Deze cursusinformatie is bedoeld om de student te ondersteunen bij het verwerken van de leerstof

• Nederlands
• Engels

• You keep yourselves informed about current international affairs and you are interested in assessing conflicting explanations of international political and economic developments.
• You are able to apply abstract generalising statements to concrete cases.
• You master basic notions of Theories of International Relations and International Economics

• convey insight in some of the most important questions of international political economy
• learn how to assess different answers to those questions
• develop a critical reading attitude
  

• Time: Wednesday 10.30 - 12.30.
• Professor: Dirk De Bièvre PhD (UA) 
• Place: M. 107, De Meerminne, FPSW, St. Jacobstraat 2, 2000 Antwerpen.
• First class: Wednesday 15 February 2012, 10.30 am.
• This is not a course in international economics; it is a course in one of the subdisciplines of political science, International Political Economy (IPE), in which we study how public institutions take decisions on international economic policy in trade, money, and finance.

• This reading seminar offers an introduction to the subdiscipline of political science known as international political economy, and will be taught in English.

  The central question in this course is how economic interests affect political decision making. Some of the main questions treated are: Who liberalised international trade and why? Why was the World Trade Organization (WTO) created? Who initiated the liberalisation of international finance? Why do states delegate monetary policy to an independent central bank? Which role do states and interest groups play in the origins of and reaction to international financial crises? In formulating answers to these questions, we are primarily interested in the motives for public actors.

• The prerequisites for this course are your willingness to update your knowledge of political science and an understanding of the political underpinnings of international economics thought, excellent reading skills in English, and active participation in class.

• Textbook (Acco; obligatory preparatory reading):

   

  Oatley, Thomas (2010) International Political Economy: Interests and Institutions in the Global Economy, 4^th edition, New York, Pearson Longman.

  Overview of classes:

  1.      15 Febr: Introduction

  2.      22 Febr: Chapter 2 The WTO in the world trade system, Chapter 3 The political economy of international trade cooperation & Chapter 4 A society-centered approach to trade politics

  29 Febr: no class

  3. 7 March: Chapter 5 A state-centered approach to trade politics; Dür 2007; Goldstein & Martin 2000; Poletti 2011
  4. 14 March: Chapter 6 Trade and development I: Import substitution industrialization & Chapter 7 Trade and development II: Economic reform
  5. 21 March: Chapter 8 Multinational corporations in the global economy & Chapter 9 The politics of multinational corporations

  28 March: no class (Geneva trip MA IBD)

  4 & 11 April: Easter break

  6. 18 April: Chapter 12 A society-centered approach to monetary and exchange rate policies & Chapter 13 A state-centered approach to monetary and exchange rate policies
  7. 25 April: Chapter 14 Developing countries and international finance I: The Latin American debt crisis & Chapter 15 Developing countries international finance II: A decade of crises
  8. 4 May: student conference on sovereign debt crisis, with Guntram Wolff (Brueghel), Hubert Zimmerman (Marburg), and Geert Noels (readings to be announced)

   

  Supplementary reading, apart from Oatley 2012:

  -          DE BIÈVRE, D. & DÜR, A. (2005) Constituency Interests and Delegation in European and American Trade Policy. Comparative Political Studies, 38, 1271-96.

  -          DÜR, A. (2007) Foreign Discrimination, Protection for Exporters, and U.S. Trade Liberalization. International Studies Quarterly, 51, 457-480.

  -          POLETTI, A. (2011) World Trade Organization judicialization and preference convergence in EU trade policy: making the agent's life easier. Journal of European Public Policy, 18, 361-382.

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