Mihai Varga

Mihai Varga (PhD 2011 in sociology, University of Amsterdam) is a senior researcher at the Institute for East-European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin. His current research focuses on the political economy of agricultural reforms and of infrastructural development in the wider Black Sea region. His latest book is Poverty as Subsistence. The World Bank and Pro-Poor Land Reform in Eurasia (Stanford, 2023; also covering land reform and its effects in Ukraine). His work has also appeared in journals such as Word Development, Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of Common Market Studies, New Political Economy, Land Use Policy, Journal of Development Studies, and Review of International Political Economy.

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Papers

Buzogany, A. & Varga, M., 2025. Breaking the rural underdevelopment trap? Eastern Enlargement, agricultural policy and lessons for Ukraine. Journal of European Public Policy, 1-22.

Buzogany, A. & Varga, M., 2025. Making Markets Through Coalitions: The European Union and the Debate Over Ukraine’s National Resources. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 63 (1), 108-126.

Varga, M., 2023. Poverty as Subsistence: The World Bank and Pro-poor Land Reform in Eurasia. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Varga, M., 2020. Poverty Reduction through Land Transfers? The World Bank’s Titling Reforms and the Making of “Subsistence” Agriculture. World Development, 135, 105058.

Varga, M., 2017. Small Farms Survival and Growth: Making Investments Despite Credit Constraints. Sociologia Ruralis, 57, 641-660.

Varga, M., 2016. Worker Protests in Post-communist Romania and Ukraine: Striking with Tied Hands. Manchester University Press.

Varga, M., 2015. Trade unions and austerity in Central and Eastern Europe did they do something about it? Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 21 (3), 313-326.

Varga, M., 2013. State strategies of resisting social accountability: Post-Soviet insights. East European Politics and Societies, 27 (4), 727-742.