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Kevin Keller

@kbkeller.bsky.social
102 followers 91 following 45 posts

Associate Professor at University of Missouri - Kansas City School of Law. Researching history of international and comparative law, economic development. www.kevin-keller.com

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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
I wrote about @driessenmiriam.bsky.social's fantastic new book, which digs into the messy world of lawsuits against Chinese businesses in Ethiopian courts. Thanks to Sinica for publishing! www.sinicapodcast.com/p/law-versus...
sinicapodcast.com
Law Versus Development
Chinese businesses are pouring into Ethiopia. When someone gets hurt, what happens?
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
(Which is obviously infuriating for other countries, who are told that repayment of debt is the first rule of sovereign lending.) www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...
hup.harvard.edu
Rethinking Sovereign Debt — Harvard University Press
Conventional wisdom holds that all nations must repay debt. Regardless of the legitimacy of the regime that signs the contract, a country that fails to honor its loan obligations damages its reputatio...
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Great piece, and highlights one of the strangest features of sovereign lending: that for some countries, nobody really expects (or wants) them to pay off their debts.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
7/ My stupid proposal is that we institute something like jury duty for book clubs. You get a summons in the mail: two weeks from today, report to City Hall to discuss Middlemarch
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
6/ If we want people to be able to read (I do), and we also think people deserve a chance to participate in guided learning as adults, if desired (I do), then we might need to think creatively about how to solve those specific problems, and not bundle them with "fix the whole university system."
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
5/ I'm very frightened and stressed about AI, and I'm confused by the civic centers. But I think Gilman and Manov do a good job of pushing us to specify what precisely we're losing with both these developments, and who's losing it.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
4/ It's true that, unlike today, people lacked the tools to "pretend" to do good work. But that doesn't mean they put in the effort to actually "do" good work. They just did bad work.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
3/ These both chime with my experiences. I loved undergrad and I learned a ton, but even back in "my day" (late 2000s / early 2010s), many instructors were pretty bad, many courses were pretty thin, and many classmates were pretty checked-out.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
2/ Second (by Ann Manov) is about the spread of "civic centers": harpers.org/archive/2026...
harpers.org
Republican Machines, by Ann Manov
Can the GOP save the humanities?
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
1/ Two really interesting recent pieces, both making a similar point: for at least a decade, things at universities haven't been going great. First (by @nilsgilman.bsky.social) is about AI: www.persuasion.community/p/the-multiv...
persuasion.community
The University As We Know It Is Finished
That’s a good thing.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Huge thank you to Just Money for spotlighting my forthcoming piece. There's still time to alert me to any goofs in the article!
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
3/ For a lot more about Kenya, and the railway, and the contracts saga, see here:
academic.oup.com
From Legal Transplants to Policy Irritants: Chinese Economic Expansion and Global Legal Change
Abstract. Since the 1970s, comparative law scholars have studied “legal transplants”: legal institutions that emerged in one location and then were moved t
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
2/ What stands out to me is this: access to Chinese capital has set off an intense fight in Kenya about whether (and how) to use that capital--and more broadly, about what kind of legal system is conducive to growth. Government transparency is part of that larger debate.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
1/ More developments on the elusive contracts for the Standard Gauge Rail! This is especially interesting right now, as a lot of discussion on law + China/Africa focuses on the recent cancellation of RightsCon in Lusaka.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Exciting stuff!
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Reposted by Kevin Keller
Nathaniel Donahue @nwdonahue.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
The final version of the paper is now published and live, with a greatly expanded application section and some new historical finds. Thanks to everyone who gave me comments and workshopped the piece with me—it’s so much better for everyone’s input! yalelawjournal.org/pdf/01KQD1GF...
yalelawjournal.org
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
10/ Finally: this is a draft! Please send along any suggestions / critiques / comments. The article is available here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
papers.ssrn.com
The World Bank and the Origins of Chinese State Capitalism
This article reconsiders the legacy of the World Bank, one of the world’s most powerful international economic organizations. Scholars typically claim that the
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
9(2)/ It also appears in many of the forthcoming pieces highlighted in this blog post. To me, it is one reason why international LPE is an exciting avenue for future research.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
9(1)/ This observation--that a global perspective can improve our understanding of law and political economy, even for developments that might appear "local" or "national"--came up in many panels and talks at the recent ALPE conference in Richmond.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
8(2)/ To understand political-economic developments in one country (e.g., the bipartisan turn to "industrial policy" in the United States, or Trump's acquisition of a "golden share" in U.S. Steel), it is helpful to look at global circuits of material and intellectual exchange.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
8(1)/ But I think it is an important strand, in part because it makes an implicit methodological point.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
7/ Necessary caveat: this is one small strand of a gigantic story! And there's more nuance in the article.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
6(2)/ For someone convinced in the superiority of neoliberalism, it was easy to assume that China would eventually "converge" with the United States, and not to worry too much about supporting non-neoliberal (and therefore, theoretically, temporary) forms of governance.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
6(1)/ The second was the overwhelming confidence that many political and economic leaders (across the world) felt about the future of neoliberalism.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
5(2)/ Of course the Bank, and others, were excited to work with Chinese leaders! And were predisposed to compromise.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
5(1)/ The first was the unique position of China in the 1980s and 1990s. A huge country, with a huge number of potential workers and consumers, suddenly transformed from a vocal critic of the US-led economic order to a willing participant.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
4/I argue that the Bank's work in China--in which an organization heavily influenced by the US helped nurture a form of corporate power that violated many principles of U.S. economic management--reveals two reasons for the eventual global shift from neoliberalism to state capitalism.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
3/ Who cares? Aside from law+development people, I think the episode helps us tackle a larger question. As recently as the 2000s, neoliberalism was a globally dominant mode of economic policy-making. Over the past decade, we've seen a global turn to "state capitalism" or "industrial policy." Why?
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
2/ In brief, the paper shows that in the 1980s and 1990s the World Bank helped the Chinese government strengthen Chinese state-owned enterprises. This is surprising because, in most of the rest of the world, the Bank pushed governments to privatize their SOEs.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Delighted to be part of this list! My paper "The World Bank and the Origins of Chinese State Capitalism," is forthcoming in the Berkeley Journal of International Law. Getting to the draft requires a lot of clicking around, so I thought I'd pull out my most widely relevant arguments here. 1/9
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
Terrifically interesting interview, with helpful introductions to some ideas / terms that are trending on the Chinese internet.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
Fascinating stuff from leading gun buff @katebirkbeck.bsky.social
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Reposted by Kevin Keller
Renata Keller @renatakeller.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
I'm so excited to return to my old stomping grounds next Monday to give a talk about The Fate of the Americas. If you're in the Boston area, it would be great to see you there! #History 🗃️
Poster for book talk at Boston University on April 13 at 2pm
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
Happy to share that this article is forthcoming in the Berkeley Journal of International Law! Please send along any comments or critiques. Draft available here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
The latest from health law buff Heather Romero!
americanbar.org
Skin Substitute Crackdown Is Wounding Providers and Patients
At the outset of 2026, wound care providers, and skin substitute treatments in particular, are under significant stress from the government on two fronts.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
Makes me fee better about academia "When Mr. Redzepi wanted to discipline them but there were customers in the dining room, several employees said, he would crouch under the counters in the open kitchen and jab them in the legs with his fingers or a nearby utensil, like a barbecue fork."
nytimes.com
Punching, Slamming, Screaming: A Chef’s Past Abuse Haunts Noma, the World’s Top-Rated Restaurant
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
What motivated foreign policy in Nigeria in the 1960s? And what can this tell us about post-colonial African history? Very interesting new piece by @chloemayoux.bsky.social !
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Also, reminds of this great, recent book by Lisandro Claudio about the history of austerity in the Philippines. We can't heap all the blame on the IMF!
cornellpress.cornell.edu
The Profligate Colonial by Lisandro E. Claudio | Hardcover | Cornell University Press
In The Profligate Colonial, Lisandro E. Claudio reveals how austerity, long before it became a buzzword of modern technocracy, was a tool of US empire.Austerity is often praised as prudence in hard...
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Terrific piece. Must add the latest book from @seanvanatta.bsky.social and @petercontibrown.bsky.social to my reading list.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
(And, as scare quotes suggest, we should be careful about saying what "worked." There are a lot of rickety stories out there. We must listen to historians and their revisionist takes! 😤)
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
I especially agree on the need to reject two premises that prop up a lot of research and programming: (i) that societies behave like machines, and (ii) that approaches that "worked" in the US or Europe should be applied elsewhere.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Fascinating piece by Yuen Yuen Ang -- that our current moment is not a "polycrisis," but a "polytunity."
theideasletter.org
Polytunity - The Ideas Letter
“Polycrisis” has become a ubiquitous descriptor for the multisector, intersecting problems afflicting the world—but the term masks the systemic nature of these crises and overwhelmingly reflects Euroc...
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Reposted by Kevin Keller
Renata Keller @renatakeller.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
Tempted to steal my daughter’s sign for my office door…
Child’s homemade do not disturb sign
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
Johns Hopkins only has 84 classrooms?
publicbooks.org
The Misuses of the University - Public Books
Have the funds that might have trained the next generation of scholars at the nation’s first research university have been blown on ostentatious new buildings?
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
Read more here! (My author page; the paper page is not working 😎) papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/...
papers.ssrn.com
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
This is obviously one piece of a very large puzzle. But it's an interesting piece. It improves our understanding of how the global economy worked during the era of "neoliberalism," and it suggests new reasons for the current global turn to state capitalism.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
I describe how the World Bank in the 1980s and 1990s helped Chinese leaders reform and strengthen state-owned enterprises. This is interesting because across much of the rest of the Global South, the World Bank (together with the IMF) pushed strongly for privatization.
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Kevin Keller @kbkeller.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
How did Chinese state-owned enterprises become some of the world's largest corporations? My latest paper (finally posted on SSRN!) tackles the question.
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