Democracy and finance, once mutually accommodating, now threaten to permanently part ways. Wealth accumulation through asset price appreciation rather than economic growth has decoupled elite fortunes from shared prosperity. Monetary policy has accelerated this divide, raising fundamental questions about democratic legitimacy.
Meanwhile, the rise of cryptocurrency has created new forms of concentrated financial power, and the digitization of financial infrastructure, from algorithmic trading to digital payment systems, is reshaping monetary sovereignty itself.
BPFD grapples with these realities head-on. Our mission is to catalyze critical scholarship that examines how finance drives inequality and explores democratic alternatives. We produce original research, convene scholars across disciplines, and support emerging researchers.
Finance-driven wealth accumulation has produced new oligarchic structures that capture regulatory institutions and erode the capacity of democratic majorities to govern economic life.
The digitization of financial infrastructure, from algorithmic trading to stablecoins to decentralized finance protocols, is creating parallel financial architectures that dilute the state’s power to control its own currency and monetary policy.
Understanding finance as a form of social power requires moving beyond existing models. This stream examines how financial mechanisms function not merely as neutral intermediaries but as active forces shaping social relations, distributional outcomes, and the boundaries of political possibility.
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March 1, 2024
Research Director, Berkeley Program on Finance and Democracy
Research Lead, Technology
Director and Research Lead, Capitalism & Democracy
Professor of Social and Political Thought, UC Santa Cruz
Associate Professor of Sociology, UC Merced
Class of 1939 Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus of Sociology
Assistant Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley
Chair and Head Graduate Advisor, Designated Emphasis in Political Economy
Assistant Professor of Economics
BESI welcomes inquiries from UC Berkeley faculty and graduate-level scholars working in political economy. To learn more about our research programs and how to get involved in BESI, please use our contact form.
May 29, 2024
In this article for the journal Policy and Society, BESI Technology Network affiliate Brian Judge and his co-authors at the Center for Human-Compatible AI examine the challenges of regulating AI and propose an adapted model of regulation suitable for AI’s novel features.
March 1, 2024
Berkeley Program on Finance and Democracy’s research director offers a new perspective on the birth of neoliberalism, showing that — counter to the prevailing narrative — financialization was not the offspring of deregulation but the mechanism that allowed neoliberalism to take root.
