“CIVICA is committed to integrating interdisciplinary teams across the social sciences.”
08-08-2024
An interview with IE University's Irene Menéndez González on her role in CIVICA's research initiatives.
Meet Irene Menéndez González, professor of International Political Economy at IE University in Spain. Irene joined the university in January 2020 as an assistant professor at the IE School of Politics, Economics & Global Affairs, and is now part of the IE University team of the CIVICA alliance. Her role in this strategic alliance is to represent IE University in the field of research. This involves defining the direction for CIVICA's research initiatives and managing a series of research activities that CIVICA facilitates.
Irene’s academic background includes a PhD from the University of Oxford and master's degrees from the Juan March Institute, Sciences Po, and the University of St. Andrews. Her career includes roles such as Assistant Professor at the University of Mannheim, Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, and Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Zurich. Her research and publications span the political effects of globalization, welfare states and labor markets, with a focus on both Europe and Latin America.
Could you give us an overview of CIVICA's research and explain its main goals within the European social sciences landscape?
The main goal of CIVICA's research is to create and strengthen a European research community among ten leading European universities in the social sciences. Rigorous, innovative research is key to addressing some of the most pressing issues faced jointly by European societies today. However, like any scientific research, it is cumulative—it requires long-term investments that generate knowledge. Fundamentally, it also requires cooperation and exchange of ideas, both of which CIVICA strongly encourages.
For instance, CIVICA funds short faculty visits across institutions that allow faculty to work in person with co-authors, which helps progress enormously. So far, faculty from IE University have visited Sciences Po, the London School of Economics, the European University Institute and the Hertie School, and laid the foundations for other projects. To foster collaboration, CIVICA is structured around four thematic priorities that reflect pressing issues and the joint expertise of much of the academic community in the alliance.
The thematic group “Democracy in the 21st Century,” for instance, which I also coordinate at IE University, addresses key questions related to the functioning of democracy nowadays. Democracies around the globe are confronted with several challenges: increasing polarisation, economic inequality and the rise of extreme parties. At the same time, recent innovations in democratic theory and practice suggest that reforms to improve the workings of democracy are possible. Many of the projects funded by CIVICA touch on this and other important questions.
Could you describe your specific contributions and role within this initiative?
Together with Marco Giarratana, vice-dean of research, my role is to manage the implementation of CIVICA-related research activities within IE University and to provide strategic guidance—together with our CIVICA partners—on a number of issues related to research within the CIVICA community.
Could you explain how your expertise informs your role in shaping the research priorities for the CIVICA projects?
My research lies at the intersection of international and comparative political economy, and thus fits well with most of the core themes that structure CIVICA research. These core themes revolve around the workings of democracy, European integration, climate change and data-driven technologies. Most of our faculty at IE School of Politics, Economics & Global Affairs work on issues that bear directly on these four themes. My own research relates closely to how democracy works in globalized economies. This provides me with a deeper understanding of the research frontier in political science and economics and allows us to identify research projects within IE University that address key challenges and have the potential to inform policy.
What are some of the projects you are currently working on?
I am working on several projects that look at the politics of public goods provision in emerging countries. With researchers from Uruguay, we explore whether policies that defer enforcement of public regulations in hard times sustained payment among defaulters, and whether this has political consequences. Our findings have important policy implications that go beyond middle-income democracies: deferring payment of outstanding debt allows cash-strapped governments to protect against poverty in ways that are politically and economically viable.
In other projects, I work with researchers from the University of Pittsburgh to examine whether China’s entry into the world economy affects electoral outcomes in emerging economies. We assess whether relative differences in exposure to trade across skill and racial groups shape electoral outcomes, a topic relevant to European policymakers as well.
Lastly, with my colleagues Nina Wiesehomeier and Michael Becher, we examine populism in the legislature in Spain. We study how the entry of populist parties affects parliamentary representation. Overall, our findings show that competition for seats with populist parties changes the process of parliamentary representation in substantive ways.
CIVICA research is structured around four key themes: “Democracy in the 21st Century,” “Data-Driven Technologies for the Social Sciences,” “Europe Revisited” and “Societies in Transition, Crises on Earth.” How do these themes align with current global challenges, and what unique contributions does IE University make to these areas?
Students in different schools at IE University are producing cutting-edge work on these topics. Political scientists are particularly focused on the functioning of democracy and European integration, which is also an important topic for students at IE Law School. For example, ongoing projects study aspects of democracy such as nationalism, populism, fake news, public goods provision, electoral competition, bureaucracies, and the role of international trade and technological change.
This work also exhibits close dialogue between theory and evidence. It is the result of collaboration across subfields in political science—for example, between game theorists and experimentalists, as well as people focused on different regions of the world.
Looking forward, what new research themes or questions do you believe are critical for CIVICA to address in the coming years? How might these evolve in response to global political and economic shifts?
Like the critical questions of today, those of tomorrow are likely going to require interdisciplinary solutions. CIVICA is committed to integrating interdisciplinary teams across the social sciences. This multidisciplinary approach—especially across economics, politics, data sciences and law—is increasingly shaping social-scientific research around the world and is key to providing evidence-based policy recommendations.
Article credits: Irene Menéndez González (IE University).
Photo credits: IE University.