On March 13, 2026, CES hosted an online discussion with Professor Mark Vail (Wake Forest University) about his new book, “The Hobbled State: Fractured Politics in Contemporary Germany.” Professor Vail was joined by Professor Sarah Wiliarty (Wesleyan University). The Hobbled State was published in 2026 as part of CES’s Understanding Europe Book Series with Agenda Publishing.
Speaker Bios:
Mark I. Vail is Worrell Chair of Politics and International Affairs at Wake Forest University. His research focuses on the comparative political economy of advanced industrial countries, with a particular emphasis on social and economic policy, industrial relations, political institutions, and the role of political ideas and ideologies in Western Europe. Until 2020, he was Professor of Political Science and a Fellow at the Murphy Institute of Political Economy at Tulane University. He has served on the editorial boards of several prominent journals and is currently editor of the series “Understanding Europe” published by Agenda Publishing. He has held positions as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, the Max Planck/Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies in Paris, and the University of Duisburg-Essen. In addition to The Hobbled State, he has published two previous books: Liberalism in Illiberal States: Ideas and Economic Adjustment in Contemporary Europe (Oxford University Press, 2018); and Recasting Welfare Capitalism: Economic Adjustment in Contemporary France and Germany (Temple University Press, 2010). He has also published chapters in numerous volumes of edited scholarship and articles in many prominent journals, including the European Journal of Political Research, Governance, Comparative Politics, the Journal of Common Market Studies, and West European Politics.
Sarah Elise Wiliarty is an Associate Professor of Government and Co-Chair of the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University. She graduated from Harvard and earned her PhD from UC Berkeley. She is a specialist in West European politics and the author of The CDU and the Politics of Gender in Germany: Bringing Women to the Party (2010). Her research focuses on political parties, policy making, and women and politics with a special focus on Germany. Recent publications include “Leadership in Crisis: Comparing Prime Minister Abe’s and Chancellor Merkel’s Response to the Covid-19 Pandemics” and “The Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) and the 2025 Federal Election: The Unsteady Return”. She is currently working on a book about how the policy-making dynamic changed as a result of German unification.
Learn more about the book here: https://www.agendapub.com/page/detail/the-hobbled-state/?k=9781788218528
All CES members get 40% off of all books in the Understanding Europe book series. Please reach out to us at memberships@ces-europe.org for instructions on how to order from this series.