This course is available on the MSc in International Affairs (LSE and Peking University), MSc in International Political Economy, MSc in International Political Economy (LSE and Sciences Po), MSc in International Political Economy (Research) and MSc in Political Science (Global Politics). This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. 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.

All International Relations (IR4) optional courses at LSE are Controlled Access and require an application via LfY. Students must include a statement in their LfY application of no more than 200 words explaining their interest in the course and its relevance to their academic and career goals.

Application deadline: 12:00 noon, Friday 26 September 2025.

Notification of outcome: by 12:00 noon, Monday 29 September 2025.

After this date, students should consult the MSc Course Availability Spreadsheet for remaining spaces on IR4-level courses. 

For further details, see the LSE Selecting Courses webpage in the first instance or contact IR.Programmes@lse.ac.uk only if necessary.

All students will be required to obtain permission from the Teacher Responsible by completing the Student Statement box on the online application form linked to course selection on LSE for you. Admission to the course is not guaranteed, due to limited space.  The course is primarily for students on the IPE Masters and LSE-Sciences-Po Double Degree masters.

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 firsthand 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.

15 hours of seminars and 10 hours of lectures 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%).