Cooperation against the odds

Book manuscript

Cooperation among economic actors is a key ingredient for inclusive growth and innovation across the Global North and South: it can help left-behind areas recover their dynamism; middle-income regions move upmarket; and low-income regions become exporters. Yet, we know strikingly little about how to create cooperation in institutionally weak, low-trust contexts.

My book Cooperation against the Odds provides one of the first accounts of how economic actors start working together to address challenges that they face in common in adverse circumstances. Drawing on four pairs of matching case studies in the wine, spice, niche tourism, and mass tourism sectors, it explains the puzzling creation of cooperation for upgrading within an unlikely setting, namely Greece shortly before and during the financial crisis.

The book shows that cooperation against the odds emerges through a combination of boundary-spanning local leadership and facilitative policy instruments, which can be made available in surprising ways even in the least likely environments. How, exactly, do local leaders help overcome the collective action problems and cognitive obstacles to cooperation that firms face in their area? Who becomes a local leader and in what kinds of places are such actors more likely to be found? How can public policies make it easier for firms to define and implement their own collective goals? Can supranational entities like the European Union help provide facilitative policies in countries that lack domestic coordinating institutions?

In tackling these questions, the book bridges scholarship in comparative political economy, international political economy, and regional studies, addressing the blind spots of each. It sheds light on cooperation as a pathway to economic prosperity that is understood little compared to the more familiar strategies of liberalization and top-down state intervention. This pathway is becoming more important than ever as the green transition, the need for climate adaptation, and changing geopolitical dynamics pose growing challenges to regional economic resilience, creating an ever more pressing need to foster inclusive growth in places facing institutional weaknesses.

The book is under contract by Cambridge University Press and is expected to appear in the Business and Politics series in the first half of 2027.

Full-length journal articles

• Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni (2024), ‘How can public policies facilitate local cooperation? insights from the EU’s wine policy’, New Political Economy 29(4)

• Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni (2024), ‘Obstacles to local cooperation in fragmented, left-behind economies: An integrated framework’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 17(2)

Short journal articles

• Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni (2024), ‘Fostering Coordination to Bridge the UK’s Regional Disparities: A Response to Rachel Reeves’s Mais Lecture’, The Political Quarterly 95(4)

PhD thesis

• My PhD thesis is entitled “Cooperation against the odds: a study on the political economy of local development in a country with small firms and small farms”. It can be accessed here.

Scholarships, grants and awards

• Hellenic Bank Association Postdoctoral Fellowship, January-December 2023

• ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, January-December 2022

• London School of Economics, Full PhD Scholarship, 2016-2020

• Early Career Plenary Speaker, annual conference of the Regional Studies Association (RSA), 11-14 June 2024

• Early Career Workshop Award, Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), 2019 (awarded on a competitive basis to 14 early career researchers, enabling them to participate at a career development workshop and covering the registration, travel and accommodation costs of attending SASE’s annual conference in New York)

• UACES Travel Scholarship, 2018 (competitive grant awarded by the Academic Association for Contemporary European Studies for my PhD fieldwork)

Public engagement

• Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni (15/11/2022), invited talk at the “Third Joint EU Cohesion Policy Conference” organised by the European Commission (DG REGIO), the Croatian Ministry of Regional Development and EU Funds, and the Regional Studies Association (Europe) in Zagreb.

• Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni (10/11/2022), participation in the Greek public broadcaster (ERT)’s 8pm news programme “Prime” to discuss my ELIAMEP policy paper

• Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni (3/11/2022) “Cooperation against the odds: Getting small firms to work together in unfavourable circumstances”, Policy Paper #115, Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP). Available in both English and Greek.

• Stathis Kalyvas and Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni (31/5/2020), “The tourism that we wish for” (in Greek), opinion article in the Greek daily Kathimerini

• Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni and Philip Schnattinger (29/11/2019), “The misuse of CAP funds in Central and Eastern Europe is a symptom of corruption, not a cause.”, LSE EUROPP blog.

Media mentions

• Article in the Greek daily Kathimerini by economist and venture capital professional Aristos Doxiadis about the overall argument of my thesis, with an emphasis on the transformative role of institutional entrepreneurs at the local level

• Local newspaper article about a talk I gave at a public event hosted by Santorini’s wine cooperative. The talk was on “the contribution of cooperation and networking to the development of gastronomical tourism in Greece”. The event took place in the framework of the EU-funded award programme “South Aegean: European Region of Gastronomy 2019”.

Talking about my dissertation findings at a public event in Santorini on 18/4/19

Talking about my ELIAMEP policy paper at the Greek public broadcaster’s 8pm news programme on 10/11/22