Finance and Democracy

Organized by the Berkeley Program on Finance and Democracy at BESI, the Rhodes Center at Brown, the European Institute at LSE, and the Huth Initiative at LSE, the annual Finance and Democracy Summer School program aims to weave an emerging generation of researchers into an international network that bolsters the study of finance, political economy, and democracy.

In this talk, recorded at BESI on February 23, 2026, sociologist McCarthy shows how democracy and working-class power can be strengthened by creating new deliberative forms of financial governance, focusing on the inclusion of historically excluded groups. His inspiration: ancient Athens.

In an op-ed for Project Syndicate, BESI's Brian Judge argues that the digital euro can change how the European public perceives integration — but only if leaders resist their technocratic impulse and show how it improves their daily lives.

Berkeley Program on Finance and Democracy research director Brian Judge joined Garth Bray on The New Zealand Herald's "HNOW: Business" to discuss how diminishing investor confidence in private credit funds signals broader risks for the global financial market.

Set against the backdrop of recent proposals by states to tax their wealthiest residents, this conversation explores how the “grand bargains” between the rich and the rest of us became embedded in law and civic culture, how they have broken down over time, and how a renewed interest in taxation might inform a political and regulatory agenda for the future.

As high-profile private credit fund managers face a surge in withdrawals stemming from jitters over the economy, BESI's Brian Judge observes echoes of the months leading up to the 2008 financial crisis.