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Central European University
Department of International Relations
Introduction to International Political Economy 2022/2023 Fall Term
(4 credits)
Class Times:
Tuesday, 13:30-15:10, venue; Thursday, 13:30-15:10, venue
Instructors:
Andrew X. Li
Email: LiX@ceu.edu
Office Hours: Tue & Thu 11:00-13:00
Dóra Piroska
Email: PiroskaD@ceu.edu Office Hours: by appointment
Guest Lecturers:
László Csaba
Email: csabal@ceu.edu
Thomas Fetzer
Email: fetzert@ceu.edu
Béla Greskovits
Email: greskovi@ceu.edu
Course Description
Susan Strange – one of the founders of IPE as a discipline - liked to compare her approach to IPE as a minestrone soup. This course takes this proposition to IPE at its core and introduces students to a variety of empirical problems, a corresponding diversity of theoretical approaches, scientific methods, and arguments to examining the world economy. We contend that IPE’s unique self-definition as a minestrone approach among disciplinary social sciences is its main strength and the basis of its attractiveness to differently positioned scholars.
The course starts with a discussion on the main approaches to IPE. It then surveys four substantive domains of the international economy that are increasingly inter-related: trade, investment, finance and development. In addition, the course addresses emerging issues in IPE such as international migration and (achievements of and challenges to) globalization. At the end of the course, students will be able to analyze phenomena and answer questions such as:
why are democracies generally more open to international trade than authoritarian states? Why are some developing countries more attractive to international investors than others? Why does the value of the Saudi Arabian Riyal stay constant over time while that of the Euro is constantly changing? What are the sources of the recent emergence of anti-globalization sentiments?
Students will see that these economic policy outcomes are influenced by domestic actors –
voters, interest groups, political parties, politicians, bureaucrats, and international institutions,
as well as social structures.
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Main Textbook
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Oatley, Thomas (2019). International Political Economy, 6th Edition. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. [hereafter referred to as Oatley (2019)]
Requirements
To succeed in this course:
1. You must read the mandatory readings (marked by *) before each class, and actively participate in class discussions. (10%)
2. Two position papers (20% each). Each student will submit two position papers on the readings of his/her own choosing. Each paper should be 1250 words in length (everything included) and engage three journal articles or book chapters (no textbook chapters allowed). The paper should provide i) a succinct summary of the articles or chapters; ii) an analytical review that identifies their strengths and weaknesses of the readings; and iii) possible research questions that follow from the commentary. The first position paper should cover three readings from Week 1-6 and is due on October 30
th, 2022 at 23:59 (Vienna local time). The second position paper should cover three readings from Week 7- 11 and is due on December 4
th, 2022 at 23:59 (Vienna local time).
3. Final assignment as a choice of two options (50%)
Option A: Country Report. each student will assume that he/she is a specialist of country X employed in a consultancy firm. One of the firm’s client, a big multinational corporation (MNC) in industry Y is considering investing in country X. To make an investment decision, the CEO of the MNC would like to know i) the general economic environment of country X concerning foreign direct investment (eg: cost of labor, availability of land and etc.); ii) the condition of industry Y in country X (eg: any rivals?); iii) government policies governing FDI in country X, both general and industry specific; iv) institutional environment concerning industry Y (such as protection for intellectual property) in country X and v) the relationship between the government and MNCs and the level of political risk in country X. Your task is to write a report on country X addressing these issues, where country X and industry Y are a real country and a real industry of your choice. The report is expected to be 4-5 double spaced pages in length and is due on December 9
th, 2022 at 23:59 (Vienna local time).
Option B: Research Proposal: Formulation of a critical IPE research project in the own
area of interest. The research proposal is a plan of a critical research paper. Your proposal
should state your topic and indicate how you will go beyond the existing academic literature
on this topic (lit. review). You should also set out a WHY QUESTION and indicate why
the question is of interest (for instance, that it challenges a prevailing view or that it reveals
an essential and hitherto unrecognized relationship). You should provide some kind of an
answer or an argument to the question. You should acknowledge counter-arguments to your
own position. You should provide evidence to support your argument and as evidence that
you scanned the relevant sources of information (a bibliography of at least five scholarly
works). The research proposal is expected to be 4-5 double spaced pages in length and is
due on December 9
th, 2022 at 23:59 (Vienna local time).
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Penalty for late work: 1 percentage point of overall grade per calendar day
Note on submission: submission of assignments should only be done through Moodle electronically. Submissions via email or in paper format will not be accepted. Students are required to safely save a personal copy of all the files submitted to Moodle and may be asked by the instructors to resubmit or reproduce parts of the assignment after the initial submission.
Failure to comply may result in a zero grade for that assignment.
Course Schedule
Week 1: Approaches to IPE (Part I)
Session 1 (Sep 20
th, 2022): Introduction and Overview (Prof Li & Prof Piroska)
- Keohane, Robert O. (2009), The Old IPE and the New. Review of International Political Economy 16(1), 34-46. *
Session 2 (Sep 22
nd, 2022): Interests and Institutions (Prof Li)
- Oatley (2019), Chapter 1, 1-21. *Week 2: Approaches to IPE (Part II)
Session 1 (Sep 27
th, 2022): Social Structures of the Global Liberal Market (Prof Piroska)
- Polanyi, Karl. 1944. The Great Transformation: 71-80, 136-158. *
- Abrams, P. (1982). Historical Sociology. Cornell University Press. Chapter 4 The transition to industrialization (Max Weber)
- Strange, S. (1998): Mad money. When markets outgrow governments. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press
- Germain, R. D. (1997). The International Organization of Credit: States and Global Finance in the World-Economy. In Cambridge Studies in International Relations.
- Gerschenkron, A. (1962). Economic backwardness in historical perspective: a book of essays. Cambridge, Mass.: New York: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
- Hobsbawm, E. (1995). The Age of Extremes: 1914-1991, Abacus Book, London, UK
Session 2 (Sep 29
th, 2022): The Role of Ideas in IPE (Prof Fetzer)
- Campbell, John L. (1998), Institutional Analysis and the Role of Ideas in Political Economy.
Theory and Society 27(3), 377-409. *
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Schmidt, Vivien (2008), Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse. Annual Review of Political Science 11, 303-326. *Week 3: International Trade
Session 1 (Oct 4
th, 2022): Embedded Liberalism (Prof Piroska)
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- Ruggie, J. G. (1982). International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order. International Organization, 36(2), 379–415. * - Gourevitch, Peter. 1986. Politics in Hard Times: Comparative Responses to International
Economic Crises. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 17-68.
- Helleiner, Eric. 2019. “Multilateral Development Finance in Non-Western Thought: From Before Bretton Woods to Beyond.” Development and Change 50(1): 144–63.
Session 2 (Oct 6
th, 2022): Interests and Preferences in Trade Policy (Prof Li)
- Oatley (2019), Chapter 4-5, 70-114. *
- Bearce, David H., and Samantha L. Moya (2020), Why Is the Mass Public Not More Supportive of Free Trade? Evidence from the United States. International Studies Quarterly 64(2), 380-391.
Week 4: The World Trade Organization and Transnational Relations
Session 1 (Oct 11
th, 2022): International Trade Cooperation and Dispute Settlement (Prof Li)
- Oatley (2019), Chapter 2-3, 22-69. *
- Rosendorff, B. Peter (2005). Stability and Rigidity: Politics and Design of the WTO's Dispute Settlement Procedure. American Political Science Review 99(3), 389-400.
- Milner, Helen V., and Keiko Kubota (2005). Why the Move to Free Trade? Democracy and Trade Policy in the Developing Countries. International Organization 59(1): 107-143.
- Kono, Daniel Y. (2006). Optimal Obfuscation: Democracy and Trade Policy Transparency.
American Political Science Review 100(3): 369-384.
Session 2 (Oct 13
th, 2022): Transnational Relations from a Historical Materialist Perspective (Prof Piroska)
- van Apeldoorn, B. (2004). Theorizing the Transnational: A Historical Materialist Approach.
Journal of International Relations and Development, 7(2), 142–176. *
- Lapavitsas, C. (2009) ‘Financialised Capitalism: Crisis and Financial Expropriation’, Historical Materialism, 17, 114–148.
- Arrighi, G. (2003) ‘The Social and Political Economy of Global Turbulence’, New Left Review, 20, 5–71.
- Epstein, G. (ed.) Financialization and the World Economy, Northampton (MA), Edward Elgar, 2005.
Week 5: International Investment
Session 1 (Oct 18
th, 2022): Foreign Direct Investment and the OLI Framework (Prof Li)
- Oatley (2019), Chapter 8, 161-182. *
- Pandya, Sonal S. (2016). Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investment: Globalized Production in the Twenty-first Century. Annual Review of Political Science 19, 455-475. * - Hollyer, James R., B. Peter Rosendorff, and James Raymond Vreeland. Information, Democracy and Autocracy: Economic Transparency and Political (In)Stability. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2018. Chapter 8: 217-246.
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- Beazer, Quintin H., and Daniel J. Blake (2018). The Conditional Nature of Political Risk:
How Home Institutions Influence the Location of Foreign Direct Investment. American Journal of Political Science 62(2): 470-485.
Session 2 (Oct 20
th, 2022): Geoeconomics of International Trade and Investment (Prof Fetzer)
- Anthea Roberts et. al. (2019), Toward a Geoeconomic Order in International Trade and Investment, Journal of International Economic Law 22(4): 655-676. *
Week 6: Financial Crisis and Exchange Rate Politics
Session 1 (Oct 25
th, 2022): Financial Crises – History, Theory, and Experience (Prof Csaba)
- Spence, M. (2021). Some Thoughts on the Washington Consensus and Subsequent Global Development Experience. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 35(3), 67-82. *
- Griffin, J. M. (2021). Ten Years of Evidence: Was Fraud a Force in the Financial Crisis? Journal of Economic Literature, 59(4), 1293-1321.
- Mitchener, K. J., & Trebesch, C. (2021). Sovereign Debt in the 21st Century: Looking Backward, Looking Forward. Journal of Economic Literature, forthcoming.
- Ferri, G., & D’Apice, V. (Eds.). (2021). A Modern Guide to Financial Shocks and Crises.
Edward Elgar Publishing.
Session 2 (Oct 27
th, 2022): The Politics of Exchange Rate Policy (Prof Li)
- Oatley (2019), Chapter 12-13: 255-303. *
- Bearce, David H. and Mark Hallerberg (2011). Democracy and de facto Exchange Rate Regimes. Economics & Politics 23(2), 172-194.
- Steinberg, David A., and Krishan Malhotra (2014). The Effect of Authoritarian Regime Type on Exchange Rate Policy. World Politics 66(3): 491-529.
Week 7: International Money and Banking
Session 1 (Nov 1
st, 2022): No class, Public Holiday in Austria and Hungary Session 2 (Nov 3
rd, 2022): Banking and Financialization (Prof Piroska)
- van der Zwan, N. (2014). Making sense of financialization. Socio-Economic Review, 12(1), 99–129. *
- Epstein, R. A. (2014). Assets or liabilities? The politics of bank ownership. Review of International Political Economy, 21(4), 765–789.
- Braun, B. (2020). Asset Manager Capitalism as a Corporate Governance Regime
- Calomiris, C. W., & Haber, S. H. (2014). Fragile by design: the political origins of banking crises and scarce credit. Princeton University Press.
- Haggard, S., Lee, C. H., & Maxfield, S. (Eds.). (1993). The Politics of Finance in Developing Countries. Ithaca: Cornell Univ Pr.
- Loriaux, M. M. (1996). Capital ungoverned: liberalizing finance in interventionist states.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
- Zysman, J. (1983). Governments, markets, and growth: financial systems and the politics of industrial change. In Cornell Studies in Political Economy. Ithaca [N.Y.]: Cornell University Press
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- Pellandini-Simányi, L., Hammer, F., & Vargha, Z. (2015). The Financialization of Everyday life or the Domestication of Finance? Cultural Studies, 29(5–6), 733–759.
- Ertürk, I., & Gabor, D. (2016). The Routledge Companion to Banking Regulation and Reform.
- Braun, B., Gabor, D., & Hübner, M. (2018). Governing through financial markets: Towards a critical political economy of Capital Markets Union. Competition & Change, 22(2), 101–
116.
Week 8: Monetary Stability and Development Finance
Session 1 (Nov 8
th, 2022): The IMF and the International Monetary System (Prof Piroska)
- Barnett, M., & Finnemore, M. (2004). Rules for the World. Cornell University Press.
Chapter 3: 45-72. *
- Best, J. (2007). Legitimacy dilemmas: The IMF’s pursuit of country ownership. Third World Quarterly, 28(3), 469–488.
- Kentikelenis, A. E., & Babb, S. (2019). The Making of Neoliberal Globalization: Norm Substitution and the Politics of Clandestine Institutional Change. American Journal of Sociology, 124(6), 1720–1762.
- Kentikelenis, Alexander E., Thomas H. Stubbs, and Lawrence P. King. 2016. “IMF Conditionality and Development Policy Space, 1985–2014.” Review of International Political Economy 23(4): 543–82.
- Reinsberg, Bernhard, Thomas Stubbs, Alexander Kentikelenis, and Lawrence King. 2019.
“Bad Governance: How Privatization Increases Corruption in the Developing World.”
Regulation & Governance 0(0). (July 28, 2019).
- Ban, Cornel. 2016. Ruling Ideas: How Global Neoliberalism Goes Local. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
- Ocampo, José Antonio. 2017. Resetting the International Monetary (Non)System. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
Session 2 (Nov 10
th, 2022): The World Bank and International Development Promotion (Prof Piroska)
- Weaver, C. (2008). Hypocrisy Trap. Princeton University Press. Chapter 3: 44-91. * - Baroncelli, Eugenia, 2013: The World Bank, in: Knud Erik Jorgensen and Katie Verlin
Laatikainen (eds.), Routledge Handbook on the European Union and International Institutions. Performance, policy and power. London/New York: Routledge, 205-220.
- Moschella, Manuela, and Catherine Weaver, eds. 2013. Handbook of Global Economic Governance: Players, Power and Paradigms. 1st ed. Routledge.
- Park, Susan, and Jonathan R. Strand. 2015. Global Economic Governance and the Development Practices of the Multilateral Development Banks. Routledge.
- Park, Susan, and Antje Vetterlein, eds. 2010. Owning Development Creating Policy Norms IMF and World Bank. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
- Mawdsley, Emma. 2015. “DFID, the Private Sector and the Re-Centring of an Economic Growth Agenda in International Development.” Global Society 29 (3): 339–58.
Week 9: Growth Models and Digital Transformations
Session 1 (Nov 15
th, 2022): New Perspectives on Latecomer Development (Bela)
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- Sonja Avlijas, Anke Hasse, and Bruno Palier, “Growth Strategies and Welfare Reforms in Europe” Chapter 12, in: Anke Hassel and Bruno Palier, eds. (2021). Growth and Welfare in Advanced Capitalist Economies: How Have Growth Regimes Evolved? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 372-436. *
- Michael Schedelik, Andreas Nölke, Daniel Mertens, Christian May (2020), “Comparative Capitalism, Growth Models and Emerging Markets: The Development of the Field”, New Political Economy, 26(4), 514-526. *
Session 2 (Nov 17
th, 2022): Digitalization and class-formation (Prof Piroska)
- Marion Fourcade, Kieran Healy, Seeing like a market, Socio-Economic Review 15(1) January 2017, 9–29. *
- Shoshana Zuboff. 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future - at the New Frontier of Power.
- Sadowski, J. (2019). When data is capital: Datafication, accumulation, and extraction. Big Data & Society, 6(1)
- Gabor, D., & Brooks, S. (2017). The digital revolution in financial inclusion: international development in the fintech era. New Political Economy, 22(4), 423–436.
- Bernards, N., & Campbell-Verduyn, M. (2019). Understanding technological change in global finance through infrastructures. Review of International Political Economy, 26(5), 773–789.
- Brown, E., & Piroska, D. (2021). Governing Fintech and Fintech as Governance: The Regulatory Sandbox, Riskwashing, and Disruptive Social Classification. New Political Economy, 1–14.
Week 10: Emerging Topics in IPE
Session 1 (Nov 22
nd, 2022): Blind Spots in IPE (Prof Grekovits)
- Genevieve LeBaron, Daniel Mügge, Jacqueline Best & Colin Hay (2021) Blind spots in IPE: marginalized perspectives and neglected trends in contemporary capitalism, Review of International Political Economy, 28(2), 283-294. *
- Martin Müller (2020), In Search of the Global East: Thinking between North and South.
Geopolitics, 25(3), 734-755. *
Session 2 (Nov 24
th, 2022): The Political Economy of International Migration (Prof Li)
- Freeman, Gary P. and Alan K. Kessler (2008). Political Economy and Migration Policy.
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 34(4): 655-678. *
- Peters, Margaret E. (2017). Immigration and International Political Economy. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. *
- Fitzgerald, Jennifer, David Leblang, and Jessica C. Teets (2014). Defying the Law of Gravity: The Political Economy of International Migration. World Politics 66(3), 406-445.
- Holland, Alisha C., and Margaret E. Peters (2020). Explaining Migration Timing: Political Information and Opportunities. International Organization 74(3), 560-583.
Week 11: The Globalization Debate
Session 1 (Nov 29
th, 2022): Globalization as a Subject of IPE (Prof Csaba)
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- Johnson, P., & Papageorgiou, C. (2020). What remains of cross-country convergence?
Journal of Economic Literature, 58(1), 129-75. *
- Hammar, O., & Waldenström, D. (2020). Global earnings inequality, 1970–2018. The Economic Journal, 130(632), 2526-2545.
- Gradín, C., Leibbrandt, M., & Tarp, F. (2021). Inequality in the Developing World. Oxford University Press.
- Engler, S., & Weisstanner, D. (2021). The Threat of Social Decline: Income Inequality and Radical Right Support. Journal of European Public Policy, 28(2), 153-173.
Session 2 (Dec 1
st, 2022): Globalization - Achievements, Challenges and Transformations (Prof Li)
- Oatley (2019), Chapter 16: 349-358. *
- Gest, Justin. The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Chapter 1-2: 1-38.
- Milanovic, Branko (2013). Global Income Inequality in Numbers: In History and Now. Global Policy 4(2), 198-208.
- Milner, Helen V. (2021). Is Global Capitalism Compatible with Democracy? Inequality, Insecurity, and Interdependence. International Studies Quarterly 65(4), 1097-1110.
