This course introduces and surveys positive comparative and international political economy. Specifically, it focuses on how certain socio-political-economic configurations — institutions, structures, and events (elections, coups) — systematically produce certain sorts of economic policies and on how these contexts might condition the effects of the policy so made. In other words, the course takes “political economy” primarily to mean the politics and economics of economic policy-making as opposed to (at least) three other broad areas of inquiry also referred to as political economy (some of which may be covered and/or used to some less centrally-focused extents as well):

• the (micro-)economics of politics, which studies how self-interested, rational policy-makers make choices in a institutionalized environment, employing the utility-maximization theories and tools of microeconomics;
• normative political economy, which studies, alternatively, what economic policy should be enacted to produce ideal effects or what policy would be enacted under some ideal circumstances which do not necessarily (and often will likely not) obtain; and
• the political consequences of economic outcomes wherein political effects are treated as outputs of (usually exogenous) economic causes, the impact of unemployment on presidential approval.

Intended Audience:

Graduate Students

Class Format:

Class meets for 2 hours a week for some mixture of lecture and discussion of the week’s required readings.