This course examines the interplay of politics, institutions, and markets. The course has two purposes. One purpose is to develop an understanding of a set of analytic tools required to understand political economies. We want to understand the adjustments countries must make to an ever evolving economy and the political efforts necessary to shape and control that evolution. The second purpose is to create a framework of the issues and topics in the field within which to locate classic and contemporary literature and debate.
The initial objective is to consider core analytic tools central to political economy. The question is not how to choose among these lines of analysis, but how to use them properly. Does the structure of a situation, at home or abroad, account for national outcomes? Do the interests of the actors define their behavior and their interplay to account for outcomes? Are the political interests read off of a economic or marketplace map? If so, how? If not, how do we define the groups and their interests? Both political actors and political institutions must be understood as outcomes and settlements of past political and economic crises. This has substantial methodological consequences. There is no irreducible nub of interests from which to read a political map. Making sense of the political interests of economic actors in the advanced countries requires understanding the competitive dynamics of markets. Understanding market dynamics makes the political interplay of business, labor, and the state more transparent.
How do we understand and explain the variety of national outcomes? A unifying perspective is that economic growth and political stability require political settlements that at once resolve the technical tasks of growth (assuring the appropriate allocation of resources and the sustained reorganization of economic activities) as well as the political problem of allocating the gains and costs of development. There is no single best way of ensuring sustained economic development and political stability. Policies that work in some periods may not be appropriate or workable in others. Nonetheless, some countries have been able to manage sustained economic growth, while others have stumbled along the way.
The analytic discussion is embedded in a narrative about the evolution of national choices in the global economy and marketplace. Will the advanced countries shape technology and global market forces, or conversely, be reshaped or shattered by them? The perspective here is that globalization involves a sequence of national stories played out on larger stages in new and innovative ways. Yet national political economies and, indeed, national politics more broadly, require an understanding of the evolving global marketplace and transforming character of production and value creation.