Columbia’s Center for Political Economy invites you to a discussion by leading scholars who bring their expertise in law, economics, classics, and political science to bear on this pressing question during a time of great uncertainty.

This cross-disciplinary panel will consider the forces that undermine the capacity of societies to find common ground for effective self-governance, especially under conditions of uncertainty and during political and economic shocks. The discussion will explore structural forces threatening shared prosperity, tradeoffs inherent in economic policymaking, pathways to a more just and inclusive economy, and the significance of a political economy fit for advancing the future of democracy.

Speakers include Ira Katznelson (Columbia); legal scholar Amy Kapczynski (Yale), who leads Yale’s influential Law and Political Economy Project; classicist and political scientist Josiah Ober (Stanford), who utilizes tools of economic analysis to probe Athenian democracy; and economist and political scientist James Robinson (University of Chicago), whose work takes up themes concerning prosperity, poverty, and dictatorship, and who received the 2024 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for comparative studies on prosperity between nations with Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson. The panelists will reflect on the intersection of research and practice, focusing on preserving and promoting political economy for democracy.