International Political Economy (honours)

Course Organisation

The course is based on a weekly one-hour lecture plus a one-hour seminar.

Lecture:

  • Thursday from 11.10-12.00 in Lecture Theatre 1, 7 Bristo Square.

Tutorials:

  • Thursday 15.10-16.00, 22 Buccleuch Place, Room 3.3
  • Thursday 16.10-17.00, 22 Buccleuch Place, Room 3.3
  • Friday 11.10-12.00, 22 Buccleuch Place, Room 1.2
  • Friday 14.10-15.00, 22 Buccleuch Place, Room 3.3
  • Friday 15.10-16.00, 22 Buccleuch Place, Room 3.3

Learn

This course is conducted online via Learn, which students can access through their personal university accounts. Students are encouraged to access Learn as soon as possible and frequently thereafter —Learn provides a number of essential resources for this course. Further information on the utility of Learn will be provided during the first lecture.

The Politics and International Relations Handbooks contain ‘protocols’ on the use of e-mail and special circumstances that should be consulted, especially if you believe you have faced any serious adverse circumstances.

Lecture and Tutorial Programme
Week / Lecture topic
1 / Introduction to IPE
2 / IPE theory: Statist and Liberal approaches to IPE
3 / IPE theory: Structuralist and critical approaches to IPE
4 / International Trade
5 / Transnational Corporations (TNCs)
6 / The Politics of Money
7 / Global Finance I
8 / Global Finance II: The European Debt Crisis; a debate with Mark Aspinwall and Iain Hardie
9 / Globalisation I
10 / Globalisation II and Regionalism
11 / Revision, mock exam feedback

Contacts and Objectives

1stSemester 2012-13

CONVENOR: Dr. Iain Hardie

Room 4.23, ChrystalMacmillanBuilding

Office Hours: Mondays 1-3

TUTORS: Mr. Philip Bruner,

Ms. Anouk Berthier,

All teaching staff on this course may be contacted in their offices during office hours. If you need to see us outside these hours, please e-mail to set up an appointment.

Aims & Objectives

This course introduces the subject area of international political economy. It is intended for students who have had no previous background in the subject or in economics. It begins with the main schools of thinking about International Political Economy and examines international exchanges of money and trade, including how they have changed over recent decades. The course also looks at problems of under-development and debt. The role of non-state actors, and the growth of regionalism and globalisation in the contemporary world economy are also examined.

Course Requirements

  • Active and informed participation in tutorial discussions.
  • An essay of a maximum of 2000 words to be submitted by Friday 2 November 2012, at 12 noon.
  • A final examination (held December 10-21. Do not make travel plans until you know the exam date).

Assessment

International Political Economy (Honours)

Your mark will be based on the following percentages:

  • 10% - tutorial participation (see below for further guidance).
  • 40% - essay. A list of essay topics appears at the end of this document. Essays will be returned within 3 weeks of their deadlines with comments and a mark.
  • 50% - exam. The exam is unseen, two-hours in length, in which students answer two questions.

MOCK EXAM: we will also have an optional mock exam which you may participate in if you want. It won’t affect your mark either way but is intended as a confidence-building feedback exercise. More information will be provided during the semester.

Please note that marks for assessed work are provisional: the Board of Examiners decides the final mark at the end of the year.

Please see the ‘Honours Handbook’ for further information on submission of coursework; ‘Late Penalty Waivers’; plagiarism; learning disabilities, special circumstances; common marking descriptors, re-marking procedures and appeals.

Essay Penalties:

LATE SUBMISSION OF ASSESSED ITEMS:

Work submitted late is subject to a 'lateness penalty' of 5 marks deducted per working day after the deadline, starting immediately after the 12 noon deadline and will receive a mark of ‘0’ (without being marked) if submitted after five working days. The penalty applies from the deadline, so an essay submitted late will incur an immediate 5 mark penalty.

PLEASE NOTE that failure to submit an electronic version along with the hard copy of your coursework will be treated as failure to submit, and subject to the same lateness penalties set out above.

There are set guidelines and processes for students claiming a legitimate reason for late submission of assessed work. These rules are in the Politics and International Relations Honours Handbooks.

OVERLENGTH. Essays that are too long will be penalised. 1 point is deducted for every 20 words over the stated maximum (beyond a 10% grace amount). Text and footnotes are counted in the word limit. References/bibliography and appendices are not counted.

Returning Coursework and Feedback

Essays will be returned to students within 3 weeks of the submission date. Students should feel free to request further feedback/clarification from the marker (tutor or convener) if they have questions about the written feedback they receive regarding coursework.

Tutorial participation

10 per cent of the course mark will be for participation in tutorials. This is a participation, rather than just an attendance, mark, although obviously students will have to attend in order to participate.

Participation will be assessed on:

Generalized feedback on the exam, via the standardized feedback sheet, will be posted on the course Learn page, and students will be notified when it is available. Iain Hardie will provide individual exam feedback during office hours.You should also feel welcome to meet with Iain Hardie or the tutors to discuss your progress and your results during the course of the semester.

When reviewing marks for coursework and exams, students should in the first instance consult the widely circulated School marking descriptors to better understand the marks they receive. These are available in the Politics and IR Honours handbooks, both of which are on the Politics/IR website. You may also find it useful to consult the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Assessment (TLA), accessible at if you feel you need to improve your study and assessment skills.

Finally, you may use the student representatives on Staff-Student Liaison Committees to communicate any concerns with particular courses or programmes. You are also welcome to communicate issues directly to me as course convener or to the Director of Undergraduate Teaching (currently Pontus Odmalm).

Essay topics

(choose one of the following topics)

  1. Which theoretical approach best explains the impact of transnational corporations on host countries?
  1. How well do mercantilist approaches explain the development of the international political economy since 1945?
  1. ‘The WTO is simply a tool of its most powerful members’. Discuss.
  1. Do you find the ‘fundamentalist’ or the ‘panic stricken’ explanation of financial crisis more convincing?
  1. To what extent are governments now overly constrained in their policy choices as a result of the ability of capital to move across borders?
  1. Should developing countries be permitted to protect domestic industries?

Tutorial Skills

10% of the mark for this course will come from a) classroom discussion and b) the presentation, which will be equally weighted.

a) Classroom Discussion

The mark for classroom discussion will be assessed in relation to the following factors:

Regular Attendance

Students should attend classes regularly. Each unjustified absence will lead to a deduction of one point from the overall mark for tutorial skills.

Preparation for Class

The tutor will take each student’s level of preparation for the class sessions into account. Students should have done a sufficient amount of reading for each week’s questions and they should critically reflect on the topic under discussion. Their contributions to the classroom discussion should reflect their preparation.

Willingness to Contribute

Students should engage actively with the class discussion, with each other’s points, and with questions raised by the tutor. This does not meanthat the best grades will be awarded to those students who talk the most. In conjunction with the other factors cited here, students’ contributions will be marked on account of their quality, the level of preparation they reflect and the interaction with fellow students.

Clarity of Expression

Students should try to express their ideas well, using clear, accurate language and developing their arguments in a logical, structured manner. Clarity of expression is far more valuable than long words or complex phrases. And students should endeavour to respond directly to the questions raised rather than being distracted by tangential or irrelevant issues.

Cooperation with Fellow Students

There are many ways in which members of a tutorial group can help their colleagues. For instance, students might offer constructive criticism, ask each other questions, and take an interest in what other people say. Students can also help their colleagues by recommending helpful reading or by lending each other photocopies. Above all, it is important that students recognise that the success of our sessions is not dependent upon the tutor’s contribution: every member of the group has an important role to play.

These factors will form part of the feedback students receive on their tutorial skills. Each student will receive personalised written comments on their performance. Students are also invited to discuss their classroom performance throughout the semester with the tutor in order to discuss room for improvement.

b) Presentation

The oral presentation is an integral part of the students’ demonstration of tutorial skills and it makes up half the overall mark for the tutorial. Students are expected to give an oral presentation on topics that they choose from the course handbook and that they agree upon with the tutor.

The mark for the oral presentation will be assessed on the basis of the following criteria:

Presentation Handout

Each student should prepare a handout to accompany the oral presentation. This material should contain the key points, both informative and interpretative, of the presentation, but it should not be a verbatim repetition of the oral presentation. Handouts should be emailed to the tutor who will then put them up on the class WebCT site.

Oral Presentation

The presentation itself should be as fluid as possible, but it should not be read off the page. Hence, ideally speaking, it should be based on notes, but not on a fully elaborated version. Students should not be afraid of occasionally ‘stumbling’ and having to collect their thoughts. Their colleagues will be much more able to follow the presenters’ train of thought if the presentation is not read.

Presentation assessment

The presentations will be assessed by the tutor, but he will take into account the feedback he receives from the other students in class. Tutor and students will use a standardised assessment form that contains several factors, such as coherence and structure, clarity, the use of handouts and audiovisual aids (see next page). Based on these criteria, the tutor and the students will assign an overall mark to the presentation on the university’s extended common marking scale. Thetutor’s mark will count for 50% of the overall final mark for tutorial skills.

Oversight of assessment

The course convenor and external examiner will have an opportunity to review the written material produced in the tutorials (the form assessing classroom participation, the students’ handouts, the tutor’s and peer review forms of the presentations).

Oral Presentation Assessment

STUDENT PEER ASSESSMENT FORM

Presented by ………..……………………..

Topic ……….…….……..…..…….…………

Date ……..…...... …………………………….

Criteria

/ 1
Very weak / 2
Weak / 3

Competent

/ 4

Very Good

/ 5
Excellent
  1. Was the presentation fluent and not read off the page?

  1. Did the presentation have an overall argument and a coherent structure?

  1. Were handouts and/or visual aids used effectively?

  1. Did the presentation enhance your understanding of the topic?

  1. Did the presentation stimulate debate?

Please assign an overall mark to the presentation: ………….

Reading

There are a number of good text books for IPE courses. You will see from the weekly readings that I recommend chapters from them most weeks. I recommend that you have a look at the following three and decide which you think suits your needs best:

  • John Ravenhill (ed.), Global Political Economy, 3rd edition, (Oxford University Press, 2011). Judge the book’s usefulness over its whole length, not its second, theory, chapter, which is less helpful. As this is an edited volume, the expertise of the authors of the individual chapters is very high.
  • Robert O’Brien and Marc Williams (2010), Global Political Economy 3rd edition. The structure of this book fits the course slightly less well than the alternatives, but some individual chapters are excellent.
  • Theodore H. Cohn, Global Political Economy: Theory and Practice, 6th edition (2012). Generally, students have in the past liked the early chapters of this book, but I consider it weaker than the alternatives for later in the course.

Other good textbooks on international political economy include the following. All have useful chapters, many of which are included in the reading list:

Richard Stubbs and GeoffreyUnderhill eds. (2006), Political Economy and the Changing Global Order 3rd edition.

David N. Balaam and Michael Veseth, Introduction to International Political Economy (2008) 4th Edition.

Peter Dicken, Global Shift: Reshaping the Global Economic Map in the 21st Century (2011).

Raymond C. Miller (2008), International Political Economy.

Thomas Oatley (2008), International Political Economy, 3rd edition.

Joseph M. Grieco & G. John Ikenberry (2003), State Power and World Markets: The International Political Economy

Thomas Lairson and David Skidmore (2003), International Political Economy: The Struggle for Power and Wealth, 3rd edition.

Mark R. Brawley (2005), Power, Money and Trade.

Herman Schwartz (2010), States versus Markets, 3rd edition.

Susan Strange (1994), States and Markets, 2nd edition. This is a classic, which is why it’s still listed!

The following readers contain useful collections of articles on International Political Economy:

Jeffry Frieden and DavidLake eds. (2000), International Political Economy: Perspectives on Global Power and Wealth, 4th edition.

C. Roe Goddard, Patrick Cronin & Kishore C. Dash eds. (2003), International Political Economy: State-Market Relations in the Changing Global Order, 2nd edition.

David N. Balaam and Michael Veseth eds. (1996), Readings in International Political Economy.

John Beynon and David Dunkerley eds. (2000), Globalization: The Reader (2000)

Resources

International political economy is frequently concerned with current events. Among the best sources for contemporary information about the global political economy are the Financial Times, The Economist and The Wall Street Journal. These are available on-line. They require subscriptions, but the first two can be accessed through the university system. Other newspapers, including The Guardian, The Times, New York Times, and The Washington Post, also have useful material and are available on-line free of charge (some require registration - see the section on on-line resources below). Interesting articles, particularly from the Financial Times, will be highlighted periodically on WebCT.

The University has a subscription to Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO), which has a wealth of links to journals, working papers, reports from international organisations, and briefings. You need a password to access this web site if off-campus:

Online Resources

A wealth of information is available on the web for students of international political economy. This ranges from the web sites of companies, governments, international organizations, and NGOs to journals and newspapers to academic papers. The following are some of the more useful sites (please let me know if any of the links are broken or suggestions for additions to the list):

International Organizations

Bank for International Settlements: “the central banks’ central bank”: international banking statistics; data on indebtedness:

International Monetary Fund: data on debt, balance of payments, international reserves; analysis of structural adjustment programs; staff working papers are online as are the Fund’s fortnightly newsletter, IMF Survey and its biannual World Economic Outlook:

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development: data on development aid, foreign investment, economies of member states. Staff working papers and other reports online.

UN Economic and Social Council: Reports on environment, trade, and development issues:

UNCTAD: Trade and Development Issues; annual comprehensive survey of Foreign Direct Investment trends:

World Bank: Data on development; major reports online (including annual World Development Report); staff working papers online:

World Trade Organization: Data on trade, impediments to trade, dispute settlement mechanisms & panel reports:

Regional Organizations:

Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation grouping (APEC):

European Union:

North American Free Trade Agreement:

Other Intergovernmental Associations:

Group of Twenty

SPECIFIC READINGS & STUDY QUESTIONS

Note: A number of readings are available electronically via the course Learn page.

Week 1. INTRODUCTION TO IPE

Study questions

  • What are the origins of international political economy?
  • What constitutes the field of international political economy, and why did it emerge as a distinct field within international relations?
  • Is there a distinctive international political economy approach?

Readings:

  • Cohn, ch. 1 – 2
  • Ravenhill, ch.1
  • Stubbs and Underhill, ch. 1
  • Balaam and Veseth, ch. 1
  • Dicken, Global Shift, ch. 3-4
  • Miller, ch. 1
  • Strange, Susan (1975), ‘What is Economic Power and Who has it?’ International Journal 30: 2.
  • Held, David et al. (1999), Global Transformations.
  • O’Brien & Williams, ch 1-2 (includes week 2 and 3 reading)
  • Eichengreen, Barry and Peter B. Kenen (1994), ‘Managing the World Economy under the Bretton Woods System: An Overview’, in Peter B. Kenen (ed.), Managing the World Economy: Fifty Years after Bretton Woods, pp.3-57.
  • Frieden, Jeffry A. (2006), Global Capitalism, especially chapters 15-20.
  • Cohen, Benjamin J. (2008), International Political Economy.
  • Harris, Nigel (1983), Of Bread and Guns, ch. 1
  • Keohane, Robert O. (2009), ‘The old IPE and the new’, in Review of International Political Economy, 16:1, pp.34-46. All of this edition of the journal is a response to Cohen’s book above, and of interest for those wishing to read more.

Week 2IPE THEORY: STATIST AND LIBERAL APPROACHES