This course is available on the BSc in International Relations, BSc in International Relations and Chinese, BSc in International Relations and History, BSc in Politics and International Relations, Erasmus Reciprocal Programme of Study and Exchange Programme for Students from University of California, Berkeley. This course is not available as an outside option to students on other programmes. This course is available with permission to General Course students.

This course is capped. Places will be assigned on a first come first served basis.

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

How do decision-makers get what they want in negotiations on economic issues? What allows a government on the brink of bankruptcy to attain a better deal from an international lender? How does a country reduce its dependence on a rival's technology without triggering the economic costs of decoupling? And when do leaders decide that disrupting the global trading system serves their countries national interest? The answers to these questions often defy economic logic. Explaining them means thinking like an economic diplomat, understanding the constraints they face and the trade-offs they must make.

The course introduces students to the theories and analytical frameworks relating to decision-making and negotiation in international economic relations and develops the skills needed to apply these to real cases. It examines the roles of the main actors, the institutional settings in which they operate, and the interaction between domestic decision-making and international negotiation across the full range of economic diplomacy, from commercial diplomacy and trade negotiations to sovereign debt restructuring, financial crisis management, aid, climate change, weaponized interdependence and economic coercion.

At the heart of the course is a commitment to learning through cases. Each week students step inside a real diplomatic dilemma and must work through the competing pressures of economic rationality, political survival and international commitments. Students use academic concepts and evidence to confront real world problems and experience the challenges faced by real negotiators.

The course has three ambitions. Students will develop a command of the main theoretical frameworks relating to decision-making and negotiation in international economic relations and the ability to apply these to real cases. They will learn to critically evaluate the academic and policy evidence used to explain why negotiations succeed or fail. And they will develop the capacity to analyse pressing problems in economic diplomacy, from trade wars and debt crises to sanctions and weaponized interdependence, and to apply academic insights to the challenges practitioners face.
 

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.

A formative take-home exam will be administered in week 7 of the WT. This assessment familiarises students with the case-based exam format and provides feedback to support summative exam preparation.

• Woolcock, Stephen. The new economic diplomacy: decision-making and negotiation in international economic relations, Fifth edition. Routledge: Oxon and New York, 2025.
• Koremenos, Barbara. The continent of international law: Explaining agreement design. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
• Drezner, Daniel W., Henry Farrell, and Abraham L. Newman, eds. The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Interdependence. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2021
• Okano-Heijmans, Maaike. "Economic Diplomacy." In The SAGE Handbook of Diplomacy, edited by Costas M. Constantinou, Pauline Kerr and Paul Sharp. London: SAGE Publications, 2016, pp. 552-563.

Exam (90%), duration: 120 Minutes in the Spring exam period.

Course participation (10%).