Popescu, Bogdan

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Bogdan G. Popescu’s research interests focus on comparative politics and historical political economy using novel data from historical sources. His first book – Imperial Borderlands: Institutions and Legacies of the Habsburg Military Frontier (forthcoming with Cambridge University Press, 2023) draws on political science, economics, and history to examine key questions related to state formation, extractive institutions, and the modern-day impact of colonial legacies. He argues that the effect of extractive institutions depends on the removal of property rights, the use of violence, and investment in local infrastructure. To illustrate such effects, he focuses on military colonialism in the Habsburg Empire, a state that governed over vast territories of Central and Eastern Europe. His research was published in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Comparative Political Studies, and the Journal of Historical Political Economy. His other projects examine how states adopt institutions in order to ensure their survival and the consequences of their actions.

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    Imperial Borderlands: Institutions and Legacies of the Habsburg Military Frontier
    (Cambridge University Press, 2024) Popescu, Bogdan
    What are the institutions which govern border spaces and how do they impact long-term economic and social development? This book focuses on the Habsburg military frontier zone which originated in the sixteenth century as an instrument for protecting the empire's southern border against the threat of the Ottoman Empire and which lasted until the 1880s. The book outlines the conditions under which this extractive institution affected development, showing how locals were forced to work as soldiers and exposed to rigid communal property rights, an inflexible labor market, and discrimination when it came to the provision of public infrastructure. While the formal institutions set up during the military colony disappeared, their legacy can be traced in political attitudes and social norms even today with the violence and abuses exercised by the imperial government transformed into distrust in public authorities, limited political involvement, and low social capital.
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    Civic associations, populism, and (un-)civic behavior: evidence from Germany
    (2024) Popescu, Bogdan; Jugl, Marlene
    Civic associations are expected to foster civic, pro-social behavior, but this optimistic view is increasingly contested. We argue that populist radical right parties can strategically target and infiltrate associations to diffuse anti-establishment rhetoric and anti-democratic attitudes. We illustrate this phenomenon by examining the relationship between civic associations and compliance with government rules during Germany's first Covid-19 lockdown with a difference-in-differences design. Results show that areas with denser sport, nature, and culture clubs recorded higher mobility under lockdown. We document the infiltration mechanism and the spreading of anti-democratic attitudes within associations, using survey and election data and qualitative evidence including interviews. In doing so, we shed light on a negative effect of social networks and an understudied strategy of challenger populist parties.