Ban Publishes Economic History of Romania
Cornel Ban, assistant professor of International Relations and co-director of the Global Economic Governance Initiative (GEGI) at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, has published an economic history of Romania with Tact Press.
“Dependență și dezvoltare. Economia politică a capitalismului românesc” is published in Romanian. According to publishers, it serves as a critical document examining the economic and political story of Romania in the last 150 years.
“The book is a spin off of the work I have done on my dissertation,” said Ban. “I have a political science book about the diffusion of economic ideas under review with a top academic press in the US but writing an economic history of my own country has always been on my mind. I therefore used the historical chapters from my dissertation, added parts of some of my ongoing work, wrote an introduction and a conclusion and sent it to an academic press in Romania. The book compares several modernization experiences (liberalism, mercantilism, corporatist developmentalism, national-Stalinism, neoliberalism) and concludes that while some had important successes, a great social deficit persisted. The large gap between the elites and the rest of society endures to this day and it has had persistent racializing features that are not widely talked about. This book aims to fill a hole in the national debate by providing an accessible history about historical as well as pressing current issues for the general public, not just academics.”
Ban’s book was published this fall. You can view a televised interview with him on the publication here. The interview is in Romanian.
Cornel Ban is the author of several peer-reviewed articles on Brazil’s liberal neo-developmentalist political economy(Review of International Political Economy), sovereign debt crises and austerity in authoritarian regimes (East European Politics and Societies), the economic aspects of transnational migration (International Migration) and the diffusion of German economic ideas in Spain (History of Economic Ideas). He co-edited a special issue on the Washington Consensus in the BRICS (in Review of International Political Economy) and is co-editing a special issue on the crisis politics and economics of the International Monetary Fund (for Governance). Ban is currently completing a book manuscript on the political economy of crises, with a focus on the role of economic ideas and the interaction between international and domestic actors.