International political economy
Henrik Plaschke
International Political Economy (IPE) is an area of study rather than a precisely defined discipline. IPE scholars come from a great variety of scholarly disciplines, including (but limited to) political science, sociology, economics, cultural studies, anthropology, history, law, geography etc. As such it is interdisciplinary – or non-disciplinary. Different scholars also tend to understand the IPE area of study in somewhat different ways. We shall deal with different understanding of IPE in this course but the course is obviously only an introductory course.
I have chosen to include a focus on both rather general historical (1) and theoretical (2) issues, a focus on the different actors in the international system (4-5), and finally the study of different issue areas studied by IPE scholars (6-9).
I will be utilizing different articles and texts from various books – and as the general background literature the book by André Groome quoted below.
Literature:
André Broome, Issues & Actors in the Global Political Economy, Palgrave MacMillan 2014.
Selected articles (references below - and more to be added).
There are lots of good introductory volumes available surveying and/or introducing IPE debates and theories. Let me quote a couple of different books:
O’Brien, Robert & Marc Williams (eds.), Global Political Economy, MacMillan/Red Globe Press , 6th edition, 2020.
Ravenhill, John (ed.), Global Political Economy, OUP, 6th edition 2020.
Rodrik, Dani, The Globalization Paradox. Why Global
Markets, States and Democracy Can’t Coexist, Oxford UP 2011.
Watson, Matthew, Foundations of International Political Economy, Palgrave 2005.
These volumes are all highly useful but I have chosen, as you may note it, a different basic text for this course.
None of these volumes deal with the more basic issues of economic analysis (income formation, business cycles, balance of payments etc.). It is indeed useful to have an understanding of basic economics when studying IPE.
Two (more or less) mainstream introductory volumes are (of which the first is a bit more mainstream than the second):
David Colander, Economics, McGraw-Hill, 11th ed. 2020.
The CORE Team, The economy. Economics for a Changing World, Oxford UP 2017 (can be downloaded freely from: https://www.core-econ.org/the-economy/).
A quite different introductory text is provided by the Korean-born Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang, Economics: The User’s Guide, Pelican 2014. Take a look also at (the short one):
The examination will be organized in the following way: You will be asked to submit an essay of about 7-8 pages reflecting on a couple of issues. One or several text(s) will be made available towards the end of the course and this (these) text(s) will serve as a back-ground for your reflections.
- Teacher: Adelle Hougård