5pm: Lecture at The Sir Michael Dummett Lecture Theatre

6.15pm: Drinks and Informal chat in the Exhibition Space

7pm: Dinner at High Table. (Senior Members only. Please book in as normal if you wish to join Lord Willetts at dinner.)

Abstract: Love’s emergence as basis of marriage is a hallmark of modernity. Its compatibility with religious and traditional bases of marriage, however, is less understood. We explore the different criteria Iranians use to select their spouse as part of a broader effort to understand the complex relationships between love, religion and modernity. Love, we argue, does not mean the same thing to all, and its meaning is conditioned by the distinct historical and cultural frameworks in which it is embedded.

The impact of borders on refugees’ lives has been extensively analysed in relation to border control, border policing and border violence. However, borders can also be generative, shaping non-state political and social orders at multiple levels. This lecture examines the relationship between border regimes and the social orders created in displacement, drawing on empirical work with refugees from Burma living in Thailand, Malaysia and India.

Under what conditions do communities in ethnic wars form, and abide by, local non-aggression pacts? Studies of civilian victimization showed that pre-existing microlevel contention can generate violence, but lesser attention was given to the role of cordial relationships in constraining it. In this paper I argue that local actors will create inter-ethnic agreements in order to coordinate when there is high uncertainty over the local outcome of the war, and thus cooperatively lower it by providing mutual assurances.

Large-N studies reveal a strong, negative relationship between income-based measures of the middle class and perceptions of grand corruption. Yet significant cross-country variation exists, even when accounting for regime type. Why are some countries with large middle classes nonetheless perceived to be persistently corrupt? This paper argues that the effect of middle-class size on grand corruption is moderated by the strength of horizontal accountability institutions.

While there is a lot of research about how redistributive preferences change in times of economic crisis, and some studies about how those preferences shape party voting, there are no investigations about how the effect of redistributive preferences over vot-ing changes in time of economic crisis. This paper fills this gap, expecting that in times of economic crisis the effect of redistributive preferences over voting increases, since economic issues become more relevant.

Do political crisis at the national level alter or shift service delivery allocation at the local level? When budget planning and expenditure practices are regulated by law, the provision of public goods and services should be reflective of a locality's needs. This paper uses rich administrative micro-data to study the effects of critical political events at the national level on the spending decisions of local bureaucrats and how these vary depending on the local government's party alignment with respect to the incumbent in power at the national level.