The Study of International Politics II: International Political Economy

Course Organization

Course Description

The idea of this course is to introduce students to ways of thinking critically about international political economy. To this end, we will read, discuss, and reconstruct theories of various phenomena drawn from five different approaches. These approaches provide alternative definitions of the historical development of capitalism and its connection to what we in political science typically call the “international states system.” The course is thus simultaneously theoretical and historical in its focus; it is also self-contained: there are no course prerequisites.

I referred above to the goal of thinking critically about international political economy.  This means, first, that you write, for your own purposes, summaries of the overall argument of each reading. Second, you should take critical notes on each reading: for example, what, if any, weaknesses do you see in the argument? What additional cases could one use to determine the argument’s validity?  How far can one extend the argument in time and space? Are there similarities or differences to other readings from that or other paradigms?  Does the argument have theoretical implications? Finally, you will have to participate in class discussions. This does not mean giving an opinion on a general topic vaguely related to the week’s reading; instead, you must come to class prepared to say something specific and critical (though not necessarily negative) about the reading.

To facilitate critical thinking, you will have to do several kinds of formal writing assignments. One is to compose a short argument (ca. three paragraphs) taking a particular side on a question I pose on the readings for a given week; this will happen twice over the semester and your argument (and that of another student taking the opposite position) will be posted on a class weblog. Everyone else in the class will then, on two occasions during the semester, have to post a very brief comment (a few sentences) responding to one or both of the arguments. This blog will only be open to people in the course (it will be password-protected) and will be taken down at the end of the semester.

Another kind of writing I want you to do is more structured: to write two analytical papers on particular readings. I will put together between four paper assignments and post them early in the semester; you will have to do two of them. You decide for which assignments you wish to write papers; but you must hand in the papers by the beginning of class. I in turn will undertake to grade the papers and return them at the end of class the following week. These papers must not be written in response to assignments covering authors for which you are doing a blog argument (the point, obviously, is to avoid duplication and induce you to look at additional materials more carefully).

A third kind of writing, aimed at helping pull together the various ideas in the course, will be in the form of a take-home final test. I will give you either 48 or 72 hours to do this; there will be two essay questions covering a fairly wide terrain.

Course mechanics

1) You will have to buy a photocopy packet for the course. 2) Journal articles and some older books are available online; books chapters for the first few weeks of the course are also available online, in password-protected form. Optional readings should eventually all be available at the library. Of course, you are free to purchase any particular books for your own purposes. 3) Grades for the course: the two weblog arguments together will count for 16.5% of your grade and the two comments on others’ arguments another 16.5% together; the two analytic papers together will count for 1/3 of your grade; and the final will also count for 1/3. I will round grades up or down to the nearest quarter-point on the basis of class participation. I will also take account of improvement over time in the course: if weblog comments or papers get better as the semester continues, I will count the later ones more than the earlier ones.

This syllabus, the paper and web assignments, lists of students, office hours, etc. may all be found on the course website: http://graduateinstitute.ch/political-science/international-political-economy-2009_en.html

The assistant for the course is Assia Alexieva. Her office is Rigot 35, her phone number is 022-908-5948, her email is assia.alexieva@graduateinstitute.ch , and her office hours are Tuesday 14.30-16.30.
 

Course Syllabus and Class Schedule

0. Introduction: the concept of paradigms in international political economy

September 17

No reading


1. Actions by individuals, firms, and governments

a. The argument in its classic form

September 24

Required reading:

Norman Angell, The Great Illusion (1908), chs. 1-9 (Heinemann ed., 1933): 77-266.
<Link to password-protected pdf>

Optional readings:

John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), chs. 1-2.
http://socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/keynes/peace

Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence, 2nd edn. (Scott Foresman 1989), chs. 1-2. [Note: you might find it illuminating, though not necessarily in the way in which the volume’s editor envisaged it, to browse through the various papers on the “American School of IPE” in the February 2009 issue of Review of International Political Economy.]


b. Two extensions

October 1

Web Assignment

Eric Helleiner, “Reinterpreting Bretton Woods: International Development and the Neglected Origins of Embedded Liberalism,” Development and Change 37,5 (2006): 943-67.

Rawi Abdelal, “Writing the Rules of Global Finance: France, Europe, and Capital Liberalization,” R. of International Political Economy 13,1 (2006): 1-27.

Edward S. Cohen, “Constructing Power Through Law: Private Law Pluralism and Harmonization in the Global Political Economy,” R. of International Political Economy 15,5 (2008): 770-99.

Barry Eichengreen and Douglas A. Irwin, “The Slide to Protectionism in the Great Depression: Who Succumbed and Why?” NBER Working Paper 15142 (July 2009).

Optional readings:

Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton 2000), chs. 5-6.

Kenneth A. Schultz and Barry R. Weingast, “The Democratic Advantage: Institutional Foundations of Financial Power in International Competition,” International Organization 57,1 (2003): 3-42.

Gregory Clark, A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (Princeton 2007), chs. 12-13.

Philip T. Hoffman and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, “Divided We Fall: The Political Economy of Warfare and Taxation,” http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~pth/Papers/newtaxunityapsr.doc


2. Modes of production and ideal-typical motivations

a. Before capitalism

October 8

Web Assignment

Required reading:

Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (California 1982), chs. 2-5: pp. 24-157.
<Link to password-protected pdf>

Optional readings:

Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 (Oxford 1989).

Timothy J. Yeager, “Encomienda or Slavery? The Spanish Crown’s Choice of Labor Organization in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America,” J. of Economic History 55,4 (1995): 842-59.

Philip D. Curtin, The World and the West: The European Challenge and the Overseas Response in the Age of Empire (Cambridge 2000), chs. 5-8.

Peter Temin, “A Market Economy in the Early Roman Empire,” J. of Roman Studies 91 (2001): 169-81.

Jack Goody, The Theft of History (Cambridge 2006), ch. 4.

[Although they are not directly relevant, two somewhat speculative recent works by nonhistorians arguably are compatible with this approach: Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, 1997; and Charles G. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, 2005.]


b. Capitalism as a possibility

i. Origins and spread

October 15

Web Assignment

First paper due.

Required readings:

Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques (1734), letter 6: “Sur les presbytériens.”
http://www.inlibroveritas.net/lire/oeuvre820.html

Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois (1758 edn.), bk. 20, chs. 1-2
http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/montesquieu/de_esprit_des_lois/partie_4/esprit_des_lois_Livre_4.pdf

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-5), entire. I’ll be using the T. Parsons translation, 2d edn. (Scribner’s 1958).
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/WEBER/toc.html

Optional readings:

Joseph Schumpeter, “The Sociology of Imperialisms” (1919), trans. H. Norden.
http://www.mises.org/books/imperialism.pdf (note: the essay is pp. 1-98).

R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926).

Albert O. Hirschman, “Rival Interpretations of Market Society: Civilizing, Destructive, or Feeble?” J. of Economic Literature 20,4 (1982): 1463-84.


ii. The implications of the transition

October 22

Web Assignment

Required readings:

Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600-1750 (Academic 1980), chs. 2-4, 6: 36-175, 244-89.

Thomas Mun, England’s Treasure by Forraign Trade (1663; orig. written 1626-30), ch. 19.
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/mun/treasure.txt

Optional readings:

Thomas A. Brady, Jr., “The Rise of Merchant Empires, 1400-1700: A European Counterpoint,” in James D. Tracy, ed., The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade 1350-1750 (Cambridge 1991).

Evan Luard, The Balance of Power: The System of International Relations, 1648-1815 (Macmillan 1992), chs. 7-9.

Benno Teschke, “Theorizing the Westphalian System of States: International Relations from Absolutism to Capitalism,” European J. of International Relations 8,1 (2002): 5-48.

Patrick Karl O’Brien, “Contentions of the Purse Between England and its European Rivals from Henry V to George IV: A Conversation with Michael Mann,” J. of Historical Sociology 19,4 (2006): 341-63.


3. Spatial reasoning: clustering and propinquity

a. Thinking geographically

October 29

Web Assignment

Second paper due.

Required reading:

D.W. Meinig, “The Continuous Shaping of America: A Prospectus for Geographers and Historians,” American Historical R. 83,5 (1978): 1186-1205.

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. edn. (Verso 1991): chs. 1-4.

Eliga H. Gould, “Entangled Histories, Entangled Worlds: The English-Speaking Atlantic as a Spanish Periphery,” American Historical R. 112,3 (2007): 764-86.

Optional readings:

D. W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, vol. 1: Atlantic America, 1492-1800 (Yale 1986), pt. 1; pt. 2, chs. 10-11, 17-19; pt. 3, chs. 1-2, 7-10, 13, 15; and pt. 4: 3-76, 160-90, 226-70, 295-338, 370-85, 395-407, 421-54.

Philip D. Curtin, “Location in History: Argentina and South Africa in the Nineteenth Century,” J. of World History 10,1 (1999): 41-92.

James P. Ronda, “‘We Have a Country’: Race, Geography, and the Invention of Indian Territory,” J. of the Early Republic 19,4 (1999): 739-55.

John A. Agnew, Place and Politics in Modern Italy (Chicago 2002), ch. 3.
<Link to password-protected pdf>
 

John Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 (Yale 2006), chs. 6, 8.

John Agnew, “No Borders, No Nations: Making Greece in Macedonia,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 97,2 (2007): 398-422.


b. Class development

November 5

Web Assignment

Required readings:

Michael T. Taussig, The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (North Carolina 1980), chs. 3-5, 8, 11-13.

Optional readings:

Johan Galtung, “A Structural Theory of Imperialism,” J. of Peace Research 8,2 (1971): 81-117.

Kenneth A. Yelvington, Producing Power: Ethnicity, Gender and Class in a Caribbean Workplace (Temple 1995), chs. 2, 3, 6.

James Heartfield, “China’s Comprador Capitalism is Coming Home,” R. of Radical Political Economics 37,2 (2005): 196-214.

Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin America, trans. M. Urquidi (written 1966-67, publ. 1969; Engl. trans. California 1979).

Fernando Henrique Cardoso, “New Paths: Reflections About Some Challenges of Globalization,” 2007.


4. System logic

a. Commodities, commodification, and capitalism

November 12 [Note: I will be out of town on this day so we will have to reschedule the class session.]
 

Make-up session on Tuesday, November 17, 18h15, R2

Web Assignment

Required reading:

Karl Marx, Capital (1867-94), vol. 1, chs. 1-2, 4, 6-7, 10, 12, 26-33. The easiest thing by far is to read the online edition, which uses the well-known English. translation by Moore and Aveling, and was edited by Engels:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/
However, the Fowkes trans.(Vintage 1977) is more accurate and captures more of Marx’s literary flair.

Optional readings:
 

The First Indian War of Independence (1857-1858), Marx & Engels in the New York Daily Tribune, with particular attention to "British Rule in India" (Marx 25 June 1853), "The East India Company (Marx 11 July 1853), and "The Future Results of British Rule in India (Marx 22 July 1853)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/india/index.htm

John A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (1902).
http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Hobson/hbsnImptoc.html

V.I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (written 1916, publ. 1917).
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/


b. Discipline and surveillance

November 19

Web Assignment

Required reading:

Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (Gallimard 1975), pts. 3-4: 135-315.   [This is written in beautiful French; but for those who would prefer a flattened and not always accurate English translation, I have made available A. Sheridan’s: Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Vintage 1979), 133-308.]

Optional readings:

Charles E. Lindblom, “The Market as Prison,” J. of Politics 44,2 (1982): 324-36.

Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Cambridge 1988), chs. 2-4.
<Link to password-protected pdf>
 

Stephen Gill, “The Global Panopticon? The Neoliberal State, Economic Life, and Democratic Surveillance,” Alternatives 20,1 (1995): 1-49.

Morgan Brigg, “Post-development, Foucault and the Colonisation Metaphor,” Third World Q. 23,3 (2002): 421-36.

Jakob Vestergaard, “The Asian Crisis and the Shaping of the ‘Proper’ Economies,” Cambridge J. of Economics 28,6 (2004): 809-27.


c. Race

November 26

Web Assignment

Third paper due.

Required reading:

Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden” (1899)
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/Kipling.html

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, pt. 2: Imperialism (Harcourt, Brace & World 1951), chs. 6-8.

Optional readings:

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902). http://www.classicreader.com/book/47/

Edward W. Said, Orientalism (Random House 1978), chs. 1, 3 (Vintage edn. 1979: 29-110, 200-328).

Ann L. Stoler, “Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in 20th-Century Colonial Cultures,” American Ethnologist 16,4 (1989): 634-60.

Richard Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building, 2d edn. (Schocken 1990), pt. 4.

Paul A. Kramer, “Empires, Exceptions, and Anglo-Saxons: Race and Rule between the British and United States Empires, 1880-1910,” J. of American History 88,4 (2002): 1315-53.

Mona Domosh, “Selling Civilization: Toward a Cultural Analysis of America’s Economic Empire in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 29,4 (2004): 453-67.

Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier (Stanford 2007), Foreword and chs. 1-6.

Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (Cambridge 2008), ch. 12.
<Link to password-protected pdf>

5. Society as decentered ensemble

a. The invention and decline (?) of self-regulation

December 3

Web Assignment

Fourth paper due.

Required reading:

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time [1944] (Rinehart 1957).

Optional readings:

Antonio Gramsci, “State and Civil Society” (1929-35), trans. Q. Hoare, in Selections from the Prison Notebooks (International Publishers 1971).

E.P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 50 (1971): 76-136.

John Gerard Ruggie, “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order,” Int. Org. 36,2 (1982): 379-415.

A. Claire Cutler, “Locating ‘Authority’ in the Global Political Economy,” International Studies Q. 43,1 (1999): 59-81


b. Consumption and emulation

December 10

Web Assignment

Required readings:

Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (Macmillan 1899), ch. 4: 68-101.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/VEBLEN/veb_toc.html

Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik, The World that Trade Created: Society, Culture, and the World Economy 1400 to the Present (M.E. Sharpe 1999), ch. 3.

Optional readings:

Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (Viking Penguin 1985).

T. J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers (Princeton 1984), intro., chs. 1, 3-4: 3-78, 147-258.

Woodruff D. Smith, “Complications of the Commonplace: Tea, Sugar, and Imperialism,” J. of Interdisciplinary History 23,2 (1992): 259-78.

Lisa Penaloza, “Just Doing It: A Visual Ethnographic Study of Spectacular Consumption Behavior at Nike Town,” Consumption, Markets and Culture 2,4 (1998): 337-401. Available http://www.crito.uci.edu/noah/CMC%20Website/CMC%20PDFs/CMC2_4.pdf#page=6


December 17

No class; take-home test during the week.