Helen Callaghan

Helen Callaghan studied at Northwestern University in Chicago, where she earned an M.S. in mathematical methods for the social sciences in 2002 and a Ph.D. in political science in 2006. Before embarking on her dissertation, she studied politics, philosophy and economics at Trinity College in Oxford and worked as a research assistant at the Social Science Research Centre (WZB) in Berlin. During the field research and write-up phases of her thesis, she was based first at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and then, from 2003 to 2006, at the Max-Planck Institute in Cologne.

Callaghan’s research is in the area of comparative political economy, with a special focus on the politics of corporate governance in advanced industrialized countries. Her dissertation, “European Integration and the Clash of Capitalisms,” maps, compares and analyses the positions of German, French and British unions and employers regarding EU directives concerning takeovers and worker participation, to explore why the division of power inside firms between shareholders and stakeholders still differs dramatically across countries. A joint paper with Martin Höpner, recently published in Comparative European Politics,uses roll call data to find out whether the protracted political battles over company law harmonization divide or unite transnational party groups in the European Parliament. The main theoretical contribution of both projects is to identify conditions determining whether domestic actors join cross-border coalitions with their peers abroad to exploit the lobbying opportunities provided by multilevel governance structures. As a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute (2006-2008), she pursued similar questions.