European Studies
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Books & Projects

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Populists and the Pandemic edited by Nils Ringe, Director of the Jean Monnet European Union Center of Excellence for Comparative Populism

Populists and the Pandemic: How Populists Around the World Responded to COVID-19 edited by Nils Ringe, a Professor of Political Science and Director of the Jean Monnet European Union Center of Excellence for Comparative Populism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Lucio Renno, a Professor of Political Science at the Universidade de Brasilia, examines the responses of populist political actors and parties in 22 countries around the globe to the COVID-19 pandemic, in terms of their attitudes, rhetoric, mobilization repertories, and policy proposals.

The responses of some populist leaders have received much public attention, as they denied the severity of the public health crisis, denigrated experts and data, looked for scapegoats, encouraged protests, questioned the legitimacy of liberal institutions, spread false information, and fueled conspiracies. But how widespread are those particular reactions? how much variation is there? What explains the variation that does exist? This volume considers these questions through critical analysis of countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa, by leading experts with deep knowledge of their respective cases. Some chapters focus on populist parties, others on charismatic populist leaders. Some countries examined are democracies, others autocracies. Some populists are left wing, others right wing. Some populists are in government, others in opposition. This variation allows for a panoramic consideration of factors that systemically influence or mediate populist responses to the pandemic.  This book thus makes a unique contribution to our understanding of the intersection between two of the most pressing social and political challenges of our time.

This book will be of interest to all those researching populism, extremism, and political parties, and those more broadly interested in political science, public policy, sociology, communications, and economics.

Banks on the Brink: Global Capital, Securities Markets, and the Political Roots of Financial Crises by Mark Copelovitch, Jean Monnet Chair

This innovative analysis investigates a complex issue of tremendous economic and political importance: what makes some countries vulnerable to banking crises, while others emerge unscathed? Banks on the Brink explains why some countries are more vulnerable to banking crises than others. Copelovitch and Singer highlight the effects of two variables in combination: foreign capital inflows and the relative prominence of securities markets in the domestic financial system.

Foreign capital is the fuel for banks’ potentially dangerous behavior, and banks are more likely to take on excessive risks when operating in a financial system with large securities markets. The book analyzes over thirty years of data and provides historical case studies of two key countries, Canada and Germany, each of which explores how political decisions in the 19th and early-20th centuries continue to affect financial stability today. The analyses in this book have crucial policy implications, identifying potential regulations and policies that can work to protect banking systems against future crises.

Language(s) of Politics by Nils Ringe, Jean Monnet EU Center of Excellence for Comparative Populism Director

Nils Ringe, Director of the Jean Monnet European Union Center of Excellence for Comparative Populism and Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has a new book, The Language(s) of Politics: Multilingual Policy-Making in the European Union, published by the University of Michigan Press. This highly praised book focuses on multilingualism in the European Union and how a shared reliance on foreign languages and translation services affect politics and policy-making. Ringe argues that multilingualism is an inherent consequential feature of EU politics and thus depoliticizes policy-making by reducing politically charged language.

The Language(s) of Politics, has been deemed, “Essential reading for EU scholars and EU participants” by Liesbet Hooghe, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the European University Institute, Florence. Ringe’s book has been selected for open access meaning it’s available at no cost to the public. More information on and access to The Language(s) of Politics is available on the publisher’s website.

 

Projects

The themes for the 2018-20 cycle of Jean Monnet Projects were:

The EU and the Global Economy (Professor Mark Copelovitch)
Neighborhood and Social Cohesion Policy (Faculty Associate Elizabeth Covington)
Blood, Meat and Upscaling Tissue Engineering: Promises, Anticipated Market and Performativity in the Biomedical and Agri-food Sectors (Professor Linda Hogle)

This project will research issues related to the scale-up of human cell manufacturing for therapeutics. With collaborators at four UK universities, Professor Hogles will focus on the actual practices of regenerative medicine researchers and companies within EU regulatory and bioethics environments, including recently-changed EU data protection law. A working group of researchers and policymakers will convene to discuss developments and future directions.

EU-US City-to-City Pairings on Sustainable Urban Development (Associate Professor Sabine Moedersheim)

Professor Modersheim will lead the project involving the sister cities of Madison, Wisconsin and “Green City” Freiburg, Germany. Working with the Madison-Freiburg Sister City Committee and its counterpart in Freiburg, as well as the Green City Freiburg office, the project will explore the impact of citizens’ involvement from the anti-nuclear protests in the 1970s to the energy transition (Energiewende), pioneering renewable energy, low emission neighborhoods, energy and housing coops, multimobility, environmental research and education, and sustainable entrepreneurship.

Associate Professor Sabine Moedersheim has collaborated with the UniverCity Alliance Urban Futures Survey (University of Wisconsin-Madison), which unites a group of community practitioners and campus scholars to study social and policy engagement in urban areas—locally and globally. Moedersheim led the City of Madison-Freiburg Sister City group on this project, which demonstrated the nature of involvement in urban communities and particular nodes of interest going forward.

A Politicized Union: The End of the “Permissive Consensus” and the Future of European Integration (Professor Nils Ringe)

Click here for an archive of the 2015-17 Jean Monnet Projects