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POSITIONS
Senior Lecturer in Political Theory (Associate Professor), Department of Political Economy, King’s College London, 2023-
Lecturer (Assistant Professor), King’s College London, Department of Political Economy, 2020-2023
Berlin Prize Fellow, American Academy in Berlin, Fall 2019
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Florida, 2017-
University Term Professor, University of Florida, 2018-2021
Max Weber Post-Doctoral Fellow, European University Institute, Italy, 2016-2017
Affiliated with the Department of Social and Political Science, Mentor: Richard Bellamy
EDUCATION
Ph.D. University of Chicago, Political Science, 2016
Dissertation: “The Work of Politics: Radical Democracy, Political Economy, and the Twentieth-Century Welfare State”
Committee: John P. McCormick (chair), Patchen Markell, Robert Gooding-Williams, and Lisa Wedeen
Visiting Researcher, CRC 597 “Transformations of the State”, Universität Bremen, 2013-2014
M.A. University of Chicago, Political Science, 2012
Joseph Cropsey Prize, Best MA Thesis in Political Philosophy, University of Chicago
B.A. University of British Columbia, Political Science (Honours), 2008
BOOKS
Union: A Global History of an Idea, under contract with Allen Lane and Oxford University Press.
The Work of Politics: Making a Democratic Welfare State, Cambridge University Press, 2020.
Shortlisted for the ECPR Political Theory Prize.
Reviewed in Political Theory, Review of Politics, Contemporary Political Theory, European Journal of Political Theory, Theory & Event, Business Ethics Quarterly, and Choice.
Subject of a critical dialogue in Perspectives on Politics (with Benjamin L. McKean’s Disorienting Neoliberalism: Global Justice and the Outer Limit of Freedom (Oxford 2020)).
JOURNAL ARTICLES
“Rethinking Citizen Competence: A New Theoretical and Empirical Framework,” British Journal of Political Science, online first.
“A Transnational Double Movement? Polanyian Reflections on Conflicts Law Constitutionalism,” European Law Open, 4, no 1 (March 2025): 76-88.
“On the Egalitarian Value of Electoral Democracy,” Political Theory, 52, no. 5 (October 2024): 782-807.
“Democracy Requires Organized Collective Power,” The Journal of Political Philosophy, 30, no. 1 (March 2022): 26-47.
“European Law and the Dilemmas of Democratic Capitalism,” Global Perspectives, 1, no. 1 (May 2020): 13378, with responses from Claus Thomasburger, Christian Joerges, and Vladimir Bogoeski.
“The Power of Money: Critical Theory, Capitalism, and the Politics of Debt,” Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, 27, no. 1 (March 2020): 19-35.
““The Politics of Forward and Backward Infiltration: Toward a Dynamic Understanding of Civil Society and the State.” (co-authored with Cheol-Sung Lee (Sogang University)), Sociological Theory, 37, no. 1 (March 2019): 62-88.
“Fictitious Freedom: A Polanyian Critique of the Republican Revival,” American Journal of Political Science, 61, no. 4 (October 2017): 852-863
“Between Charisma and Domination: On Max Weber’s Critique of Democracy,” Journal of Politics, 79, no. 1 (January 2017): 179-192.
“‘Fit to Enter the World’: Hannah Arendt on Politics, Economics, and the Welfare State, American Political Science Review 108, no. 4 (November 2014): 856-869.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
“Corporatism,” in The Cambridge Handbook of Constitutional Theory, ed. Richard Bellamy and Jeffry King, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
“A Missed Opportunity? Social Democracy and the Neo-Statist Moment,” (co-authored with Paolo Gerbuado, KCL) Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy, forthcoming.
“Substance and Form in the Theory of Democracy,” Analysis Review, forthcoming [review essay of Camilla Vergara, Systemic Corruption: Constitutional Ideas for an Anti-Oligarchic Republic (Princeton 2020) and Emaneula Ceva and Maria Paola Ferretti, Political Corruption: The Internal Enemy of Public Institutions (Oxford 2021)].
“Finance and the Financialization of Capitalism,” (co-authored with Ivan Ascher, Carolyn Hardin, Johnna Montgomery, and Emily Rosamond), in Capitalism, Democracy, Socialism: Critical Debates, ed. James Chamberlain and Albena Azmanova, Springer, 2022.
Review of Igor Shoikhebrod, Revisiting Marx’s Critique of Liberalism: Rethinking Justice, Legality, and Rights (Palgrave 2019), Perspectives on Politics, 20, no. 3 (September 2022): 1092-1094.
Review of James Muldoon, Building Power to Change the World: The Political Thought of the German Council Movement (Oxford 2020), Contemporary Political Theory 21, sup. v. 3 (September 2022): 106-109.
Review of Albena Azmanova, Capitalism on Edge: How Fighting Precarity can Achieve Radical Change without Crisis or Utopia (Columbia 2020), Constellations, 28, no. 2 (June 2021): 288-290.
Review of Alexander Gourevitch, From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge 2015), Perspectives on Politics, 16, no. 2 (June 2018): 511-512.
“Communication Breakdown: Critiquing Habermas’s Discourse Theory of Law,” H-Law (September 2011) [Review of Hugh Baxter, Habermas: The Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Stanford 2011)].
PUBLIC WRITINGS
“Pragmatic politicians are doomed to fail,” Institute of Art and Ideas, August 22, 2025s
“Are Elections Enough? Democracy and Collective Power,” APA Perspectives on Democracy, August 13, 2025
“Towards a Democratic Theory of Labour Unions,” Public Ethics, Sept 28, 2023
“America is Learning to Reject Socialism, but Love the Welfare State,” Foreign Policy, February 17, 2021.
“Coronavirus Against the Market” (with Anton Jäger), Tribune, March 28, 2020.
“In the Red: Democracy in an Age of Debt,” The Berlin Journal, Issue 34, Fall 2019.
“Socialism and Freedom: Karl Polanyi’s Early Writings,” Los Angeles Review of Books, January 25, 2019.
“The New Science Wars,” The Chronicle Review, December 16, 2018.
“Against Civility, or Why Habermas Recommends a Wild Public Sphere,” Aeon, September 24, 2018.
“A Serious Man” (with John Ganz), The Baffler, February 7, 2018.
“Right-Wing Extremists Have a Right to Speak, Not a Right to be Listened To,” The Washington Post, November 6, 2017.
“How (Not) to Criticize Karl Polanyi,” Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, June 5, 2017.
FELLOWSHIPS AND PRIZES
Co-PI, Neubauer Collegium Research Project, University of Chicago, 2025-2026
PI, ERC Starting Grant, “Systemic Risk and the Transformation of Democracy,” 2023-2027
Research Fellowship, Center for the Study of Governance and Society, KCL, 2022
Center for Humanities in the Public Sphere Workshop Grant, University of Florida, 2020
Berlin Prize, American Academy in Berlin, 2019
Humanities Scholarship Enhancement Fund, University of Florida, 2017
University Term Professor, University of Florida, 2018-2020
INVITED PRESENTATIONS AND LECTURES
“Towards a Democratic Theory of Labour Unions”
- University of Birmingham, November 13, 2024
- University of Hamburg, December 4, 2024
- University of York, March 25, 2025
“Systemic Risk and the Transformation of Democracy”
- University of Toronto, April 9, 2024
- University of Oslo, February 25, 2025
“On the Egalitarian Value of Electoral Competition”
- Political Theory Workshop, London School of Economics, November 17, 2022
“Democratic Futures: Towards a Critical Political Theory of Finance”
- Contemporary Political Theory Workshop, University of Cambridge, October 21, 2022
“On the Egalitarian Value of Electoral Competition”
- Politics Department Research Seminar, University of Reading, October 11, 2022
“Corporatism: A Constitutional Concept”
- Cambridge Intellectual History and Political Thought Seminar, January 25, 2021
“The Power of Money: Towards a Democratic Theory of Finance”
- Keynote Workshop Paper, “The Political Economy of Debt after the Euro-Crisis: Normative and Empirical Perspectives,” Amsterdam Center for European Studies, University of Amsterdam, December 11, 2019
“Max Weber and the Contradictions of Political Leadership”
- Institute of Philosophy, London, November 22, 2019
“Can Democracy Tame 21st-Century Capitalism?”
- Daimler Lecture, American Academy in Berlin, November 5, 2019
“Democratic Institutions, Political Equality, and Organized Collective Power”
- Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, October 29, 2019
- Technische Universität Darmstadt, October 29, 2019
“The Power of Money: Towards a Critical Theory of Finance”
- Georgetown University, November 11, 2019
- Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, November 14, 2019
- Freie Universität Berlin, October 16, 2019
“Political Equality and Collective Power: Elements of a Theory of Democracy”
- The Rice Workshop in Humanistic Ethics, April 12-13, 2019, Houston
“Karl Polanyi and the Enduring Dilemmas of Democratic Capitalism”
- “The Political in the Economy and its Law: Symposium in Honour of Professor Christian Joerges,” Dec. 5, 2018, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin
“Towards a Worldly Political Economy”
- “Economics Through the Lens of Political Theory,” Relationships Matter: EU Policy-Making Borne from Relational Political Agents, December 5-7, 2018, European Commission, Brussels
WORKSHOPS ORGANIZED
“Capitalism and Democracy in the 21st Century: Polanyian Perspectives,” Hertie School of Governance, Berlin, co-sponsored by the Jacques Delors Institute and the American Academy in Berlin, November 26, 2019, co-organized with Christian Joerges (Bremen and Hertie) and Vladimir Bogoeski (Hertie)
“Towards a Political Theory of Institutions,” MANCEPT Workshop, September 9-11, 2019, co-organized with Rob Jubb (Reading)
“Persistent Inequalities: Studying Gender in the 21st Century,” European University Institute, March 14, 2017, co-organized with Nevena Kulic (EUI)
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
Director of Research, Department of Political Economy, King’s College London
External Examiner, Department of Politics, University of Edinburgh
Founding Co-Convening, London Political Theory Network
Political Theory Research Group Coordinator, King’s College London, 2021-2023
Editorial Board Member, The Journal of Politics (2020-2024) and Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Theory
Grant Reviewer, SSHRC
Book Manuscript Reviewer: Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Yale University Press
Article Manuscript Reviewer: American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political Theory, Political Studies, Perspectives on Politics, Sociological Theory, Constellations, European Journal of Political Theory, Raison Politique, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Political Research Quarterly, Democracy and Security, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy
Steven Klein 