Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies

Assetization is a process through which social and environmental ‘goods’ are transformed into financial assets. Scholars of assetization have described how this process requires decontextualization of localized entities in order to make them abstract and globally tradable assets. While the spatial dimension of this process has been widely studied, less attention has been paid to how actors overcome the problem of linking these global and local scales. We address this problem by drawing on a comparative study of impact investing in Geneva and in the UK. We find that local actors, such as private asset managers, engage in what we call ‘issue translation’ as they seek to exploit structural holes in their proximate environment by translating abstract ideas of impact investing into concrete projects. This creates considerable heterogeneity in impact investing approaches that global ideational entrepreneurs draw upon to ‘valorize’ their ideas and frame impact investing as an emergent asset class. Together, we argue, these processes help explain variegation of and limits to processes of assetization.

Rising wealth inequalities, concentrated in the hands of a few super-rich families, have recently sparked sociological interest in how these families sustain and legitimise their wealth across generations. Yet, few studies have gained access to the life-worlds of these families to examine their wealth infrastructures, family dynamics and perceptions. Drawing on 14 in-depth interviews with members of two super-rich German families, as well as personal and legal documents, the study investigates the affective dimensions integral to the perpetuation of dynastic wealth. I argue that these families have persisted as units of economic production across different phases of capitalism, adjusting their modes of economic, social and legal reproduction by tying family and capital relations closely together. Simultaneously, the cultural ideal of the family as a place of love, emotionality and care has and still does profoundly shape how these families organise and manage wealth reproduction. By tracing their wealth trajectories, the analysis highlights how super-rich families adapt their affective and economic strategies to preserve elite status over generations. The article advances debates on wealth inequality by showing how managing family feelings plays a critical role in wealth reproduction, revealing how these dynamics shape both family life and broader patterns of social inequality.

A common challenge in studying Italian parliamentary discourse is the lack of accessible, machine-readable, and systematized parliamentary data. To address this, this article introduces the ItaParlCorpus dataset, a new, annotated, machine-readable collection of Italian parliamentary plenary speeches for the Camera dei Deputati, the lower house of Parliament, spanning from 1948 to 2022. This dataset encompasses 470 million words and 2.4 million speeches delivered by 5830 unique speakers representing 77 different political parties. The files are designed for easy processing and analysis using widely-used programming languages, and they include metadata such as speaker identification and party affiliation. This opens up opportunities for in-depth analyses on a variety of topics related to parliamentary behavior, elite rhetoric, and the salience of political themes, exploring how these vary across party families and over time.

Decarbonization forces societies to cope with the restructuring and outright unwinding of assets, firms, workers, industries, and regions. We argue that this problem has created legitimacy for industrial policies managing the reallocation of resources. We illustrate this dynamic by documenting incremental state-building in the European Union, an administration institutionally tilted toward regulatory statehood and the making of the Single Market in energy since the 1990s. European greening policies, we argue, have incrementally lessened the primacy of regulatory tools and have introduced a plethora of instruments to accelerate green restructuring and carbon unwinding. Best understood as a process of multi-sited institutional layering, the European Union increasingly appears to complement financial and regulatory instruments to effect green energy transitions with the management of decline in targeted regions and sectors, based on targeted funds and targeted transition planning.

With the global return of industrial policy, most literature examines why states increasingly resort to market activism. Much less is known about how industrial policy works “on the ground.” In this paper, we address this how-question through an in-depth case study of the poster child of the EU’s new industrial policy: the Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEI). We argue that while the literature has rightly pointed out that attaching conditionalities to public money is key to steering markets effectively and equitably, conditionalities also come with costs. Moreover, they are not the reflection of policy design principles but reflect political, institutional, and ideational constraints that shape which and how conditionalities are applied. We show how the constrained politics of EU industrial policy have shaped both the creation and application of the conditionalities that govern IPCEIs, and how this has led to costs in the form of perverse outcomes, adverse selection, and workarounds.

Despite decades of awareness, societies have failed to adequately respond to climate change, as evidenced by rising CO 2 emissions and the continued dominance of fossil fuels in global energy consumption. This failure underscores the structural constraints of capitalist modernity, where economic and political incentives, as well as consumer behaviors, obstruct effective climate action. Beyond the challenge of mitigation, climate change raises pressing questions about its social and political consequences. Societies will face increasing losses due to extreme weather events, resource depletion, and declining living conditions, exacerbating social inequalities and undermining the legitimacy of existing political and economic structures. The inability of capitalist modernity to address this crisis fosters a state of social anomie, where normative commitments to sustainability clash with entrenched systemic realities. Social scientists have a crucial role in examining these structural failures and identifying pathways for adaptation, resilience, and transformation. By analyzing the conflicts and contradictions within current societal arrangements, they can contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of climate change as a profound challenge to social order and political stability.

With the decline of unionization and collective bargaining coverage rates across advanced economies, governments increasingly make use of statutory minimum wages to ensure adequate compensation for low-wage workers. This state intervention reflects the liberalization of labour markets and the rise of an ‘employment rights’ regime, where state regulation in the low-wage sector plays a growingly important role as the influence of social partners diminishes. This article investigates the factors that drive increased governmental involvement in minimum wage-setting mechanisms (MWSMs). Through a combination of historical large-N statistical analysis and an in-depth review of ruling parties’ justifications to changes in MWSM, we find that economic and industrial relations variables – such as lower economic growth, higher inflation, and declines in unionization and collective bargaining coverage – primarily explain the shift towards greater governmental discretion. Partisanship and electoral cycles appear less significant. A media analysis of policymakers and social partners’ statements in Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Spain reveals that governments justify intervention by emphasizing their responsiveness to changing economic circumstances. These findings have implications for the study of partisan politics and low-wage regulation, highlighting the growing role of governments in wage-setting practices.

Rapid growth in bio-logging-the use of animal-borne electronic tags to document the movements, behaviour, physiology and environments of wildlife-offers opportunities to mitigate biodiversity threats and expand digital natural history archives. Here we present a vision to achieve such benefits by accounting for the heterogeneity inherent to bio-logging data and the concerns of those who collect and use them. First, we can enable data integration through standard vocabularies, transfer protocols and aggregation protocols, and drive their wide adoption. Second, we need to develop integrated data collections on standardized data platforms that support data preservation through public archiving and strategies that ensure long-term access. We outline pathways to reach these goals, highlighting the need for resources to govern community data standards and guide data mobilization efforts. We propose the launch of a community-led coordinating body and provide recommendations for how stakeholders-including government data centres, museums and those who fund, permit and publish bio-logging work-can support these efforts.

This article examines the act of ‘being invited’ by research participants to explore asymmetrical power relations and research ethics in ethnographies along migration trajectories. It uses the lens of money in research relationships to explore agency and the reversal of power through hospitality and gift-giving. I examine invitations in the research process as (a) a way for researchers to gain access to their research subject and (b) a way for interlocutors to renegotiate and invert the research process. Drawing on a 9-month multi-sited ethnography along the trajectory of undocumented migration from Afghanistan to Germany, I relied on continuous invitations to revisit interlocutors. First, I argue that invitations are the necessary entry point into research sites, but are often excluded from considerations of research ethics. Second, an examination of ‘being invited’ as a concept shows that interlocutors shape the research process and exercise agency through a moral economy of research relations.

We analyse wage developments in Germany during the inflation shock years of 2021–2023 from three perspectives: cost of living, supply-side cost pressure, and relational. With an export-led growth model, Germany is dependent on a favourable real effective exchange rate. Because of its above-average exposure to the energy crisis and low unemployment, Germany was particularly vulnerable to strong wage demands, putting at risk its cost competitiveness. In response to the inflation crisis, moderate collective bargaining outcomes have resulted from widespread use of one-off payments, longer duration of collective agreements, and ‘zero-month’ clauses, which have delayed wage increases. As in all other eurozone countries, employees have suffered real wage losses, but nominal wage increases at the lower end of the labour market fared better than average. Major competitiveness shifts have occurred in the eurozone, particularly to the detriment of Eastern European countries and the Baltics, but not Germany.

This paper provides a quantitative assessment of the political and structural determinants of social dialogue in 25 European countries between 1980 and 2018 using a measure of social dialogue based on an original survey of industrial relations and social policy experts. We assess hypotheses on the role of structural (unionisation, employer organisation) and political (government partisanship, government strength) factors on the extent of cooperation between governments, trade unions and employers in public policymaking. We find a declining trend in the overall extent of social dialogue in the countries surveyed. Using panel regressions, we show that higher levels of social dialogue are more prevalent among governments where there is a balance of power between right‐wing and left‐wing parties, and thus where unions and employers can act as ‘brokers’ between left and right parties. We find no association between most structural factors (unionisation, collective bargaining coverage, employer organisation) and levels of social dialogue.

Since the introduction of the euro, German growth has been primarily based on exports. Signs of an exhaustion of Germany's export-led growth model were already evident before the energy crisis of 2022-23, which hit the country hard. German elites could have capitalized on the shock to rebalance their growth strategy. But the opposite happened: the government's adjustment strategy has aimed at doubling down on export-led growth and protecting the core export industries. This article investigates the politics of Germany's economic policymaking in hard times. We show that the government's economic policy responses were driven largely by an export sector growth coalition led by cross-class alliances in the chemical, metalworking, and engineering sectors. In contrast to previous corporatist decision-making, which aimed to include broader societal concerns in peak-level concertation, German corporatism has undergone a functional transformation toward the predominance of export sector distributive coalitions. This article's findings contribute to the emerging literature on the politics of growth models in comparative political economy.

In the most recent discussion of inequality in economic sociology, entrepreneurial actions represent a peculiar gap. These actions contribute not only to the creation of inequalities but can also address them. In this chapter, we argue that a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between entrepreneurship and inequality can only be developed when different perspectives on entrepreneurship and inequality are considered in their interplay. To this end, we propose four perspectives. First, entrepreneurial action occurs under unequal starting conditions. Second, there are inequalities within the population of entrepreneurs. Third, entrepreneurship can be understood as a mechanism that produces inequalities. Fourth, inequalities can also be identified, addressed, and dealt with in the course of entrepreneurial action. Subsequently, we illustrate these four perspectives on entrepreneurship and inequality using the example of the Berlin start-up ecosystem. It becomes clear how this multi-perspectivity enables us to grasp the connection between entrepreneurial action and social inequality in its multidimensionality.

Despite the significant impact of inheritance on perpetuating social inequality from one generation to the next, a majority of Germans and Austrians are opposed to an inheritance tax. In the present contribution, we investigate how opponents and proponents of such a tax justify their respective positions in order to understand the structure of the discourse on this issue. The paper draws on our content analysis of 3,573 arguments, expressed in two online debates that were both triggered by in-depth interviews on the topic. The results confirm that a majority rejects an inheritance tax. Yet beyond this finding, the analysis of the respective justifications offers insights into the complex controversies this tax and the normative and functional questions it poses give rise to.

The 2021–2023 surge in inflation rates witnessed across many advanced economies reignited concerns about demand-driven inflationary pressures derived from wage growth. Historically, wage demands and demand-driven inflationary pressures have been channelled through organised labour, which wielded greater institutional power than it does today. This article revisits the link between industrial relations and inflation, employing a political-economy lens that views inflation as the product of political and distributive conflicts between capital and labour. Employing a variety of econometric techniques on a panel of OECD economies, the study finds that although historically there has been a positive relationship between strong industrial relations and inflation, this association has weakened progressively, becoming statistically insignificant in recent decades. This indicates that, in advanced capitalist economies, the activities of organised labour are no longer as closely linked to inflation rates as they were in the 1970s.