International Workshop "Institutions and development: a sub-national perspective": results and final thoughts

The joint ICSID & Quality of Government Institute (QoG) workshop “Institutions and development: a sub-national perspective” was successfully concluded on October 7-9. The workshop was held as a Zoom meeting. This new format once again enabled event organizers to bring together participants from universities all around the world: Russia, Sweden, Germany, USA, UK, Ireland, Italy, Finland, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Poland, India, Turkey, Nigeria and Uruguay. In three days the workshop was attended by more than 100 people.

The first day of the workshop started with a key-note lecture “Regional Governance in Europe: causes and consequences” by Nicolas Sharron (Gothenburg University). During the second day another key-note speaker of the event, Susanne Wengle (University of Notre Dame) presented her study entitled “Technology and the political economy of Russian Agriculture”.

The programme of the workshop included papers, devoted to analysis of regional government activities, social policy issues and also issues of public goods, norms and impact of historical factors. All speakers received valuable comments that will help them improve their research not only from paper discussants but also from participants. At the end of the event the organizers discussed opportunities for future collaborations between their Institutes.

The workshop participants noted a wide range of presentation topics and also pointed out high quality of the given feedback. Some of the speakers shared their opinion on the event.

«I would like to thank you once again for a terrific work shop: well organized and with high quality papers, presentations and discussions. As I think that the final discussion showed there are several ways we can collaborate in the future, both on individual and institutional levels. I am very glad if we can make this happen».

Carl Dahlström (QoG, University of Gothenburg)

«Thank you very much for the last couple of days, it was a fantastic workshop! It was great to meet everyone and get to know the research at HSE».

Marina Povitkina (QoG, University of Gothenburg)

 «В общем и целом я слышу только позитивные отзывы. Наши QoG-овцы впечатлены разнообразием тем и данных, уровнем исследований, отличными комментариями. Все работы были интересны, что довольно редкое явление на конференциях. Что можно было бы улучшить? В отсутствие социальной составляющей - общих ужинов и кофе-брэйков - нет ощущения, что мы познакомились по-настоящему».

Marina Nistotskaya (QoG, University of Gothenburg)

«Был очень рад принять участие в семинаре и высоко оцениваю его академический уровень. Практически все выступления были очень интересны как с точки зрения постановки исследовательского вопроса, так и с точки зрения собранных и используемых данных. Отдельно хотелось бы отметить высокий уровень оппонирования и качество обратной связи. Мной были получены полезные комментарии, которые я постараюсь использовать для улучшения моей текущей работы».

Aleksey Oshchepkov (HSE University)

All abstracts of the papers are available here: Programme ICSID and QoG workshop 2020.pdf