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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’.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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?”

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.

On this week’s episode of the Governance Podcast, our Assistant Director Dr. Bryan Cheang interviews Prof. Daniel Smith from Middle Tennessee State University. This episode features his latest book Money and the Rule of Law, published by Cambridge University Press and co-authored with Alexander Salter and Peter Boettke. Drawing on a wide body of scholarship, this volume presents a novel argument in favor of embedding monetary institutions into a rule of law framework. The authors argue for general, predictable rules to provide a sturdier foundation for economic growth and prosperity. The authors argue that a rule of law approach to monetary policy would remedy the flaws that resulted in misguided monetary responses to the 2007-8 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.

On this week’s episode of the Governance Podcast, our Director Prof. Mark Pennington, interviews Prof. Jennifer Murtazashvili from the University of Pittsburgh. This episode features her latest book Land, the State and War, published by Cambridge University Press. The book employs a historical narrative, extensive fieldwork and a national survey to explore how private property institutions develop, how they are maintained, and their relationship to the state and state-building within the context of Afghanistan. This episode also discusses the long running governance challenges in Afghanistan, and the recent problems associated with the actions of foreign powers.

On this week's episode of the Governance Podcast, our Director Prof. Mark Pennington, interviews Dr Mikayla Novak from the Australian National University. This episode features her latest book Freedom in Contention: Social Movements and Liberal Political Economy, which explores social movement activities and outcomes through the lens of liberal political economy. Using historical and contemporary case studies, this book illuminates how social movements fluidly organise in often repressive environments to achieve freedom, equality, and dignity.     The Guest   Dr Mikayla Novak is a doctoral student in sociology at The Australian National University. Her research interests are wide-ranging, and include: classical sociology; economic and fiscal sociology; inequality and social stratification; network theory and analysis; rational-choice sociology; social movement studies; and social theory.   Mikayla has extensively written on matters of social thought and policy, invariably attuned to the complex intersections between sociological, economic and political phenomena. In 2018 her first book, Inequality: An Entangled Political Economy Perspective, was published by Palgrave   Prior to her transition into academic sociology, Mikayla was an economist with a doctorate in economics awarded at RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia) and a First Class Honours economics degree at The University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia).

On this week's episode of the Counterintuitive Series on the Governance Podcast, Professor Mark Pennington (King's College London) argues that if not quite everything, then a great many things, ought to be legally for sale. From kidneys, to drugs, to sex, to votes, how much ought the market be allowed to freely trade in?

In the latest issue of the Governance podcast Mark Pennington interviews Prakash Kashwan of the University of Connecticut. The conversation considers the political economy foundations of the Bloomington school with in-depth discussion on the role of power, institutions, and incentives in the analysis of common pool resource problems.

What can early modern practices of duelling teach us about the contemporary 'culture wars' over identity politics? According to Dr Clif Mark, a lot more than you might think. Join us for this episode of the Counterintuitive Series on the Governance Podcast.

That we live in an era of 'post truth politics' has become a widespread mantra since the shock of the Brexit vote and the 2016 election of Donald Trump. But Matt Sleat (University of Sheffield) believes this is a mistake: politics is no more 'post truth' now than it has ever been. To understand what has been happening, we need to look elsewhere. Join us on this episode of the Counterintuitive Series on the Governance Podcast.

Diana Popescu (Department of Political Economy, King's College London) joins the Counterintuitive Series of the Governance Podcast this week to argue that Universal Basic Income - the state giving money to everybody, for free, and unconditionally - is a realistic and desirable policy, one that governments around the world should take seriously. Subscribe on iTunes and Spotify Subscribe to the Governance Podcast on iTunes and Spotify today and get all our latest episodes directly in your pocket. Follow Us For more information about our upcoming podcasts and events, follow us on facebook, twitter or instagram (@csgskcl). The Guest Dr Popescu works on distributive justice, recognition theory, and the relation between the two with respect to recognition struggles, disability rights, minority discrimination and social exclusion. She received her PhD from the London School of Economics, where she worked as a Fellow in Government from 2014 until 2017. She is also interested in public policy, and has contributed to projects aimed at assessing progress in combating the social exclusion of the Romani minority within the European Union. Her current research interests include discrimination theory, post-truth, and applications of recognition struggles to social polarisation.

Given the upheavals unleashed by the Brexit referendum of 2016, many are now wary of direct democracy. But Jonathan Benson (Utrecht University) argues that to improve our current politics we need more, not less, direct involvement of the people in decision-making. Join us on this episode of the Counterintuitive Series on the Governance Podcast. Subscribe on iTunes and Spotify Subscribe to the Governance Podcast on iTunes and Spotify today and get all our latest episodes directly in your pocket. Follow Us For more information about our upcoming podcasts and events, follow us on facebook, twitter or instagram (@csgskcl). The Guest Jonathan Benson is Assistant Professor in Political Philosophy at Utrecht University (j.d.benson@uu.nl). His general research interests are in political and democratic theory, political epistemology, and theoretical political economy. He has published on issues such as deliberative and participatory democracy, the relationship between democracy and the market, the limits of markets, and environmental politics.

In the first episode of the Counterintuitive Series on the Governance Podcast, Professor Clare Chambers (University of Cambridge) defends the ideal of the marriage free state. She argues that for reasons of justice and equality, the state should not legally recognise - and therefore, privilege - any particular form of marriage. And until it ceases to do so, we must consider its actions unjust. Subscribe on iTunes and Spotify Subscribe to the Governance Podcast on iTunes and Spotify today and get all our latest episodes directly in your pocket. Follow Us For more information about our upcoming podcasts and events, follow us on facebook, twitter or instagram (@csgskcl). The Guest Clare Chambers is Professor of Political Philosophy and a Fellow of Jesus College. She came to Jesus College and to the Faculty of Philosophy in the University of Cambridge in 2006. Previously she held academic positions at the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics, and has twice been a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley. Prof Chambers is on leave from College duties from October 2018 until October 2021. During that time she has a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust to work on a project titled Intact: The Political Philosophy of the Unmodified Body. Prof Chambers is a Council member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, the UK’s leading independent body informing policy and public debate about the ethical questions surrounding medical and biological innovations and research. She is also Editor-in-Chief of Res Publica, a journal of moral, legal, and political philosophy; a member of the Executive Committee of The Aristotelian Society; and the Secretary of the Britain and Ireland Association for Political Thought.

Why are political parties important for liberal democracy? Which institutional reforms can alleviate the burdens of globalisation on the working class? Join us on this episode of the Governance Podcast for a conversation between Steven Klein (King’s College London) and Ian Shapiro (Yale) on the major governance challenges facing advanced democracies and how they might be solved. Subscribe on iTunes and Spotify Subscribe to the Governance Podcast on iTunes and Spotify today and get all our latest episodes directly in your pocket. Follow Us For more information about our upcoming podcasts and events, follow us on facebook, twitter or instagram (@csgskcl). Read the Books The Wolf at the Door: The Menace of Economic Insecurity and How to Fight It by Ian Shapiro and Michael J. Graetz Responsible Parties: Saving Democracy From Itself by Ian Shapiro and Frances McCall Rosenbluth  The Guest Ian Shapiro is Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University. He has written widely and influentially on democracy, justice, and the methods of social inquiry. A native of South Africa, he received his J.D. from the Yale Law School and his Ph.D from the Yale Political Science Department where he has taught since 1984 and served as chair from 1999 to 2004. Shapiro also served as Henry R. Luce Director of the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies from 2004-2019. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Shapiro is a past fellow of the Carnegie Corporation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He has held visiting appointments at the University of Cape Town, Keio University in Tokyo, and Nuffield College, Oxford.  His most recent books are The Real World of Democratic Theory (Princeton University Press, 2012) Politics Against Domination (Harvard University Press, 2016), and, with Frances Rosenbluth, Responsible Parties: Saving Democracy from Itself (Yale University Press, 2018). His current research concerns the relations between democracy and the distribution of income and wealth. Skip Ahead 0:42: I wanted to begin with your 2018 book on Responsible Parties: Saving Democracy From Itself, which you co-authored with Frances McCall Rosenbluth. It’s a spirited defence of the importance of parties for democracy. Before we get into your argument, I wanted to see if you could say a little about why you think political parties are so vital for democracy, as well as why you think their value tends to be overlooked or neglected in popular debates. 5:33: This is a question of democracy bypassing elections altogether. Another issue you deal with in the book is debates about democratising political parties themselves. So some people say that political parties are necessary evils, or they have these positive effects but they can also lead to capture by elites within the party, and so what we need is good democracy within the parties. And in the book you’re also sceptical of that—could you tell us more about your worry? 9:24: This raises a really interesting puzzle which you don’t entirely address in the book, which is, if this is so harmful to parties, why do they do it? 13:30: I think another interesting aspect is the decline of the traditional sources of mobilisation for political parties. So one thing I wanted to ask is, there are two dimensions to political parties—one is the coordination function, which is bundling issues together, building those compromises, integrating various interest groups—but parties also exist to get people to vote and to mobilise their constituencies. If you look at the debate in the last two primaries in the Democratic party and in the UK, it seems like one of the issues is how you balance the coordination function while ensuring that the core constituencies of the party will viably vote. And it seems like one of the big stories has been the gradual decline of some of these reliable sources of mobilisation.     17:57: So the book is a defence of parties and you’re trying to push back against a lot of scepticism towards political parties—you defend large scale, catch all political parties—your ideal, it seems, is the Westminster, British model where you have large catch all parties who can come into power and govern on their own. You also say some interesting things about coalitions… But there is a worry about political parties in general that I feel doesn’t come through in the book… which is that when you have this sort of system, parties have an incentive to take controversial or particularly challenging issues off the political agenda. 28:08: I’m probably slightly more sympathetic to referendums than you because there’s an interesting democratic theory puzzle that comes in—so if it’s a basic constitutional issue, what other mechanism is there for altering the debate? Would a better designed referendum worked better in the UK? 33:25: This brings us back to what you said earlier and is a theme of your new book, which is that a lot of these changes in the party system are being driven by larger structural changes in the political economy of advanced capitalist societies. 39:16: This is something you mentioned earlier but I wanted to reiterate- there is the insecurity but there is the decline of institutions that would buffer some of that insecurity like labour unions… and you have a lot of disaffected people who have an understandable distrust and distaste for politics in general… they don’t have institutions that can connect them with political parties and make them feel like their voice is represented. Then you get the elites trying to figure out how to re-engage those people and they don’t have a lot of tools.

Join us on this episode of the governance podcast between Simon Kaye and Mark Pennington for a conversation on the impact of Elinor Ostrom's work on public policy. Simon Kaye discusses his latest report for the New Local on how the ideas of self-governance and community power can transform public services in the UK. Subscribe on iTunes and Spotify Subscribe to the Governance Podcast on iTunes and Spotify today and get all our latest episodes directly in your pocket. Follow Us For more information about our upcoming podcasts and events, follow us on facebook, twitter or instagram (@csgskcl). Read the Report Think Big, Act Small: Elinor Ostrom's Radical Vision for Community Power The Guest Having been awarded a PhD in democratic theory from the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London in 2015, Simon Kaye has worked as a researcher and educator in academia and think tanks, with roles at UCL’s Constitution Unit, The Hansard Society, Queen Mary, and King’s College London. His last role was as Research Director at the Project for Modern Democracy, running projects on Whitehall reform and the rebalancing of UK economic policy.   Simon has written and spoken on a diversity of subjects, including democracy and voting systems, localism and self-governance, political economy, historical methods, constitutions, conspiracy theories, and post-truth. He has published work in venues including History and Theory, Critical Review, European Political Science, and The Fabian Society. He has also penned articles for popular publications such as The Independent, Politics.co.uk, CityMetric, and CapX. He has contributed to several podcasts to talk about his research, presented at festivals and international conferences, participated in public lectures and panel debates, won several competitive academic fellowships, and appeared on BBC News as a political commentator.  Simon’s research at New Local is focused around the Community Paradigm, drawing on his expertise in democracy and political economy. His major projects include work on mutual aid groups, the new working practices and relationships that emerged during the 2020 pandemic, and the landmark research of Nobel Prize-winner Elinor Ostrom into governance systems and community management of common resources. New Local’s Ostrom project is a direct development of the original Community Paradigm and forms the intellectual grounding for much of our work on public service reform and the need for more autonomous and empowered communities.   Skip Ahead 00:26: the New Local have recently produced a very interesting policy report which tries to apply some of the ideas of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom to look at aspects of a possible policy reform agenda in the UK and perhaps other countries. Those of you who follow our podcast will know that the Ostrom’s work is quite important at our Centre because of their focus on the relationship between formal and informal institutions of governance. So Simon, welcome to the podcast. I wonder if we could start off by you giving a bit of background on what you do at New Local. 02:25: You’ve produced with New Local what I think is an excellent report on Ostrom. I wonder if you could say more about why and how the New Local has become aware of the Ostroms' work? 06:40: If we think about some of the ideas in the report, as part of this community paradigm, you are pushing an agenda which is emphasizing this idea of decentralisation, of communities taking control of how public services are delivered, or assets are managed—the idea of communities having the space to craft their own hybrids between communities, markets and states. What would you say to the idea that in the UK people have been arguing for decentralisation for many years, there’s lots of complaints in the British government about over-centralisation, and yet the decentralisation agenda never really seems to take root. What do you think it is about the Ostrom agenda that can possibly make that happen? 11:08: So you would say, for example, that the Ostrom agenda, in its capacity to appeal to people across the political spectrum, is different from --what we heard in the late 1990s and early 2000s during the Tony Blair premiership in Britain, was a lot of talk about stakeholderism and participation—and this Ostrom agenda has aspects of that but also appeals across political groupings in a way that perhaps that agenda didn’t. 12:46: Could you say a little bit about what you think she means by the phrase “beyond markets and states”? 18:26: So it’s really an argument there that there is no fixed boundary about what kind of institutional arrangement is appropriate for particular kinds of goods—that that is constantly moving and varying according to local circumstances. 20:11: That leads me to what I think is a strange paradox about British politics, which is that on the one hand we do get people complaining (and we’ve seen this in the context of the response to the Covid-19 pandemic) that there is too much centralisation and not enough scope for community decision-making. But at the same time, the minute you start to get local variety, you have people complaining that they don’t like the fact that there are different outcomes in different places—you often get the phrase “the post-code lottery” that people want there to be a uniformity of provision of outcome while the localism agenda is pointing to something else. How do you square that circle if you’re trying to sell this idea? 23:30: If I’m understanding your argument, you’re saying there needs to be some kind of levelling mechanism in that you need some kind of minimum standard which everyone as a citizen is entitled to, but then over and above that, that’s the space where local control should come into play. What would be your view on the levelling mechanism being something like a universal basic income? 26:34: Speaking of that, the government here is talking about a “levelling up” agenda. Is there any way in which what you’re talking about can inform what that might look like? Can you give some examples of cases where community control can facilitate levelling up? 31:30: I remember very well there’s a distinction Ostrom draws between what she calls a facilitator state and a controller state.     33:55: I was going to say, if you’re starting from a position where a state – whether at the local or national level – is actually responsible for managing assets or resources, there’s no way it can just disappear. At the very least it needs a mechanism for transferring authority, however much authority we’re talking about. This is certainly not a laissez-faire approach. Let’s move on to discuss the pandemic: arguably a problem which requires a centralised response to a large scale collective action problem. How do you think the relationship between the centre and localities plays out in the pandemic? 39:23: This feeds back to an earlier dilemma I was describing, which is: isn’t part of the reason central government has followed such a top down approach that there has been a popular demand for centralised action? 44:16: So you don’t feel that what’s happened with the pandemic is that there is a permanent setback to the ideas of decentralisation—you think this is actually an opportunity to show what can be achieved by thinking in a different way.

David Skarbek (Brown University) describes his ethnographic work on prison governance as a historical analogy to the emergence of states. Join us in this episode of the Governance Podcast led by John Meadowcroft (King’s College London) for a vibrant discussion on how governance emerges (or doesn’t) in different social landscapes, from prisons and gulags to clans and nation-states. Subscribe on iTunes and Spotify Subscribe to the Governance Podcast on iTunes and Spotify today and get all our latest episodes directly in your pocket. Follow Us For more information about our upcoming podcasts and events, follow us on facebook, twitter or instagram (@csgskcl). The Guest David Skarbek is Associate Professor of Political Science at Brown University. His research examines how extralegal governance institutions form, operate, and evolve. He has published extensively on the informal institutions that govern life in prisons in California and around the globe. His work has appeared in leading journals in political science, economics, and criminology, including in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Journal of Law, Economics & Organization, and Journal of Criminal Justice.  His book, The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System (Oxford University Press), received the American Political Science Association’s 2016 William H. Riker Award for the best book in political economy in the previous three years. It was also awarded the 2014 Best Publication Award from the International Association for the Study of Organized Crime and was shortlisted for the British Sociological Association’s 2014 Ethnography Award. His work has been featured widely in national and international media outlets, such as the Atlantic, BBC, Business Insider, the Economist, Forbes, the Independent, and the Times. Skip Ahead 00:38: David, you’re well known for writing a book on prison gangs in California and America called The Social Order of the Underworld. Just to begin, tell us a little bit about that book. 2:01: You mentioned that prison gangs are often organized on racial lines. Why is that the case? 4:10: So race is a convenient way of organizing a large group of people. Is that what you’re arguing? 4:34: Does that mean this has changed over time? So as a prison population got bigger in America, gangs organized upon racial lines have become more important? 7:44: You mentioned that the convict code, if you like, was informal. Would you see gangs as providing more formal governance? 9:15: Would it be fair or is it a stretch to suggest that this is like a prison constitution? 10:53: One thing when you read the book that’s quite striking is there are lots of vivid descriptions of violence that occurs in prison. How do you reconcile that evidence with what you describe as some sort of order? 13:55: I imagine that the question that comes to many people’s minds when it comes to prison gangs, is what would happen if they went to prison? Would they have to join a prison gang, and if the didn’t, what would be the consequences? 15:26: So it’d be fair to say you cannot be a solitary individual, you cannot be a holdout, so to speak. 16:15: Could we then imagine that prisons are close to what we might think of the state of nature in social science? 17:05: This brings us to your latest work in this area, which I think is going to be called the Puzzle of Prison Order. How does it extend your previous work? 20:03: Maybe you can say a little more about English prisons. One senses that they don’t have that kind of gang organization that we observe in California. Why should that be the case? 23:39: One challenge this book takes on is trying to unpack all these different factors, all these different possibilities. So I guess one common sense question would be, looking at California, America, the UK, there is a presence of gangs on the streets. One might assume intuitively that the gangs on the streets are more well organized in California compared to England and Wales. Is that the case, and how does that play into what happens in prisons? 26:08: Another dimension which I think would be of interest is the difference between men’s and women’s prisons. What have you been observing? 29:44: Let me ask a more mischievous question: You’ve looked at prisons around the world and spent many years reading research on this. Is there a country or prison system that is completely opposite to what your theory would predict? For instance, where there is a small prison population but there are lots of gangs? 31:42: So it’s a story ultimately about governance, and much less about the size of prisons. 32:10: One thing that’s striking is, prisons have people with very few resources, they may be predisposed to violence… should this lead us to be hopeful about people’s capacity for self-governance? 35:06: So it’s undoubtedly impressive that prisoners are able to self-organize or self-govern in this way. Thinking of the comparative political economy of this, though, wouldn’t it be better if there was formal governance? Is that safer and less violent? 37:00: Essentially you’re engaging in qualitative research. Maybe the first question here is about the challenges of obtaining that kind of data from prisons around the world and how you go about overcoming that challenge. 40:27: What’s your sense of the challenges of comparing different ethnographic studies? 44:26: So you were trained as an economist originally. How do economists view this sort of methodological approach, and would they be concerned about your ability to give causal answers? 46:04:  As a political scientist, you see political science going in the direction of causal identification and experimental results. Should we be concerned about that and is it limiting the types of questions we can ask? 48:18: I assume you’re not going to be working on prisons forever. What other ideas do you have going forward?