Kristin Makszin, Ph.D.
k.m.makszin@luc.leidenuniv.nl
Assistant Professor
Leiden University
About Me:
Kristin Makszin is an Assistant Professor of Political Economy. Her research relates to the field of political economy and public policy in Europe, with a focus on social and housing policy. The core of her research delves into how decisions by political and market actors impact the well-being people and families. Most recently her research looks into housing outcomes in European coountries, comparatively.
Research Interests
Political Economy
Post-Communist Politics
European Politics
Housing
Class, Inequality, and Labor Politics
Urban Poverty
Social Economy
Countries of Interest
Hungary
Poland
Czech Republic
Slovakia
United States
Netherlands
Publications:
Journal Articles:
Despite the diffusion of the paradigm of central bank independence, there is still meaningful variation in the operating missions of central banks both across countries and over time. Through a detailed qualitative case study, this article develops the concept of the operating mission of the central bank and applies it to the case of the Hungarian National Bank (MNB) to provide a more complete understanding of mission shift. Our findings demonstrate the critical role of policy agency, as the central bank governors moulded the operating mission of the central bank, even in the face of dominant international norms.
How much do politics and politically sensitive policy choices matter for sovereign credit ratings? We contend that while policy is consistently important for rating decisions, attention to politics varies with perceived uncertainty. Quantitatively analysing the text of 635 sovereign rating reports issued by Standard and Poor’s (S&P) between 1999 and 2012 for 40 European countries, we find that S&P scrutinises policy with similar intensity across countries, but political scrutiny was less intense in developed countries and prospective European Union members (categories formerly associated with lower uncertainty) than in emerging countries until the crisis dispelled illusions of lower uncertainty in these categories. Our findings nuance the common notion that financial market actors allow countries perceived to belong to low-risk categories more “room-to-move” in their political and policy choices, by showing that in rating decisions such permissiveness only applied to politics – but not to policy – and it ended with the global financial crisis.
We explore housing finance and policy in East Central Europe to understand the connection between housing, in particular independent household formation, and the demographic crisis. The combination of high debt-free homeownership rates with illiquid housing finance and limited rental markets produces conditions where housing restricts independent household formation and likely has a restrictive effect on fertility. We first assess the housing regime type in East Central Europe and demonstrate that it closely corresponds to the “difficult housing regime” in Southern Europe, which has well-established negative effects on independent household formation and fertility. Then we present a detailed case study of Hungary, which is a country with very low fertility rates and substantial changes in housing finance and policy over time. In particular, the issue was recently politicized through housing policies centered on household formation to counter the demographic crisis. We present a detailed analysis of policies related to access to housing for young adults through increased access to markets or state housing support schemes. These policies attempted to reduce dependence on families, but after the crisis, we find that these policies reinforce, rather than challenge, dependence on families for housing solutions, thereby limiting independent household formation. While these policies may serve a rhetorical role demonstrating a state response to the demographic crisis, we claim that their impact on fertility can be at most minimal because of stringent restrictions in access that concentrates on upper-middle-income households and limited financial commitment.
Scholars studying democracy are just beginning to investigate the specifically political consequences of rising socio-economic inequalities. This paper analyses whether the degree of political inequality between social groups is shaped by features of the welfare capitalist system. Specifically, we hypothesize that more labour protection and social support decrease participatory inequality via more evenly distributed resources and engagement between high- and low educated citizens. Our regression analyses combining micro- and macro-level data from 37 capitalist democracies over the past 20 years provide evidence that some protective and supportive elements of welfare capitalism reduce education-based participatory inequality. Our fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis identifies three functionally equivalent types of welfare capitalism that all produce low participatory inequality via increased protection, support or both. Finally, we empirically demonstrate that the mechanisms behind this link are, indeed, a more equal distribution of resources and engagement across low- and high educated citizens.
Book Chapters:
In: Batory A., Cartwright A., Stone D. (Eds.) Policy Experiments, Failures and Innovations: Beyond Accession in Central and Eastern Europe. The recent literature on international policy diffusion and cross-border transfer mainly focuses on innovation and adoption of practices from abroad. But how sure are we that these transfers are stable over time? Whereas practitioners and academics are often concerned about too little change and political gridlock, problems of excessive policy change have received less attention. We define excessive policy change as a type of policy failure and ask how it is related to international policy diffusion. We investigate this relationship by looking at instances of (non-)reforms in welfare policies in Eastern Europe (including aspects of health, family, and pension policy). While not all cases of excessive policy change are due to diffusion and trans-border learning, we see that in many instances diffusion greatly contributed to the excessive policy volatility.
Media Appearances:
Newspaper Quotes:
Summary of interview about expectations related to the 2018 Hungarian parliamentary election before it took place