GV339      Half Unit
Global Change, Regional Responses: The Political Economy of National Development in the Global South

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

How do changes in the international political economy shape possibilities and prospects for national development within the countries of the Global South? This course tracks global changes over time from the 1950s, defining three broad eras that offered different possibilities and constraints for sustainable development in the domains of inclusive economic development, downwardly accountable government, and environmental sustainability. Students work in regionally defined clusters of their choice (focused on sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, Latin America, or East Asia) to develop a 3-person research presentation and individual short research papers that  analyse the interaction of international factors, historical legacies, and the agency of national leaders in shaping outcomes observed in the 2020s. Comparison and contrasts help unpack the category of “Global South,” revealing very significant divergences across states and regions. We leverage a scalar approach, looking at the connections between local, national, and global processes that highlight the ways in which states mediate the connection between “local and global.”

25 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

Presentation

Annotated bibliography

There will be 1 formative exercise in the first half of the course: an annotated “reading list” (5 items identified by the student [going beyond material on the course reading list]), 1 paragraph annotation of each) on the world region the student is focusing on. The annotations should show how the reading relates to course themes.

There will be a formative in-class presentation in the second half of the course.

Stallings, B., ed.  Global Change, Regionalism Responses: The New PE of Development, 1995.

Dicken, P. Global Shift: Mapping the contours of the global economy.  (8th edition).

Naseemullah, D. 2023.  The Political Economy of National Development: A research agenda after neoliberal reform? World Development 168.

MENA

Heydemann and Lynch, eds.  Making Sense of the Arab State. University of MI Press, 2024.

Karen E. Young. 2023. The Economic Statecraft of the Gulf Arab States. IB Tauris.

Steffen Hertog. 2023. Locked Out of Development: Insiders and Outsiders in Arab Capitalism. CUP: Cambridge Element.

South Asia

Naseemullah, D.  Development After Statism: Industrial Firms and the Political Economy of South Asia (CUP 2018).

LA

Hochstetler, K., & Montero, A. (2013). The renewed developmental state. Journal of Development Studies, 49(11), 1484–1499.

Jazmin Sierra, “The Politics of Growth Model Switching: Why Latin America tries, and Fails, to Abandon Commodity-Driven Growth, in Baccaro, Blyth, and Pontussen, eds. 2022. Diminishing Returns: The New Politics of Growth and Stagnation. OUP.

Heller, P., Rueschemeyer, D., & Snyder, R. (2009). Dependency and development in a globalized world. Studies in comparative international development, 44, 287–295.

Africa

Boone, C. Inequality and Political Cleavage in Africa: Regionalism by Design. CUP 2024.

Padayachee, V. ed.  The PE of Africa (Routledge, 2010).  (selections)

Fosu, A. and E. Ogunlelye. 2018.  African growth strategies -- the past, present, and future. The Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics -- Volume II: Policies and Practices, OUP. Ch. 1, pp. 23-38.

Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni. 2020.  African Decolonizations's Past and Present Trajectories. Current History, May 2020. 188-193.

Léonce Ndikumana. 2015.  "Integrated yet Marginalized:  Implications of Globalization for African Development," African Studies Review, 58/2 (Sept.): 7-29.

Essay plan (30%, 750 words)

Research paper (70%, 3000 words)

30% 3-page (750 words) outline of the material (background, analysis, proposed argument, sources) the student has prepared for their contribution to the group in-class presentation, including a 10 item reference list.

70% 10-page research paper (3,000 words, including reference list).