Michael Rochlitz and Jutta Günther hosted an international workshop on "Quality of Governance and the Legacy of Socialism" at the University of Bremen on October 25-26, 2019. The event was organized together with the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development (ICSID) at the Higher School of Economics Moscow as well as the Mod-Block-DDR Association and the Research Centre for East European Studies (FSO).

The workshop featured keynote speeches by Gulnaz Sharafutdinova (King’s College London) and Marina Nistotskaya (University of Gothenburg), and presentations by researchers from Germany, Russia, Belgium, the US, Great Britain and Singapore who study political economy of post-communist countries. Topics discussed ranged from elections in authoritarian regimes to a long-lasting impact of socialist legacies, and from corruption to effects of Moscow redevelopment program on redistribution preferences and social capital.

Michael Rochlitz and the ICSID team have been longtime research partners. This has involved a number of co-authored publications, joint events and several on-going research projects with ICSID associates. The Center is led by Andrei Yakovlev (HSE Moscow) and Timothy Frye (Columbia University) and focuses on problems of institutional change and economic development in transition economies.