Dr James Morrison 95 ALD 1.14

This course is available on the BSc in International Relations, BSc in International Relations and History and BSc in Politics and International Relations. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students.

Who governs the global economy? How do they do so? And to what ends do they govern it? This course examines these questions by examining the canonical theories of—and state approaches to—the challenges of global economic governance across the last several centuries. While this course takes history seriously, the primary objective is to use the history to tease out generalisable insights into those challenges we face today.

More generally, this course of study will demonstrate the incomparable insights historical thinking offers in addressing contemporary challenges. History has always been central to the study and practice of international political economy. The most influential scholars and practitioners of international political economy have repeatedly turned to history both to explain, and to offer a fresh perspective on, the great challenges of their day. This course is designed to help students cultivate that invaluable skill and habit of mind.

Proceeding from the seventeenth century to the present, it examines:

- seminal theorists' particular treatments of international political economy

- the ongoing, timeless debate between these theorists

- the major shifts in the global economic order

- the interaction between theories and policy in each shift

The course begins with mercantilism and the ‘age of empires.’ It then explores the great critics of mercantilism—Adam Smith and David Hume—and the relationship between their critique and the revolutions in IPE that followed. It goes on to analyse the rise of so-called ‘English’ political economy and the ‘First Era of Globalisation’ in the 19th Century.

The course then pivots to consider two major challenges to this hegemony of thought and practice. First, it traces the development of socialism from an internal critique through the writings of Marx & Engels to an instantiated alternative system in the early Soviet Union. Second, it considers the German Historical School’s return to mercantilism—and Europe’s concomitant return to imperial rivalry in the early twentieth century.

This brings the course into the interwar period. There, the course considers the battles that raged among liberals in their attempts to resuscitate the classical IPE tradition in the wake of the First World War. It looks at two variants of liberal IPE: progressive and Austrian. This leads to examination of both the ideas and influence of JM Keynes. A selection of Keynes’s writings is coupled with analysis of the interwar collapse of IPE that consumed him—and the world. The course then transitions into a discussion of the Anglo-American Postwar Order, of which Keynes was a major architect.

Finally the course turns to the modern era. It examines the evolution of the global trade and monetary regimes. It examines the perspectives and trajectories of both developed and developing countries. It concludes by examining the tension between the apparent ascent of ‘neoliberalism’ within economic theory alongside critiques from ‘non-economic’ perspectives: environmental, democratic, and otherwise.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the LT.

Students on this course will have a reading week in Week 6, in line with departmental policy.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay and 2 presentations in the LT.

Thomas Munn. England's Treasure by Forraign Trade.

Adam Smith. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

Karl Marx. Communist Manifesto.

JM Keynes. General Theory of Employment, Interest, & Money.

Barton, et al. The Evolution of the Trade Regime: Politics, Law, and Economics of the GATT and the WTO.

Essay (100%, 2000 words) in the LT.