2025 Socio-Economic Review Best Paper Prize Winners Announced
The 2025 Socio-Economic Review (SER) best paper prize jury (Elsa Clara Massoc, chair, with
Matthias Thiemann and Leonard Seabrooke) found it very difficult to choose a prize winner this
year, given the high quality of SER contributions overall. They were tasked with looking at the
60-odd papers published in SER in 2024. In the end, they chose to give the prize to two
excellent papers. Indeed, both are impressive by their theoretical, empirical and data
contributions, in two different fields that are of importance to SER: political economy and the
sociology of elites.
The winners are:
● Voss, D. (2024). Sectors versus borders: interest group cleavages and struggles over
corporate governance in the age of asset management. Socio-Economic Review, 22(3),
1071-1094.
● O’Brien, S. (2024). The family web: Multigenerational class persistence in elite
populations. Socio-Economic Review, 22(1), 1-27.
Honorable mention:
● Murau, S., & Giordano, M. (2024). Forging monetary unification through novation: the
TARGET system and the politics of central banking in Europe. Socio-Economic Review,
22(3), 1283-1312.
They were impressed by Dustin Voss’ contribution, “Sectors versus borders: interest group
cleavages and struggles over corporate governance in the age of asset management”, for its
timely and useful contribution to the fields of international and comparative political economy
(IPE and CPE). Voss’ research allows us to better understand the power relations between
global asset managers and domestic institutions of corporate governance, building on a smart
leveraging of rare data revealing coalitional dynamics between financial and non-financial
corporate actors, and developing a theoretical perspective that enlightens CPE/IPE dynamics in
the case of Germany and beyond.
Shay O’Brien’s paper, “The family web: Multigenerational class persistence in elite populations”, is
remarkable for its excellent empirical and theoretical contributions to the field of the sociology
of elites. Her research allows us to clearly grasp the mechanisms of elite reproduction in the
long-run, building on a very impressive collection of original data revealing that the continuity
of the elite must be understood as webs rather than dynasties, and developing a theoretical
perspective that will enlighten the sociology of elites in the case of the USA and beyond.
The paper that was selected for an honorable mention, “Forging monetary unification through
novation: the TARGET system and the politics of central banking in Europe”, by Murau and
Giordano, makes a profound contribution to the study of the international political economy of
central banking and critical macro-finance. Their research allows us to comprehend the
changing role of the ECB, building on a detailed political economy account of the role that the
TARGET and TARGET2 systems have played for European monetary unification, and developing
a balance-sheet based perspective that enlightens the growing power of the ECB and well as
the evolution of the eurosystem.
The jury congratulates the winners, and SASE is proud of the contribution all Socio-Economic Review authors are making!