IR355      Half Unit
Economic Diplomacy

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Requisites

Additional requisites:

Some background knowledge of international political economy, such as that provided in IR206 ‘International Political Economy', will be useful to students taking this course.

The course introduces students to the theories and analytical frameworks relating to decision-making and negotiation in international economic relations and enables them to develop the skills needed to apply these to cases. It discusses the roles of the main actors, institutional settings and processes involved in domestic decision-making and international economic negotiations, and their interaction. The aim of the course is to provide participants with the ability to understand and analyse the factors shaping international negotiations in a range of policy issues from trade and investment, to the environment, economic summits and finance.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of classes in the Winter Term.

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

The course is composed of two modules. The first module (Week 1-3) discusses analytical toolkits for understanding economic diplomacy. During these initial weeks, students will learn about four approaches to economic diplomacy: a) balance of power and coercive bargaining, b) negotiations within international institutions, c) the effect of domestic politics, and d) the role of ideas and issue framing.

The second module (Week 4-10) features specific negotiation tactics frequently adopted by policymakers and important challenges that negotiators face in policy processes.

Students will be expected to produce a short policy memo in week 7 of the WT. The formative will be an outline of the student policy memo in preparation for the summative policy memo.  

• Bayne, Nicholas and Woolcock, S. The new economic diplomacy: decision-making and negotiation in international economic relations, Third edition, Ashgate, Stephen 2013.
• Koremenos, Barbara. The continent of international law: Explaining agreement design. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
• Davis, Christina L. "Food fights over free trade." Food Fights over Free Trade. Princeton University Press, 2011.
• Oye, Kenneth A. Economic discrimination and political exchange: World political economy in the 1930s and 1980s. Princeton University Press, 1993.

Memo (100%, 2500 words)

The memo is a Policy Memo (2500 words) (100%) in the ST.