Helen Thompson: Local oil, global finance, and democracies without citizen-creditors

In conversation with Vera Šćepanović, Helen Thompson explains how concentrating on energy can reshape our understanding of contemporary history, political economy, and transnational finance; discusses how international relations are simultaneously shaped by zero-sum attitudes and tacit cooperation; asks what it means when representative democracies no longer rely on ‘citizen-creditors’; and reflects on how the profound economic shock triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine might play out across the world.