Explore every episode of the podcast Theory of the Week

This week's episode examines Max Weber's 1919 lecture "Politics as a Vocation," delivered in Munich during a period of significant political instability between the German Empire and the Weimar Republic.

We look at Weber's definition of politics as the pursuit of state power, his account of legitimate authority (traditional, charismatic, and legal-rational), and his distinction between "living for" politics and "living off" politics. Using the historical example of the British Parliament, we trace how access to political careers has been shaped by wealth and income. The episode closes with Weber's account of what distinguishes the politician from the bureaucrat, and the three qualities he saw as essential to political vocation: passion, responsibility, and judgement.

Reading:

Weber, M. (2021) Politics As a Vocation. Creative Media Partners, LLC. Available at: https://books.google.de/books?id=_9HpzgEACAAJ.

Picture of Max Weber:

Von Ernst Gottmann - https://cdn.britannica.com/49/39749-050-E773E614/Max-Weber-1918.jpg, Gemeinfrei, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90183495

Hello and welcome to the eleventh episode of Theory of the Week, a weekly show from A Student’s Note where we explore a theory-esque concept each week.

Last time, we looked at how labour markets in developed economies can trap people in a secondary tier of precarious, low-paid work — not because of a lack of effort or ability, but because of structural conditions that are self-reinforcing. This week we are turning to developing countries, where the concept of poverty traps originates.

For this, we will look at a 2022 paper by Balboni and co-authors called « Why do people stay poor? », addressing the question of whether poverty can be explained through differences in fundamentals, such as abilities and so on, or in opportunities, that is, access to assets.

But let us begin from the beginning.

Sources

Balboni, C., Bandiera, O., Burgess, R., Ghatak, M., & Heil, A. (2022). Why Do People Stay Poor? The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 137(2), 785–844.

Banerjee, A. V., & Duflo, E. (2007). The Economic Lives of the Poor. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21(1), 141–167.

Kraay, A., & McKenzie, D. (2014). Do Poverty Traps Exist? Assessing the Evidence. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 28(3), 127–148.

Hello and welcome to the tenth episode of Theory of the Week, a weekly show from A Student’s Note where we explore a theory-esque concept each week.

This and next week I want to talk about structural factors that keep people in poverty. Not poverty in the sense of not trying hard enough, but poverty in the sense of circumstances that make it nearly impossible to think beyond tomorrow, regardless of effort or ability. People who may well be working, but in conditions where structural factors beyond their control prevent them from ever finding a way out.

I want to dedicate two episodes to this topic because poverty traps exist in both developed and developing countries, even though we are of course talking about very different levels and forms of poverty.

For developed countries, we might expect reasonably efficient labour market outcomes. After all, these are highly developed economies with formal education systems, labour market regulations, and extensive welfare states. If we control for differences in human capital, meaning education, acquired skills, and general ability, we might expect outcomes to be largely unbiased.

But then consider these questions. How can it be that people with precarious jobs tend to stay in precarious jobs? How can it be that two people with a similar educational background end up in very different wealth positions? And how can it be that someone’s likelihood of ever reaching stable employment depends so heavily on their starting point? Differences in individual behaviour and ability are one answer. But are those differences really independent of the conditions people grow up and work in?

One theory that tries to answer these questions is the dual labour market theory, developed by Doeringer and Piore in 1971. It argues that there are in fact two distinct levels of the labour market: a primary and a secondary one.

The primary sector is characterised by stable employment, good opportunities to advance, and relatively high pay with amenities like paid leave. The secondary sector, by contrast, is characterised by unstable employment and low pay. Neither employer nor worker invests much in the relationship because the employment is simply not designed to last. The jobs are precarious, offer little opportunity to progress, and are often short-term by design.

People in the secondary sector are, in a meaningful sense, stuck. It is very hard to move from secondary to primary employment, and the precarious conditions of secondary work make it difficult to accumulate the things that primary employers look for. As we will see, it is far from random who ends up in which sector in the first place.

References

Doeringer, P. B., & Piore, M. J. (1971). Internal labor markets and manpower analysis. D. C. Heath and Company.

Xibao, G., Ping, L. (2025). Dual Labor Market. In: Yinxing, H. (eds) Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese Economics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-4036-9_222

Hello and welcome to the ninth episode of Theory of the Week a weekly show from A student’s note where we explore a theory-esque concept each week.

This week I would like to introduce a macro-sociological approach to explaining voting behaviour. This means that we are discussion a theory which looks at the society, claiming that knowing about the social circumstances of different groups can help us to better understand their voting behaviour.

We are going to explore Cleavage Theory, developed by Seymour Lipset and Stein Rokkan, which is still widely used today as a framework for explaining voter behaviour and party alignment.

But let us start from the beginning.

References

Epstein, L.D. (1969) ‘Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, by Seymour M. Lipset, Stein Rokkan’, Political Science Quarterly, 84(1), pp. 158–159. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/2147080.

Inglehart, R. (1977) The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics. Princeton University Press. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt13x18ck (Accessed: 27 March 2026).

Kriesi, H. et al. (2008) West European Politics in the Age of Globalization. 1st edn. Cambridge University Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511790720.

Lipset, S.M. and Rokkan, S. (1967) Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-national Perspectives. Free Press.

Pappi, F.U. (1977) ‘Sozialstruktur, gesellschaftliche Wertorientierungen und Wahlabsicht: Ergebnisse eines Zeitvergleichs des deutschen Elektorats 1953 und 1976’, Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 18(2/3), pp. 195–229.

Schmitt-Beck, R. (2007) ‘Seymour M. Lipset/Stein Rokkan (Hrsg.), Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, New York/London 1967’, in S. Kailitz (ed.) Schlüsselwerke der Politikwissenschaft. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, pp. 251–255. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-90400-9_68.

Hello and welcome to the eighth episode of Theory of the Week, a weekly show from A Student’s Note where we explore a theory‑esque concept each week.

This week I would like to introduce another important contractualist—besides Locke and Hobbes, who we covered in the fifth episode. Today I would like to talk about Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of the most influential but also controversial figures in modern political philosophy.

He was born in Geneva in 1712 and was markedly an intellectual outsider among his contemporary Enlightenment thinkers, because he was deeply sceptical of the progress and rationalism that figures like Voltaire celebrated. You may know him from the famous line “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

Interestingly, while the diagnosis was condemned during his life, with both personal and intellectual consequences, it is the solution that became the subject of a later controversy.

But let us start from the beginning.

Hello and welcome to the seventh episode of Theory of the Week, a weekly show from A Student’s Note where we explore a theory‑esque concept each week.

We are once again back from a break. My January and February were full of exams and papers, so we were missing a speaker for a while. But enough of that.

Today we are talking about a classic figure of modern political philosophy: John Rawls. He is mainly known for his Theory of Justice, also called justice as fairness – which some of you may have heard of. In this episode, I will first give some biographical background, then outline his theory, and finally talk about the wider impact of John Rawls.

Let us begin!

Hello and welcome to the sixth episode of Theory of the Week. A weekly show from A Student’s Note where we explore a theory-esque concept each week.

For Christmas we took a little break, and hope you were able to do the same. In any case, we hope you had a fantastic Christmas.

This time I would like to explore social contract theory, but there are a lot of theorists who used this heuristic of natural state and society. To account for the different approaches, I chose to contrast the theories of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, two classical contractualists.

In my opinion, this comparison gives a good understanding of how different classical theorists came to surprisingly different results.

But I have already talked a lot without explaining what a social contract theory is. So let’s start from the beginning.

Welcome to the fifth episode of Theory of a Week, a weekly show from a student’s note, where we explore a theory-esque concept each week.

This week we are entering the arena of international relations theories by exploring the social-constructivist approach. Social constructivism gives us tools to explain changes in the nature of international politics and offers a powerful critique of neorealist theories, which tend to explain change as a return to a predefined ‘natural state’ of self-help.

These tools help us give more nuanced answers when we try, for example, to make sense of NATO allies starting to doubt whether the United States would really defend them, or Germany suddenly redefining its relationship with Russia.

For this, I would like to take a slightly different approach than usual and trace the core argument from Alexander Wendt’s 1992 article ‘Anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power politics’ from beginning to end, instead of combining different sources and perspectives.

So this week, we really need to start from the beginning.

Hello and welcome to the fourth episode of Theory of a Week, a weekly show from a student’s note, where we explore a theory-esque concept each week.

This week is somewhat of a continuation of last week’s episode, because we will cover a second path‑defining economist: John Maynard Keynes. He was active in early 20th‑century Europe, a period marked by war, social unrest, and the Great Depression. In this crisis‑ridden context, many core economic ideas were questioned – including Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” and the belief in fully self‑regulating markets.

In this episode, we introduce Keynes’s key insights about aggregate demand, unemployment, and the role of the state in stabilising a capitalist economy. We discuss why, for Keynes, markets can get stuck in deep recessions, why government spending and fiscal policy matter, and how his ideas reshaped macroeconomics and economic policy after the 1930s.

If you’re interested in macroeconomics, economic crises, or debates about austerity versus stimulus, this episode on John Maynard Keynes and the rise of Keynesian economics is for you.

Let’s get started.

Chapters

* Introduction

* The Great Depression

* The break with classical economic thought

* The role of the state

* A new vision of economic order

* Closing thought

Music credits

Music track: Daydreams by PufinoSource: https://freetouse.com/musicMusic for Video (Free Download)

Hello and welcome to the third episode of  Theory of a Week, the new weekly show from a student’s note, where we explore a new  theory-esque concept each week.This third episode explores the surprisingly modern thoughts of Adam Smith.

In this episode, we travel to 18th‑century Scotland to unpack Adam Smith’s core ideas from The Wealth of Nations: division of labour, the market mechanism, and the famous “invisible hand.” We look at how his explanation of England’s prosperity through specialisation and productivity still underpins modern microeconomics, and how his account of prices gravitating towards a “natural price” anticipates today’s supply‑and‑demand models.

At the same time, we explore Smith’s critical side: his worries about the dark side of specialisation, the risk of deskilling and alienation, and his hope that rising productivity would spread wealth through society.

If you’re interested in political economy, the history of economic thought, or just want to understand what the “invisible hand” really means (and doesn’t mean), this episode is for you.

Let’s get started.

Chapters

* Introduction

* England’s Prosperity

* Virtues of Division of Labour

* The Invisible Hand

* Exploring the Market Mechanism

* The Problematisation of Specialisation & Social Inequality

Music credits

Music track: Daydreams by PufinoSource: https://freetouse.com/musicMusic for Video (Free Download)

Hello and welcome to the second episode of Theory of a Week, the new weekly show from a student’s note, where we explore a new theory-esque concept each week.

For this second episode I have chosen Esping-Andersen’s contribution of defining three welfare state clusters, because notwithstanding criticism the typology it is still widely used in welfare state research.

Esping-Andersen revolutionalised the way in which we compare welfare states today and changed the way researchers measure the extent of individual welfare states. Reason enough to explore his reasoning and his famous typology.

Let’s get started.

Chapters

* Introduction

* Three Approaches to Welfare State Development

* Case for a multi-layered approach

* Andersens analytical categories

* Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism

Closing Question

Do we still have three worlds of welfare capitalism? That is, is the typology still useful beyond “the golden age of welfare states”?

I believe so because the typology has proven remarkably enduring. Some attempts have been made to expand it and exclude states like the Netherlands and Switzerland entirely, classifying them as « mixed cases » that don’t fit a typological design (unlike ideal types).

Furthermore, a data error initially placed Japan incorrectly in the typology. Despite these issues, the typology, with some adjustments to the countries, remains widely used beyond social policy research. And in my experience, it’s discussed in almost all introductory political science courses, demonstrating its lasting impact and persistence in analysing welfare states.

But thats just my reading, what do you think?

Music credits

Music track: Daydreams by PufinoSource: https://freetouse.com/musicMusic for Video (Free Download)

Hello and welcome to the first episode of Theory of a Week, the new weekly show from a student’s note, where we explore a new theory-esque concept each week.

For this first episode I have chosen Plato’s theory of the ideal state, which rests on a deterministic view of human capabilities and is based on a radical meritocracy.

Plato was and is an influential figure in political thought and is often even considered to be the origin of western political thought. Reason enough to explore his reasoning and one of his main theories, which is also the basis for his critique of (direct) democracy.

Let’s get started.

Chapters

* Introduction

* Historical Background

* Theory of the Soul

* Politics as an Art

* From the Individual to the Polis

* The Role of Education

Closing Question

If we abstract away from Plato’s specific ancient views—like belief in the world of Forms or the immortal soul— doesn’t Plato’s ideal state simply resemble rule by the most capable or intelligent?

I think more or less yes, but I found two limitations of this interpretation:

1. Not just intelligence, but virtue and wisdom.

For Plato, it’s not simply raw intelligence or technical expertise that qualifies someone to rule, but proven ability to know “the Good”—that is, a deep philosophical wisdom and moral character. His philosopher-kings are meant to combine intellectual and ethical excellence.

2. Rule by nature, not just effort.

Modern meritocracy often emphasises both ability and effort, allowing for social mobility based on achievement. Plato, by contrast, puts much more emphasis on inborn nature: education and testing reveal someone’s predetermined suitability for leadership or other roles—not everyone can become a philosopher-king, no matter how hard they try.

But thats just my reading, what do you think?