This course is available on the MSc in Economics (2 Year Programme). This course is not available as an outside option to students on other programmes. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process. For information on controlled access courses, including eligibility, application processes, deadlines, and departmental contact details, please refer to the Controlled Access Courses webpage.

New course for the 2027/28 academic session.

How to apply: This course is intended for MSc Economics, MSc Economics (2 Year Programme), and MSc EME Students. Any external student is expected to have successfully completed EC400 or EC451 in September and must meet the pre-requisites below.

External students will need the approval of the Department of Economics, the course convenor, and their own Programme director to take this course.

Deadline for application: Please apply as soon as possible after the opening of course selection for all courses.

For queries contact: Econ.msc@lse.ac.uk

Students are expected to have completed EC400/EC451 before taking this course. Students must have taken EC4A1 Microeconomics (or equivalent, e.g., GV4C8) and EC4C1 Econometrics (or equivalent, e.g., GV481).

In exceptional circumstances, students may take this course without EC400/EC451provided they meet the necessary requirements and have received approval from the course conveners (via a face-to-face meeting), the MSc Economics Programme Director and their own Programme Director. Contact the Department of Economics for more information (econ.msc@lse.ac.uk) regarding entry to this course.

A graduate course in the principles and recent advances in the growing field of Political Economy. The course covers both theoretical and empirical works.

The first five weeks cover the key theoretical approaches to understand democratic politics through the lens of political economy: prospective voting (including probabilistic voting), common value election, retrospective voting, and political agency. From then, the lectures after reading week are organized around a theme, with themes changing every year as a function of recent debates in the scholarly community and current problems in the world.

Examples of topics from recent years include: corruption, state capacity, populism, discrimination, social media, autocratic politics. The course material will expand students’ capacity to think about policy and about relevant issues at the intersection of economics and political science.

20 hours of lectures and 9 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.
1 hour of seminars in the Spring Term.

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

There will be a two-hour mock exam for students to receive feedback ahead of the final examination. There will also be a revision session in the first week of ST.

In addition to the mock exam, students will have the opportunity to hand in one further written assignment for feedback.

Most of the reading is from journal articles; lists will be supplied at the start of each term. Two books are of particular interest for students to get started:

• T Besley, Principled Agents? Selection and Incentives in Politics, Oxford University Press, 2005 
• T Persson & G Tabellini, Political Economics: Explaining Political Outcomes, MIT Press, 2000.

Exam (100%), duration: 120 minutes, reading time: 15 minutes in the Spring exam period.

This course is IRDAP-enabled, meaning that resit and deferred assessments will take place in August at the end of the academic year.