How can we understand the decline of establishment political parties and the rise of new, successful challengers in Europe? Why are these new challengers predominantly right wing nationalist parties? How does their rise compare to the MAGA movement in the US? How is this new political landscape creating even greater challenges to attempts to solve cross-border problems with supranational cooperation?

To help answer these questions and others, my guest for this episode is Professor Sara Hobolt, the Sutherland Chair in European Institutions and professor in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics. Previously, she has held posts at the University of Oxford and the University of Michigan. She is also the Chair of the European Election Studies (EES), an EU-wide project studying voters, parties, candidates and the media in European Parliamentary elections. Sara has written extensively on the emergence of challenger parties within Europe and approaches the issue by applying a framework from the business world: entrepreneurial startups challenging incumbent firms in an imperfect market.

In addition to being a world renowned scholar in this field, Sara is one of TRIUM’s most popular teachers. She has the rare combination of deep subject level expertise, sophisticated research methodology, and an ability to explain complex topics clearly and coherently. I hope you enjoy the conversation!

Citations

DeVries, C. & Hobolt S. (2020) Political Entrepreneurs: The Rise of Challenger Parties in Europe. Princeton University Press.

Borgen (2010-2022). [TV Series]. Netflix. Written and created by Adam Price. SAM Productions.

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The policies in the first 100 days of the Trump administration have resulted in an extraordinary time of uncertainty and change in the way the global economy works and how it will function in the future. The shock at the speed and scope of the undermining of the current system regulating global trade is real. When we feel disorientated by our current experience of chaos, it is often helpful to try to re-anchor ourselves in putting what we are experiencing into a historical context. In this way, United States’ actions can be seen as part of a semi-predictable, oscillating pattern of the rise and fall of market forces vis-a-vis assertions of state power.

In this episode, my guest is TRIUM’s own Robert Falkner, and we discuss his and Barry Buzan’s new book, The Market in Global International Society: An English School Approach to International Political Economy.

Robert Falkner is Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and is the Academic Dean of the TRIUM Global EMBA. Robert has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University, Simone Veil Fellow at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and Associate Fellow of Chatham House. In addition to his role at the LSE, he is also a Distinguished Fellow of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.

In their new book, Buzon and Falkner argue that while adopting market rules in the international system creates more wealth and power than any alternative organising principles (e.g. mercantilism), it also necessarily undermines state power and sovereignty, which inevitably leads to a reassertion of power by strong state actors. The book is an amazing combination of original theoretical understandings and a staggeringly detailed and nuanced historical account of the oscillations between market and more statist international systems.

In this episode, Robert and I discuss the evidence for this pattern and whether the challenges of climate change and technological developments – particularly AI – may mean that the cycle will end and that we are headed into something unknown and unknowable.

Buzon, B. & Falkner, R. (2025) The Market in Global International Society: An English School Approach to International Political Economy. Oxford University Press

Bassani, Giorgio (2007) The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. Penguin Modern Classics, International Edition. First published in 1962.

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We are all born, become toddlers, teenagers, adults, mid-aged, late middle aged, and eventually die. Do company’s follow this same pattern? If so, can we use that pattern to better predict what they will do and compare that to what they should do at different stages of their life cycles?

My guest for this episode is Aswath Damodaran. Aswath is a Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University (Kerschner Family Chair in Finance Education). Aswath is a super star professor, considered both in and out of academia as the ‘Dean of Valuation’, and one of the best teachers I have ever had the privilege of working with together. We have been lucky to have him teaching on the TRIUM EMBA for the last 23 years!

In this episode we discuss his latest book, The Corporate Life Cycle: Business, investment, and Management Implications.

The work is an attempt to provide a unified theory of all of finance (with a bit of strategy, management and leadership). With clear, compelling and concise writing, Aswath views all of corporate finance, valuation, investment philosophy and management/leadership through the construct of the birth, aging and dying of firms. The scope and scale is vast, and in a less gifted writer, it would risk being reductionist and overly simplistic – the opposite of what we have here. I wish I would have read this book 20 years ago because it would have saved me a lot of time and effort!

In this conversation we cover the basics of the corporate life cycle and some of its implications. We get into a lively discussion about whether companies should strive to be ‘sustainable’, explore the leadership characteristic needed at different stages of a company’s life cycle, and outline the reasons why renewal and rebirth for company’s near the end of their life cycle is so difficult.

It is conversations with the likes of Aswath which make me feel so lucky to do what I do!

Citations

· Damodaran, Aswath (2024) The Corporate Life Cycle: Business, Investment, and Management Implications. Penguin Random House.

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