PEDD 2019

From February 28 to March 2, 2019, the third conference on “The Political Economy of Democracy and Dictatorship” took place at the University of Münster. The 2019 conference is third PEDD event following the first two, which took place in Münster in 2017 and 2018. PEDD 2019 was again a joint project of the Chair of Political Economy together with Mario Ferrero of the University of Eastern Piedmont, Mario Gilli of Bicocca University Milan, Italy, and Yuan Li of the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. Again, more than 80 scholars from the fields of economics and political sciences attended this truly interdisciplinary conference.

PEDD generally aims at promoting research and academic discourse on the origins, mechanisms and consequences of different types of political regimes. It seeks to produce new insights on the dynamics of transition processes from dictatorship to democracy and vice versa, on the relation between political regimes and economic prosperity as well as on the micro-structure of (in)stability of comparative political regimes. But foremost, bringing together scholars interested in interdisciplinary work on comparative political systems is at the heart of this event.

The 2019 conference provided a platform for animated discussions of 54 accepted papers in 19 parallel sessions, bringing together scholars interested in interdisciplinary work on comparative political systems from various countries.

The academic program was completed by two inspiring keynote lectures held by Martin Paldam (Åarhus University) and Timothy Besley (London School of Economics). The lectures gave important and novel insights on two highly relevant topics: the link between economic prosperity and democratic transition and the rise of identity politics in Western democracies.

Besides the academic program, many conference attendees got to know the city of Münster during the welcome reception on Thursday evening and continued the day’s discussion during a conference dinner on Friday evening.

We would like to thank everyone involved in the organization of the conference and we would like to thank all conference participants for their contributions the academic program. The conference received generous support from the German Research Foundation (DFG), the International Office of the University of Münster and the Münster School of Business and Economics.

 

Date and Location

28 February to 2 March, 2019

University of Münster, Germany

 

Scientific Board

Thomas Apolte, University of Münster, Germany

Mario Ferrero, University of Eastern Piedmont, Italy

Mario Gilli, Bicocca University Milan, Italy

Yuan Li, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany

 

The detailed conference program can be found here.