Transaction and Border Controls in International Relations

This course provides a survey of the various ways in which states restrict, now and in the past, different sorts of cross-border transactions. It will focus on three types of restrictions: those aimed at persons (for example, passport and visa regulations, emigration and immigration laws, slavery and trafficking rules); those aimed at goods (examples: short-term capital, narcotics, endangered species, cultural artifacts); and those aimed at symbols (examples: radio jamming, copyright and blasphemy laws, download capping).

The aim of the course is to get a general perspective on how borders work. Whatever their formal juridical meaning, borders are defined through a series of practical, everyday activities which in essence serve as filters to keep certain types of people or things in or out, whether in an absolute sense or with certain conditions. These can’t be specified a priori but have to be pieced together from laws, reports, and personal experiences; that is where this course comes in. The principal focus, especially in the presentations and papers (see below) will be on present-day transactions, not because I think that historical analysis isn’t important but because it’s a complicated-enough task just to get a handle on one particular era.

What we will be doing is, first, to establish a vocabulary for understanding transaction restrictions and second, use that vocabulary to study particular restrictions (e.g., migration restrictions in France vs. Japan). This second task will be carried out by the students in the course, each of whom will be responsible for picking a specific case (this will have to be discussed with me), presenting her/his research on that case in class, and then, some weeks later, writing up the research in the form of a paper.

As you can imagine, there is an immense literature on many of the specific types of restrictions, with writings ranging from scholarly historical or technical studies to journalistic reports and first-person accounts. Although I’ll avoid statistical studies or mathematical models in the first part of the course, where we’ll be doing general readings, I nonetheless am going to be choosing materials from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. (My inclination is to avoid works of fiction, though I am open to counterarguments.) Students need not have a background in political science, though such a background obviously will provide some of the analytical reflexes helpful in doing the case research.

By the same token, because of the breadth of the materials we’ll be looking at in this course, students may feel that their knowledge is a bit shaky (for example, some people may not be clear about how tariffs work; others on the age of absolutism). This is perfectly normal and I encourage you to browse through basic compendia or, if you are particularly fearless, ask other students to enlighten you.

How to read and think. I have listed several readings for each week. I do not in fact expect you to read all of these, but I would very much like you to read at least one of them very carefully and as analytically as possible. At the end of class each week, I will indicate which is the “focus” reading for the next week. As to thinking: one of the purposes of the course is to learn how to bounce back and forth between theory and particular contemporary or historical instances of transaction controls. So when you do read something putatively theoretical, be both schematic and rude: try and diagram the argument, then ask impertinent questions of its applicability to particular cases. You can be both intellectually respectful and aggressive.

Mechanics. My office is Rigot 28, office hours Wed. 16.30 to 17.30 and by appointment, phone 022-908-5942, email david.sylvan@graduateinstitute.ch. The assistant for the course (whom you should consult for issues with availability of readings, the library, the course web site, and so forth) is Nikita Chiu, Rigot 26, office hours Thurs. 12.15 to 14.00, phone 022-908-5941, email sze.chiu@graduateinstitute.ch. The course’s website, on which you will find this syllabus, links to other readings, a password-protected list of students with emails, etc., is http://graduateinstitute.ch/political-science/courses/spr-11/transaction-border-controls-2011.html. The book-chapter-required course readings (except for the class sessions of March 3 and March 17, which can be printed out – password-protected – via the course website) will be available for purchase in a photocopy packet. The journal-article readings are available through the library’s AtoZ search engine for e-journals. The optional book-chapter readings are available in the Additional Materials section of the course webpage.

1. February 24

Introduction 1: The state

Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990, Basil Blackwell 1990, pp. 47-54, 76-95. 

Martin van Creveld, The Rise and Decline of the State, Cambridge University Press 1999, pp. 126-55.

2. March 3 [Note: I will be absent this week, so we will have to make up the class session.]

Introduction 2: The economy

Karl Polanyi, "Aristotle Discovers the Economy," in idem, Conrad M. Arensberg, and Harry W. Pearson, eds., Trade and Market in the Early Empires, Free Press 1957. 

Karl Polanyi, "The Economy as Instituted Process," in ibid.

Douglass North, "Markets and Other Allocation Systems in History: The Challenge of Karl Polanyi," Journal of European Economic History 6,3 (1977): 703-16.

Optional: Oliver Williamson, "Transaction-Cost Economics: The Governance of Contractual Relations," Journal of Law and Economics 22,2 (1979): 233-61.

3. March 10

Introduction 3: Modes of control

Robert A. Dahl and Charles E. Lindblom, Politics, Economics, and Welfare: Planning and Politico-Economic Systems Resolved into Basic Social Processes, University of Chicago Press 1953: chs. 6-13.

4. March 17 [Note: I will be absent this week, so we will have to make up the class session.]

Persons 1: Regulation

John Torpey, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State, Cambridge University Press 1999, Introduction, chs. 1, 4, 5, and Conclusion. 

Elia Zureik and Mark Salter, eds., Global Surveillance and Policing: Borders, Security, Identity, Willan Publishing 2005, chs. 8, 9. 

Clifford Rosenberg, Policing Paris: The Origins of Modern Immigration Control Between the Wars, Cornell University Press 2006, chs. 1, 4. 

5. March 24

Persons 2: Criminalization 

Peter Andreas and Ethan Nadelmann, Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations, Oxford University Press 2006, Introduction and chs. 1, 2. 

Jeffrey Barist et al., “Who May Leave: A Review of Soviet Practice Restricting Emigration on Grounds of Knowledge of ‘State Secrets,’” Hofstra Law Review 15,3 (1987): 381-406. 

Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870, Simon & Schuster 1997, chs. 28-31. Note: Adam Hochschild’s 2005 book Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves, Houghton Mifflin, covers much of the same material but in a considerably more anecdotal fashion.

Susan W. Tiefenbrun, “The Domestic and International Impact of the U.S. Victims of Trafficking Protection Act of 2000: Does Law Deter Crime?” Loyola University Chicago International Law Review 2,2 (2004): 193-218. 

6. March 31

Goods 1: Regulation 

James Tobin, “A Proposal for International Monetary Reform,” Eastern Economic Journal 4 (1978): 153-9. 

John Vincent Nye, “The Myth of Free-Trade Britain and Fortress France: Tariffs and Trade in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Economic History 51,1 (1991): 23-46. 

Giandomenico Majone, “From the Positive to the Regulatory State: Causes and Consequences of Changes in the Mode of Governance,” Journal of Public Policy 17 (1997): 139-67. 

David Stasavage and Cécile Daubrée, “Determinants of Customs Fraud and Corruption: Evidence from Two African Countries,” OECD, August 1998.

7. April 7

Goods 2: Criminalization 

Andreas and Nadelmann, Policing the Globe, chs. 3, 4, 5. 

Rosalind Reeve, Policing International Trade in Endangered Species: The CITES Treaty and Compliance, Royal Institute of International Affairs 2002, ch. 3. See also Paul Matthews, “Problems Related to the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species,” International and Comparative Law Quarterly 45 (1996): 421-31. 

Julia Buxton, “The Historical Foundations of the Narcotic Drug Control Regime,” World Bank, Policy Research Working Paper 4553, March 2008. See also David R. Bewley-Taylor, “Challenging the UN Drug Control Conventions: Problems and Possibilities,” International Journal of Drug Policy 14,2 (2003): 171-9. 

James Cuno, Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage, Princeton University Press 2008, ch. 1.

8. April 14

Symbols 1: Regulation 

B. Zorina Khan, “Does Copyright Piracy Pay? The Effects of U.S. International Copyright Laws on the Market for Books, 1790-1920,” NBER Working Paper 10271, January 2004. 

Jonathan Zittrain and John Palfrey, “Internet Filtering: The Politics and Mechanisms of Control,” in Ronald Deibert et al., Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering, MIT Press 2008. 

Peter K. Yu, “The Global Intellectual Property Order and Its Undetermined Future,” WIPO Journal 1 (2009): 1-15. (There is a 2010 revised version on SSRN.) See also Eugene C. Lim, “A Long ‘TRIP’ Home: Intellectual Property Rights, International Law and the Constructivist Challenge,” Journal of International Law and International Relations 4,2 (2008): 57-100.

9. April 21

Symbols 2: Criminalization

Harold D. Lasswell, “The Garrison State,” American Journal of Sociology 46,4 (1941): 455-68. 

Jennifer Stewart, “If This is the Global Community, We Must Be on the Bad Side of Town: International Policing of Child Pornography on the Internet,” Houston Journal of International Law 29 (1997): 206-44.

Deepali Ann Fernandes, “Protection of Religious Communities by Blasphemy and Religious Hatred Laws: A Comparison of English and Indian Laws,” Journal of Church and State 45 (2003): 669-97. 

Yaman Akdeniz, “Governing Racist Content on the Internet: National and International Responses,” University of New Brunswick Law Journal 56 (2007): 103-61.

10. April 28

Easter vacation 

No class

11. May 5

Cases, 1 and 2: Immigration and tourism; Emigration, slavery, trafficking

Readings TBA for student presentations

12. May 12

Cases, 3 and 4: Tariffs and taxes, quotas; Narcotics, endangered species, cultural artifacts