Christine Lutringer is executive director and senior researcher at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy. Trained in political science and international history, she studied in Strasbourg (Institut d’études politiques), Rome (Sapienza University and LUISS) and Geneva at the Graduate Institute where she received her Ph.D. in international history and politics in 2009. From 2010 to 2016 she was researcher and lecturer with the Institute for Area and Global Studies at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). At the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy she is in charge of projects on local democracy, citizenship and civic activism.
Her work explores democratic practices in the context of the mobilisation of new social and political actors. In particular it examines social movements and their influence on democratic politics and policy-making at the local level. Drawing on a set of case studies in urban India, Christine Lutringer analyses the strategies used by civil society to “voice” concerns and to create spaces of participation in public debates and public policies. In this perspective, Albert Hirschman’s paradigm, usually used to analyse dyanamics of exit and voice in national public spheres, is applied to understand neighbourhood mobilisation, legal recourse instead of electoral participation.
Her current projects focus on democratic practices and accountability and explore an issue of critical policy relevance and political importance: the unuse or underuse of public funds, and more specifically of special purpose social funds. Christine Lutringer is Senior researcher in the SNF Sinergia project Reversing the Gaze: Towards Post-Comparative Area Studies and conducts research in the WP4 led by the University of Edinburgh on "The Regulatory Architecture of the Cunning State: Unspent Public Funds in India and Italy".
Another thread of her research focuses on contemporary reforms of public policies. In particular, Christine Lutringer has been working on the notion of targeting social policies, examining agricultural policies and more recently health policies, with a SNIS-funded project on democratisation of access to health care for women in South Asia.
Desai, D., Randeria, S., & Lutringer, C. (2020) Redefining Vulnerability and State – Society Relationships during the COVID-19 Crisis: The Politics of Social Welfare Funds in India and Italy. In M. Maduro & P. Kahn (eds.), Democracy in Times of Pandemic: Different Futures Imagined (pp. 182-195). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108955690.014
Desai, D., Lutringer, C., & Randeria, S. (2020) Emergency Use of Public Funds: Implications for Democratic Governance, Global Challenges, special issue no. 1, June.
Eggel, D., Lutringer, C. & Galvin, M. (2020) Covid-19: A Modern Apocalypse or a Temporary Shock to the System? Global Challenges, special issue no. 1, June.
Lutringer, C. (2019). How Francophone scholarship deepened our understanding of democracy and social change, The Conversation, 21 March.
Lutringer, C. (2019) “Social change and democratic forms: Revisiting the contribution of the francophone literature on Development Studies”. In Baud, Isa, Basile, Elisabetta, Kontinen, Tiina and von Itter, Susanne (eds). Building Development Studies for the New Millennium, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 75-96.
Lutringer, C. and Randeria, S. (eds) (2017) Food consumption, Solid Waste Management and Civic Activism: Lessons from Bangalore/Bengaluru, India, special issue of International Development Policy |Revue internationale de politique de développement [Online], 8.2
Lutringer, C. (2017) Environmental and Social Justice in Solid Waste Management, International Development Policy | Revue internationale de politique de développement [Online], 8.2.
Lutringer, C. and Randeria, S. (2017) How Not to Waste a Garbage Crisis: Food Consumption, Solid Waste Management and Civic Activism in Bangalore/Bengaluru, India, International Development Policy | Revue internationale de politique de développement [Online], 8.2
Lutringer C., Randeria S. (2017) Garbage Is Good to Think With: The Interplay of Civic Activism and Judicial Intervention in Shaping Bangalore’s Solid Waste Management Policies, International Development Policy | Revue internationale de politique de développement [Online], 8.2 | 2017
Lutringer, C. (2017) Le ciblage des politiques agricoles en Inde : les implications pour les paysans du système d’approvisionnement public, Cah. Agric. 26: 45008. DOI:10.1051/cagri/2017027
Lutringer, C. (2017) Democracy on the Brink: Four Key Insights, Global Challenges, 2.
Ganguly, S. and Lutringer, C. (2017) Changing Practices of Water and Waste Management by the New Middle Classes Within Gated Communities in Bangalore, International Development Policy |Revue internationale de politique de développement [Online], 8.2
Lutringer, C. 2015 Representing Responsibility in Environmental Education: Insights from a Social Awareness Campaign in Bengaluru, India, Rivista di Studi Orientali. LXXXVIII, Supplemento 2, pp. 269-285.
Basile, E., B. Harriss-White and Lutringer, C. (eds) (2015) Mapping India’s Capitalism: Old and New Regions, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Basile, E., B. Harriss-White and Lutringer, C. (2015) Space and Capitalist Development in Contemporary India. In Mapping India’s Capitalism: Old and New Regions. Basile, E., Harriss-White B. and Lutringer C. (eds.) Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-8.
Lutringer, C. (2015) Uneven development and peasant mobilisations: Perspectives from Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh. In Mapping India’s Capitalism: Old and New Regions. Basile, E., Harriss-White B. and C. Lutringer (eds) Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 65-86.
Lutringer, C. (2015) Lineages of Scholarship. A Conversation with Barbara Harriss-White. In Mapping India’s Capitalism: Old and New Regions, E. Basile, B. Harriss-White and Lutringer C. (eds) Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 239-243.
Lutringer, C. (2013) Le secteur agricole en Inde: Quelles mutations? Collection Asie visions. Paris: Institut Francais des Relations Internationales.
Lutringer, C. (2012) Gouvernance de l’agriculture et mouvements paysans en Inde. Paris and Geneva: Karthala and Graduate Institute Publications.
Lutringer, C. (2010) A Movement of Subsidized Capitalists ? The Multi-level Influence of the Bharatiya Kisan Union in India, Revue Internationale de Sociologie, vol. 20 n° 3, pp. 513-531.