Global Political Economy (2235.YR.013011.1)

General information

Type:	OPT	Curs:	3	Period:	S semester
ECTS Credits:	7 ECTS

Teaching Staff:

Group	Teacher	Department	Language
Year 3	Daniel Hywell Nicholls	Derecho	ENG

Students should have studied introductory economics and politics/geopolitics courses.

A basic understanding of international trade and institutions is necessary.

The student workload is divided between in-class lectures, readings for each section and the production of assessed pieces of work.

The course aims to bring together the political and economic spheres and show the causal linkages between them. In this sense, students will gain a fuller understanding of causes, processes and outcomes within the global system, seeing how different actors and structural forces shape global governance.

The course aims to familiarize students with historical, theoretical and contemporary trends in global political economy (GPE). The focus is on dynamics, structures and trends rather than specific fields of economic activity in order to encourage students to interpret why and how shifts take place within the global political economy. The key elements of GPE examine the tensions between public and private actors ad domestic and international levels of governance. Students will endeavour to analyse the structure of the global economy through concepts such as fairness, efficiency, legitimacy, representation, dominance and discourse. The course places special attention on the way that social structures (concentration of land and capital ownership, wealth distribution, patterns of social dominance, access to opportunities, discursive control) feed into both domestic and global political and economic structures, and how tensions between social forces create pressure for change. Within this context, a key feature of the course is to examine how societal preferences are produced with respect to public goods and regulation, and how institutional and governance structures reflect and condition these preferences.
Due to the multi-faceted nature of GPE, the course will analyze economic events within the social, political and cultural contexts within which they take place, encouraging students to adopt a broad approach to economic processes both in terms of their causes and consequences. The course deals with many ethical issues related to economic development, freedom and control, and, through an analysis of these, the aim is for students to a critical awareness of different forms of governance and how power can be balanced between actors within the global economy.
The course has been designed bearing in mind other subjects that students have taken or will take within their degree. To avoid repetition, certain themes associated with GPE (historical development of the global economy, environment and natural resources, development studies and regional economic integration) are not included as sections within the syllabus, though they will be touched on at various points throughout the course. The focus on policy analysis and choices makes the subject relevant for students interested in policy, advocacy (private and NGO) and institutional dynamics.

1. Contents A. Structures, Analytical Frameworks and Change 1. Introduction to GPE ¿ What is GPE? Object of study, trends ¿ Role of the state ¿ Role of capital and markets ¿ Theoretical approaches ¿ economic nationalism, liberalism and critical interpretations ¿ Zero-sum, positive-sum and asymmetrical sum approaches ¿ Methodology in GPE ¿ Stag Hunts and prisoners¿ dilemmas ¿ Institutions and the collective action problem 2. Modes of Capitalism ¿ Global capital and efficiency ¿ Relocation, surplus labour and wages ¿ Hobson ¿ Falling profits, monopoly capital and imperialism ¿ Base and superstructure ¿ Neogramscianism ¿ organic intellectuals and epistemic communities ¿ Robert Cox and Critical Theory ¿ Democratic Vs authoritarian capitalism (Buzan & Lawson) 3. Institutions, Preferences and Change ¿ Regime theory, cooperation and expectations ¿ Modelski, long cycles and international regimes ¿ Institutions, socialization and legitimacy ¿ New Institutionalism ¿ Prospect Theory and crises ¿ Crisis, discourse and change (Legro) ¿ Interest groups, venue shopping and punctuated equilibrium (Cairney) B. Forms of State, Autonomy and Competition 4. State-society Relations ¿ Shackled, despotic and absent leviathans ¿ Solon, voice opportunities and organized civil society ¿ Diminishing marginal returns to income and redistribution ¿ The Scandinavian model ¿ Ordoliberalism ¿ The dangers of meritocracy 5. Domestic Determinants of Foreign Economic Policy ¿ Trading preferences ¿ Electoral systems and trade openness ¿ Industrial structure and exchange rate preferences ¿ Putnam and two-level games ¿ The Schelling Conjecture and trade negotiations 6. Globalisation and its Backlash ¿ Economic geography of populism ¿ Empathy and the welfare state ¿ Immigrants, GDP and tax ¿ Cultural Vs economic interpretations of populism ¿ Polanyi ¿ Unresponsive elites ¿ Global media, discourse and power 7. Economic Statecraft ¿ Development aid ¿ Sanctions ¿ Reshoring and friendshoring ¿ Industrial policy ¿ Sovereign Wealth Funds and State Owned Enterprises ¿ Economic tools for political Vs economic goals 8. The Economics of Authoritarianism ¿ Natural resources, extractive institutions and the rentier state ¿ Selectorate theory ¿ Clientelism and neopatrimonialism ¿ Plutocracy and the balance of power ¿ Redistribution and legitimacy ¿ Neomercantilism ¿ Exclusionary democratic orders as a response ¿ External patronage, stability and market access C. Private Actors, Global Flows and Regulation 9. Global Trade and Production ¿ Global trade and growth ¿ Asian Tigers ¿ Structural inequalities ¿ China, the WTO and the convergence wager ¿ Transnational production, technology transfer and FDI ¿ Downstreaming and FDI (Indonesia) ¿ Hymer and monopoly capital ¿ Uneven and combined development ¿ Labour standards ¿ Intellectual property protection and global health ¿ Due diligence and corporate social responsibility ¿ The UN Global Compact ¿ Transfer pricing and tax evasion 10. Big Tech and the Global Economy ¿ Regulation and private authority ¿ EU and regulation ¿ Data, market structure and control ¿ Data and non-rivalry ¿ Cryptocurrencies and speculation ¿ Bitcoin whales and democratization ¿ Technology and employment ¿ Cybermercenaries ¿ Neofeudalism ¿ Homophilious sorting, democracy and protectionism 11. Global Finance, Regulation and Crises ¿ Asian crisis of 1997 ¿ Dot.com bubble and accounting ¿ Ratings agencies ¿ Credit default swaps and collateralized debt options ¿ Glass-Steagall and Dodd-Frank ¿ Crisis response ¿ the role of public actors 12. The Global Security Economy ¿ The privatisation of security and monopoly on the use of force ¿ The arms industry and shaping foreign policy ¿ France, uranium and security in the Sahel ¿ Oil money, mercenaries and Nagorno Karabakh ¿ The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and resource access ¿ Defence spending and public preferences ¿ The security-economic nexus in the Middle East ¿ The economic consequences of conflict ¿ The role of the state and the narco-economy in South East Asia ¿ New wars and decentralized finance ¿ Cyberwarfare and vulnerability 13. Public Affairs ¿ Lobbying ¿ public Vs private interests ¿ Diffuse and concrete interests ¿ Upstream and downstream lobbying ¿ Institutional arenas ¿ Information and policy ¿ Neofunctionalism and shifting loyalties ¿ The power of corporate Europe ¿ EU as a normative power ¿ Global lobbying -The WTO and TRIPS ¿ Think tanks ¿ the fifth estate ¿ The ideas industry (Drezner) D. Hierarchy and New Interpretations 14. New Theoretical Perspectives ¿ Anarcho capitalism ¿ Degrowth ¿ Gender and GPE ¿ Postcolonialism ¿ Accelerationism from the right ¿ Accelerationism from the left 15. Governing the Global Economy ¿ US Hegemony ¿ China as a free rider or hegemonic contender? ¿ China and humane authority ¿ Public goods and hierarchy ¿ Fields of hierarchy ¿ Systemic rivalry and the end of the Global Liberal Order? ¿ A new Cold War?

The course has been divided into 15 thematic sections, to be covered over the course. The course lecturer will deliver a lecture for each session. There will be readings and other materials for each section, which students are expected to read prior to the session. Throughout the course there will be in-class activities (in groups or individually) related to a specific area of GPE (write a brief policy paper, analyse a particular issue in terms of causes and effects, compare theoretical approaches to a particular issue, carry out a counterfactual analysis etc.). These exercises must be uploaded to the course Moodle. They will not be graded as such, but participation in, and engagement with, these activities will count towards students' participation grade.

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Arrighi, G. (2008), Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century. London: Verso
Blackwell, R. & Harris, J. (2016), War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft, Cambridge: Harvard University Press
Cairney, P. (2019), Understanding Public Policy: Theories and Issues. London: Red Globe Press
Drezner, D. (2017), The Ideas Industry: How Peasants, Plutocrats and Partisans are Transforming the Ideas Industry. New York: OUP
Frieden, J., Lake, D.A., and Broz, J.L. (2017), International Political Economy: Perspectives on Global Power and Wealth. New York: WW Norton & Cº
Harvey, D. (2010), The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism. Oxford: OUP
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Rodrik, D (2011), The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy. New York: W. W. Norton and Company
Tooze, A. (2019), Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World. London: Penguin

Group	Teacher	Department
Year 3	Daniel Hywell Nicholls	Derecho