Lukas Arndt Awarded Doctorate

In June, H. Lukas R. Arndt successfully defended his dissertation at the University of Cologne and Sciences Po, Paris. In “Linking Wealth and Power: Unity and Political Action of the World’s Wealthiest Families and the Corporate Elite,” Arndt set out to develop a framework for an analysis of capitalist classes in the twenty-first century. Combining a large sample of the world’s largest corporations with data on super-rich individuals and families as well as firm lobbying in the EU and the US, he explored the extent to which the rich can be understood as part of a capitalist class in and of itself. In his research he traced the structural class positions of the global super-rich in corporate networks and examined what influence they have on their firms’ lobbying activities. Arndt was a doctoral researcher on the joint cotutelle program between Sciences Po, Paris, and the International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy (IMPRS-SPCE) in Cologne from 2018.