Michael Kemmerling is a political economist at the Cologne Center for Comparative Politics and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. He works on business power in digital(ized) capitalism and studies how digitalization affects the power resources, political preferences, and influence strategies of digital and non-digital firms.

Michael is interested in the intersection between politics and economics in digital capitalism. Digitalization fundamentally restructures value-creation in capitalist economies. Concepts such as surveillance, digital, or platform capitalism emphasize how data, digital technologies, and digital infrastructures increasingly shape economic and social activities. While an emerging literature in management and economics studies new digital(ized) business models, the implications for the political power of business remain understudied. By identifying a consumer-platform alliance against platform regulation, existing studies narrowly focus on digital platform firms but neglect non-digital firms and non-platform-based business models. Further, the literature all but ignores the related field of lobbying and interest group studies. To broaden and complement the platform power debate, my dissertation asks how digitalization affects (1) the power resources, (2) political preferences, and (2) lobbying strategies of business.

Research Interests

• Digital Capitalism
• Business Power
• Lobbying and Interest Groups
• Weaponized Interdependence
• Comparative Political Economy

Teaching