Russell Alan Williams/POSC 3250/Winter 2010-2011 1

POSC 3250

International Political Economy

Winter 2010-2011

Tuesday & Thursday, 2:00-3:15

SN2036

Russell Alan Williams/POSC 3250/Winter 2010-2011 1

Instructor:

Dr. Russell Alan Williams (Assistant Professor, Political Science)

Office: SN2031Office hours:Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 12:00-1:00pm (Or by appointment)

Phone: 737-4402 Email:

Description and Learning Objectives:

This course introduces upper-level undergraduate students to the study of International Political Economy (IPE). The course begins with an examination of the major theoretical frameworks in IPE: Realism, Liberalism, Historical Structuralism, and Feminism. The course also touches on specific approaches within each of these frameworks, such as, hegemonic stability theory, regime theory, and Gramscian analysis. The course then applies these frameworks to key topics in IPE; including the global monetary and financial order, international trade, foreign investment, multinational corporations, foreign debt, and international development. By the end of the course students should:

  • Be able to discuss current issues in international political economy using the appropriate language and theoretical tools.
  • Be able to ‘frame’ some issues, analyzing them within the relevant theoretical and political context.
  • Have improved their research essay writing skills - students will be required to write a research paper which tests theoretical claims made by IPE scholars.

Course Organization:

There will be one lecture and one split lecture-seminar each week. Lectures will highlight key concepts in the field. In the second half of each Thursday class, students will be broken into smaller groups to discuss a key “controversy” in IPE. Each group will be expected to report back on their conclusions. To participate effectively in these exercises, students will be expected to have read theClass Discussion Reading.

Textbooks:

  • Theodore H. Cohn, Global Political Economy: Theory and Practice, (Addison Wesley Longman, 5th edition, 2009).
  • Additional articles specified in the outline - Your Memorial email account must be functioning to receive the Class Discussion Readings

Course Evaluation:

Mid-term exam (Feb 15 - in class)15% Final exam30%

Essay Outline (Feb 17 - in class) 5%Class Participation10%

Essay (March 22 - in class) 40%

ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING:

ESSAY (40%) Due in Class,March 22 (Late Penalty is 5% per day)

Students are to write an essay in which they apply an IPE perspective or theory (e.g., realism, liberalism, historical structuralism, or feminism) to a topic. Students are free to refine and narrow their topic to an issue of their choosing; however, general topic areas normally appropriate for this course include:

  • Global monetary relations
  • The global financial architecture
  • Foreign debt and the “debt crisis”
  • The challenges facing the global trade regime
  • The impact of trade agreements on states and societies
  • Multinational corporations and foreign direct investment
  • Obstacles to development
  • The impact of globalisation on labour

The role of Civil Society actors in IPE

  • Gender and IPE
  • IPE and environmental cooperation
  • Resource dependency

Each paper must meet the following requirements:

  • The paper must test a theoretical argument raised by IPE scholarship against the topic chosen by the student
  • The paper should be between 3,000 to 4,000 words
  • The paper should make use of a minimum of ten separate sources in its citations
  • The paper should be formatted in the style of a formal research paper - please consult a style guide if you are unfamiliar with writing research papers. (E.g.

Please remember, a good research paper has three core elements. It has a thesis, which introduces the core argument of the paper. It develops that core argument throughout the body of the paper through the use of evidence – drawn from a minimum of TENresearch sources. It should also have a conclusion which reiterates the central argument of the paper and sums up how the evidence supports that argument.

There are no “correct” answers – there are only well written, well argued and well researched papers. Any paper that has neither a clear thesis nor sufficient research will result in failure on the assignment. It goes without saying that papers should also be well written, spell checked and carefully proof-read.

Essay Outline/Proposal (5%) Due in class, February 17.

Students are required to submit an essay outline sometime prior to February 17. The proposal should briefly introduce the topic you are going to cover and what you are going to argue (your thesis). This should take no more than a short paragraph. The outline should include several initial sources for your bibliography. All students who complete the assignment will receive the full 5%. Late proposals will not be evaluated.

MID TERM AND FINAL EXAMS:

Both exams will include a short answer definition section and an essay section. Short answer questions will focus on key concepts covered in class. Students are expected to have a clear understanding of all key concepts and terms covered in this material. Essay questions will focus on the issues raised by Class Discussion Readings provided by the instructor. Students should be sure to complete all of the required reading.

Class Discussion and Participation (10%)

Throughout the semester, weekly “Class Discussion Readings” have been assigned. We will be discussing these articles in small groups following the weekly lectures. The articles and chapters assigned are more argumentative and thought-provoking then the review offered by the Cohn textbook chapters. This class discussion is an important component of the course as both the mid term and final exams will require that students are familiar with the arguments and major ideas presented in these readings. In order to make effective use of this time, and to receive a good grade for course participation, students should read the class discussion readings prior to class and come prepared to analyze that reading.

  • Note: In order to be sure of receiving the class discussion readings assigned each week, students’ Memorial email addresses must be working. Please insure this is the case.

Student Responsibilities:

Students must not engage in academic dishonesty . . .

Cheating includes (but is not limited to) allowing another student to copy from your work, presentingsomeone else’s work as your own, consulting electronic devices such as mobile phones or MP3 playersand/or interacting with others while a test is ongoing. Information about procedures and penalties foracademic dishonesty is outlined in the University Calendar and is available from the Department(

Students must have an appropriate classroom demeanor . . .

On occasion less serious students disturb others’ learning during class, by talking at inappropriatetimes, using the Internet and/or using cell phones. Students distracted by any such behaviour should bringthis to the attention of the course instructor.

Students must have a functioning Memorial email account . . .

MemorialUniversity’s policy is that students are to use e-mail from an account with the official universitydomain name (@mun.ca). This is the sole address to be used for official university e-mail communication.The policy further states that “failure to appropriately check e-mail will not exempt them fromresponsibilities associated with the email correspondence.” This course requires that your MUN email address is working and that you regularly check your messages. Class readings and advice will be emailed to you on a regular bases.

In addition, if students wish to contact the instructor via email, they must make it clear who they are and what course they are referring to. Questions that require “in-depth” lengthy answers may not receive a quick response. Complex questions about research papers or problems understanding course materials are usually better addressed in person during office hours.

Students must complete assignments on time . . .

In the event that a class is cancelled on the day of a scheduled exam - the exam will be administered in the next available class. Students unable to write exams on the days which they are administered mayqualify—through the provision of valid medical documentation (i.e. a doctor’s note) for the day in question—for a deferred and dissimilar testing opportunity.

There will be no make-up opportunities for Thursday class discussion exercises - students who miss those assignments will receive a zero for that class unless they provide documentation of a medical issue that prevented them from participating.

The penalty for late essays is 5% per day. E-mail or other technological problems do not constitute a valid excuse.

Students who fail to submit their essay proposals by the dues date will receive a zero (in the absence of a valid medical excuse); late proposals will not be assessed.

Student Support Services:

Persons with Disabilities:The Glenn Roy Blundon Centre ( serves students whose disabilities involve conditionsaffecting mobility, vision, hearing, learning (disabilities), chronic illness, or mental health; support is alsoprovided to students with documented temporary illnesses and injuries.

Use of Recording Devices in Classrooms: Students may not make a visual and/or audio recording, openly or surreptitiously, of any lecture materialdelivered in a course without the written permission of the course instructor.

Writing Centre:The Writing Centre ( is a free facility for all MemorialUniversity studentswho want help with their writing. The Centre provides individualized tutorials to students from all schoolsand faculties on a by appointment bases.

Political Science Website:Information about upcoming courses, sample course syllabi, course instructors, work internships,international exchanges, degree requirements and more is available on the Political Science website(

Class Schedule and Reading:

  • Required Readingwill be supplemented in class by lecture materials. Exams will require a good knowledge of the required reading.
  • Class Discussion Readingare shorter articles intended for class discussion. These pieces must be read before each Thursday’s class.
  • Additional Readingsare not required. They are for student reference only and may be of use in preparing major research papers.

Class Organization and Introduction (January 6)

Unit One:Introduction - the Study of International Political Economy and the Politics of Economic Integration(January 11 & 13)

Required Reading:

  • Cohn, Global Political Economy, Chs. 1-2.

Class Discussion Reading:

  • Michael Kratke and Geoffrey Underhill, “Political Economy: The Revival of an “Interdiscipline’,” in Stubbs and Underhill, Political Economy and the Changing Global Order, (Oxford 2006), pp. 24-38.
  • Gerri Gerefi, Ronie Garcia-Johnson and Erika Sasser, “The NGO-Industrial Complex,”Foreign Policy, 125 (July/August 2001), pp. 56-65.

Additional Reading:

  • Thomas J. Biersteker, “Evolving Perspectives in International Political Economy: Twentieth-Century Contexts and Discontinuities," International Political Science Review, 14 (1993), pp. 7-33.

Unit Two:Realist Theory and IPE(January 18 and 20)

Required Reading:

  • Cohn, Ch. 3.

Class Discussion Reading:

  • Susan Strange, “The Future of the American Empire,” Journal of International Affairs, Fall 1988, Vol. 42 Issue 1, pp. 1-17.

Additional Reading:

  • Robert Cox, “Problems of Power and Knowledge in a Changing World Order,” in Stubbs and Underhill, Political Economy and the Changing Global Order, (Oxford 2006), pp. 39-50.
  • Joseph M. Grieco, “Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism,” International Organization, 42-3 (Summer 1988), pp. 485-507.
  • Samuel P. Huntington, “The Lonely Superpower,” Foreign Affairs, 78-2 (March/April 1999), pp. 35-49.
  • John J. Mearsheimer, “The False Promise of International Institutions,” International Security, 19-3 (Winter 1994/95), pp. 5-49.

Unit Three:Thinking Liberally - Diversity and Hegemony in IPE(January 25 & 27)

Required Reading:

  • Cohn, Ch. 4.

Class Discussion Reading:

  • Eric Helleiner, “Economic Liberalism and Its Critics: The Past as Prologue?,” Review of International Political Economy,10-4 (November 2003), pp. 685-696.

Additional Reading:

  • Robert O. Keohane and Lisa L. Martin, “The Promise of Institutionalist Theory,” International Security, 20-1 (Summer 1995), pp. 39-51.
  • Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence, (Scott, Foresman, 2nd ed., 1989), chapter 1 (pp. 3-22) and chapter 2 (pp. 23-37).
  • Linda Weiss, “Globalization and National Governance: Antinomy or Interdependence?”Review of International Studies, Vol. 25, Special Issue (December 1999), pp. 59-60, 67-73.
  • Anne-Marie Slaughter, “Governing the Global Economy through Government Networks”, inMichael Byers, ed., The Role of Law in International Politics, (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2000), pp. 177-205.

Unit Four: Historical Materialism (a.k.a “Marxism”) and IPE(February 1 &3)

Required Reading:

  • Cohn, Ch. 5.

Class Discussion Reading:

  • Shaun Breslin, “Power and production: rethinking China’s global economic role”, Review of International Studies, Vol. 31, No. 4 (October 2005), pp. 735-53.
  • Robert W. Cox, “Civil Society at the Turn of the Millennium: Prospects for an Alternative World Order,” Review of International Studies, 25 (1999), pp. 3-28.

Additional Reading:

  • Joseph L. Love, "The Origins of Dependency Analysis," Journal of Latin American Studies, 22 (February, 1990), pp. 143-68.
  • Christopher Chase-Dunn and Peter Grimes, “World-Systems Analysis,” Annual Review of Sociology, 21 (1995), pp. 387-417.
  • Michael Dunford, “Globalization and Theories of Regulation,” in Ronen Palan, ed., Global Political Economy: Contemporary Theories, (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 143-167.
  • Robert W. Cox, “Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations: An Essay in Method,” Millennium, 12-2 (1983), pp. 162-175.
  • Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton, “A Critical Theory Route to Hegemony, World Order and Historical Change: Neo-Gramscian Perspectives in International Relations,” Capital and Class, no. 82 (Spring 2004), pp. 85-113.

Unit Five: Contemporary Approaches - Feminism and Constructivism (February 8 & 10)

Required Reading:

  • Cohn, Ch. 5.

Class Discussion Readings:

  • Penny Griffin, “Refashioning IPE: What and how gender analysis teaches international (global) political economy,” Review of International Political Economy, Oct2007, Vol. 14 Issue 4, pp. 719-736.
  • Rawi Abdelal, Mark Blyth, and Craig Parsons, “The Case for a Constructivist International Political Economy,” in Constructivist Political Economy (Unpublished manuscript:

Additional Reading:

Feminism/Gender Theory and IPE:

  • V. Spike Peterson, “How (the Meaning of) Gender Matters in Political Economy”, NewPolitical Economy, Vol. 10, No. 4 (December 2005), pp. 499-521.
  • Sandra Witworth, “Theory and Exclusion: Gender, Masculinity, and International Political Economy,” in Stubbs and Underhill, pp. 88-102.
  • Fiona Robinson, “Feminist IR/IPE Theory: Fulfilling Its Radical Potential?,” Review of International Political Economy, 4-4 (Winter 1997), pp. 773-781.
  • Georgina Waylen, “Putting Governance into the Gendered Political Economy of Globalization,” International Feminist Journal of Politics, 6-4 (2004), pp. 557-578.
  • Georgina Waylen, “IPE, Development and Gender,” Journal of International Relations and Development, 2-4 (1999), pp. 435-446.
  • Gita Sen and Caren Grown, Development, Crises, and Alternative Visions: Third World Women’s Perspectives, Monthly Review Press, 1987.
  • Jill Steans, “The Private is Global: Feminist Politics and Global Political Economy,” New Political Economy, 4-1 (1999), pp. 113-28.

IPE and the “Constructivist Challenge”:

  • Amanda Dickins, “The Evolution of International Political Economy,” International Affairs, Vol 82, Issue 3, (2006), pp. 479-492.
  • Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton,“The Deficits of Discourse in IPE: Turning Base Metal into Gold?” International Studies Quarterly,Volume 52 Issue 1,(2008) pp. 103-128.
  • Leonard Seabrooke, “Everyday Legitimacy and International Financial Orders: The Social Sources of Imperialism and Hegemony in Global Finance,” New Political Economy, Vol. 12, No. 1, (March 2007), pp. 1-18.
  • Mark Blyth, Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the TwentiethCentury, (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2002).

MID TERM EXAM(February 15)

Unit Six: The Global Politics of Money(February 17 & 24)

Essay Proposal due in class, February 17!!!!!!

Required Reading:

  • Cohn, Ch. 6.

Class Discussion Readings:

  • Niall Fergusson, “The euro's big chance,” Prospect, May 27, 2004.
  • Benjamin J Cohen and Paola Subacchi, “A One-and-a-half Currency System,” Journal of International Affairs, Fall/Winter2008, Vol. 62 Issue 1, pp. 151-163.

Additional Reading:

  • Eric Helleiner, “Still An Extraordinary Power, But for How Much Longer? The United States in World Finance,” in Thomas C. Lawton, James N. Rosenau, and Amy C. Verdun, eds., Strange Power: Shaping the Parameters of International Relations and International Political Economy, (Ashgate, 2001), pp. 229-247.
  • Benjamin J. Cohen, “Can the Euro Ever Challenge the Dollar?,” Journal of Common Market Studies, 41-4 (September 2003), pp. 575-595.

Unit Seven: Money Problems - The “Debt Crisis” & Financial Crises(March 1 & 3)

Required Reading:

  • Cohn, Ch. 11.

Class Discussion Readings:

  • Sohan Sharma and Surinder Kumar, “Debt Relief – Indentured Servitude for the Third World,” Race & Class, 43-4 (April-June, 2002), pp. 45-56.
  • Kenneth Rogoff, “The IMF Strikes Back,” Foreign Policy, No. 134,(January/February 2003)pp. 38-46

Additional Reading:

  • Leslie Elliott Armijo, “The Political Geography of World Financial Reform: Who Wants What and Why?,” Global Governance, Vol. 7, Issue 4, (2001), pp. 379-396.
  • Fantu Cheru, “Debt, Adjustment and the Politics of Effective Response to HIV/AIDS in Africa,” Third World Quarterly, 23-2 (2002), pp. 299-312.
  • Randall D. Germain, “Reforming the International Financial Architecture: The New Political Agenda,” in Rorden Wilkinson and Steve Hughes, eds., Global Governance: Critical Perspectives, Routledge, 2002, pp. 17-35.

Unit Eight: The Global Trade Regime(March 8 & 10)

Required Reading:

  • Cohn, Ch. 7Cohn, Ch. 8 pp 222-239.

Class Discussion Readings:

  • Michael M. Weinstein and Steve Charnovitz, “The Greening of the WTO,” Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec2001, Vol. 80 Issue 6, pp. 147-156.
  • Lori Wallach and Michelle Sforza, “The WTO’s Environmental Impact,” in Wallach and Woodall eds., Whose Trade Organization? A Comprehensive Guide To the WTO, 2nd Edition (New Press, 2004).

Additional Reading:

  • Brian Hocking, “Changing the Terms of Trade Policy Making: From the ‘Club’ to the ‘Multistakeholder’ Model,” World Trade Review, 3-1 (2004), pp. 3-26.
  • Sumner J. La Croix and Denise Eby Konan, “Intellectual Property Rights in China: The Changing Political Economy of Chinese-American Interests,” World Economy, 25-6 (June 2002), pp. 759-788.
  • Trish Kelly, “The WTO, the Environment and Health and Safety Standards,” World Economy, 27-2 (February 2004), pp. 131-151.
  • Michael Hart and Bill Dymond, “Special and Differential Treatment and the Doha ‘Development’ Round,” Journal of World Trade, 37-2 (April 2003), pp. 395-415.
  • Theodore H. Cohn, Governing Global Trade: International Institutions in Conflict and Convergence, Ashgate, 2002.
  • Tony Porter, “The North American Free Trade Agreement,” in Stubbs and Underhill,Political Economy and the Changing Global Order, (Oxford 2006), pp. 317-331.

Unit Nine: Multinational Corporations and the Global Economy (March 15 & 17)