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Project Collaborator

Steven Klein

Senior Lecturer in Political Theory, Department of Political Economy King’s College, London

Biography

Steven Klein is Senior Lecturer in Political Theory (Associate Professor) in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College, London. His writing focuses on democratic theory, theories of political economy and the welfare state, and the history of European social and political thought (especially of 19th- and 20th-century Germany). His first book, The Work of Politics: Making a Democratic Welfare State (Cambridge 2020), examines the democratic potential of struggles over welfare institutions. He is currently writing a global history and philosophy of trade unions for Allen Lane/Oxford University Press. In the fall of 2023, he began a new four-year project, Systemic Risk and the Transformation of Democracy (DERISK), funded by a UKRI Frontier Research Grant. His articles have appeared in American Political Science Review, Journal of Political Philosophy, Political Theory, and several other journals. To learn more about his research and publications, please visit his website.

Topics

Featured Project

Detail of a tapestry depicting workers on a picket line.

Which Side Are You On? The Labor Movement Between Theory and Practice

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2026 – 2027
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Projects

What Force on Earth: Theorizing the Labor Movement

Tapestry featuring labor organizers

What Force on Earth: Theorizing the Labor Movement

Is the labor movement a subject for political theory? This grant brings together scholars from across many disciplines, along with organizers and labor leaders, to explore what political visions, institutional structures, and organizing strategies might seize the opportunities of the present...
Are labor unions a subject for political theory? What would it be to provide such a theory? Many of the conceptual staples of the labor movement — solidarity, common interest, economic leverage — are relatively concrete, functioning largely as practical and instrumental ideas. At the same time, the ...

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