed such issues as  varieties of capitalism and the role of the state in the economy, economic efficiency of public enterprises, effect of state capitalism on corruption, inequality and social welfare, and trajectories of political regime development under state capitalism.

"The workshop furthered my thinking about the conceptual and material boundaries of state capitalism(s) with its series of thematic papers, - tells Amanda Zadorian, one of the organizers and participants of EACES workshop. -  These explored context-specific institutions and practices such as monetary policy, bureaucratic incentives, development banks, innovation and R&D policies, and boards of directors. Looking ahead, I found particularly valuable the questions raised by Jutta Guenther and Andrei Yakovlev during the closing roundtable. They drew our attention to reconsidering the goals of our research and the appropriate level of analysis: Which forms or practices of economic organization will best serve us in a future defined by sustainability? And should we be looking for solutions to manage economic problems above (or, I would add, below) the level of the nation-state?"

The workshop concluded with a roundtable discussion “ State Capitalism: An Additional “Variety”?” with contributions from Beáta Farkas (University of Szeged), Ali Farazmand (Florida Atlantic University), Marek Dabrowski (Higher School of Economics and CASE), Jutta Guenter (Bremen University), Piotr Kozarzewski (Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin) and Nikolay Nenovsky (University of Picardie Jules Verne).

Selected papers presented at the workshop will be published in  a special issue of the International Journal of Public Administration (Editor-in-Chief - Ali Farazmand)  in 2020 . The guest editors will be Miklos Szanyi from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Amanda Zadorian from the Higher School of Economics.

"I have had long contact with ICSID and this was not my first occasion to participate on the EACES workshop attached to the Moscow Spring Seminar, - adds Professor Szanyi. - This year I helped also in the organization. As always, the administrative organization was excellent thanks to the experienced local staff. The workshop itself was devoted to a very interesting topic: state capitalism. This invited much interest, half of the submitted proposals had to be rejected due to time limitations of the workshop. The selected presentations were high quality good contributions from several countries. The workshop was very useful tool for networking as well. Another important special feature of the event was the presence of the chief editor of International Journal of Public Administration, a highly ranked professional journal that would devote a special issue for selected papers of the conference. Thus, we not only received good proposals and had good presentations but also the dissemination of the workshop's materials will be efficient".

After the workshop the participants also had a chance to visit a brand new museum “Collection” in Moscow. The museum, founded by David Iakobachvili, houses a unique private collection of objets d'art, most notably self-playing musical instruments, clocks and mechanical rarities.

EACES Workshop April 2019 program final