DIG — Political Economy of Development, Innovation and Governance

The DIG Research Group at the University of Jyväskylä investigates the changing political economy of development, innovation, and governance in an era of interconnected social, economic, ecological, technological, and geopolitical crises.

Grounded in historical analysis, present-day structural critique, and forward-looking inquiry, our work examines how capitalist development unfolds through political-economic relations, technological transformation, institutional arrangements, and the ecological limits of human societies across state, global, and community levels.

Historically Grounded

We approach development as a historically constituted process, shaped by changing relations between economies, states, societies, and the wider world. Understanding contemporary inequalities and institutional configurations requires attention to the histories of capitalist expansion, colonialism, state formation, industrialization, and North–South relations.

Our research is particularly attentive to the historical experiences and contemporary dynamics of the Global South, including East and Southeast Asia, while also examining the Nordic experience and its changing position within the global political economy.

History, for us, is not simply a record of the past. It helps explain why particular institutions, inequalities, and forms of political authority have emerged—and how they continue to influence the possibilities of development in the present.

Presently Engaged

We examine the contradictions of contemporary capitalist development as they emerge in democratic and authoritarian politics, economic inequality, social reproduction, labour, war and peace, climate change, and technological transformation.

Our research brings together critical political economy, development studies, heterodox economics, innovation policy, public administration, and post-colonial perspectives. We are interested in the changing relationships among markets and states, capital and labour, technology and society, development and democracy, and economic activity and ecological limits.

This includes research on authoritarian neoliberalism and populism; development finance and economic policy; labour and social reproduction; war, peace and securitization; climate justice; artificial intelligence and algorithmic management; and the political governance of technological change.

Forward-Looking

Critical research should not end with diagnosing the present. DIG approaches development studies as both an analytical and prefigurative field: concerned with understanding existing structures while examining how different social, economic, technological, and institutional arrangements can be built and practiced.

We study alternative development strategies, humane and democratic digitalization of work, solidarity and social movements, care economies and the welfare state. We are also interested in indigenous and cooperative governance institutions and their contribution to public value, as well as in forms of community organization that offer different ways of relating economy, society, and nature.

Our work asks how institutions and policies can support democratic participation, social justice, peace, ecological sustainability, and human flourishing—and how existing institutions can be challenged, reformed, or reimagined in response to contemporary crises.

Our Core Question:
How can development, innovation, and governance be oriented toward democratic, just, and sustainable futures?