INTERESTS, INSTITUTIONS, IDEAS: APPROACHES TO POLITICAL ECONOMY

Professors: Bla Greskovits (week 1-6) and Dorothee Bohle (week 7-12) Time: Room: Office hours: Course description This course introduces students to three perspectives on the political economy of capitalist countries: interest based, institutional, and ideational. Each approach is informed by distinct sets of questions on the relationship between politics and the economy. The first perspective focuses on how interests of different social groups labor, capital, finance, or land clash, or ally and lead to particular economic and political outcomes. It also analyses whose interests are served by existing arrangements and how the latter distribute power and resources among social groups. The second perspective is interested in how different institutions for instance the state, financial, or welfare institutions - shape the behavior of major economic actors. Finally, ideational approaches question the objective nature of economic constraints on politics. They draw our attention to how economic constraints are socially constructed, and ask how historically specific conceptions of the economic order e.g. Keynesianism or neoliberalism could become influential. The course will introduce students to major examples of scholarship in each of the three perspectives. Empirically, it will focus on how authors in each tradition analyze and explain two major political-economic transformations: the shift from economic liberalism to Keynesianism in the first half of the century, and the emergence of neoliberalism and globalization since the 1980s. In addition, although the course is not focusing on Eastern Europe, one of its aims is to provide possible analytic starting points for students who plan to do work on related issues in that region. Therefore, the assigned topics of group presentations (see below) shall address the relevance of the discussed concepts for some of the problems of the postcommunist world. Requirements 1. Class attendance and participation (25% of final grade). Class attendance is mandatory. We shall have one lecture class and one seminar per week. You are expected to read the required readings, and actively participate in the seminar discussions. 2. Exams (50% of final grade). Two in-class closed book exams will be written in the 6 th and 12th weeks, respectively.

3. Group Presentations (25% of final grade). The weekly seminars will be introduced by group presentations (2-4 students, 20 minutes long). Presentations are expected to try and apply the given theoretical approach to a specified problem (see below), and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the approach. The groups are asked to electronically distribute a hand-out the day before the presentation is scheduled. Members of each group will be graded individually, therefore the hand-out has to indicate the individual authorship of each part of a presentation.

_________________________________________________ Topics and Readings Part 1: Interest-based approaches to political economy Week 1: Introduction Week 2: Lib-lab, red-green, and Fascist coalitions in interwar Europe Required Reading: Luebbert, Gregory M., Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy. Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe. Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford 1991. Introduction pp. 1-11; Chapter 6 pp. 191-233. Chapter 8 pp. 267-305. Topic for Presentation: Is postcommunist Eastern Europe more homogenous than interwar Europe, or are its economic and political regimes no less diverse? Recommended Readings: Tba. Week 3: The political economy of debt in Latin America Required Reading: Frieden, Jeffry A. Debt, Development, and Democracy. Modern Political Economy and Latin America 1965-1985. Princeton University Press 1991. Introduction, and Part I. pp. 3-91. Topic for Presentation: Do class- and sectoral conflicts have anything to do with the collapse of communism?

Recommended Reading: Tba. Week 4: Politics and policy in times of economic crisis Required Reading: Gourevitch, P., Politics in Hard Times. Comparative Responses to International Economic Crises. Cornell University Press. Ithaca and London 1986. Chapters 1, 2, pp. 17-68, and Chapter 5 pp. 181-217. Topic for Presentation: Is nation still a sensible unit of analysis? How national is capital, labor, land, and the state these days? Recommended Reading: Tba. Part 2: Institutional approaches to political economy Week 5: How to explain the emergence of institutions? Polnyis concept of selfprotection of society Required Reading: Polnyi, K. 1944. The Great Transformation. The Political and Economic Origins of our Time. Boston. Beacon Press: pp. 33-85, and 130-150. Topic for Presentation: What is the message of Polnyis theory for participants of the new Great Transformation after communism? Recommended Reading: Block, Fred (2003). Karl Polanyi and the writing of the Great Transformation. Theory and Society, Vo. 32, No. 3, June 2003 Block, Fred (1984). Beyond the Economistic Fallacy; The Holistic Social Science of Karl Polanyi. In Block, F. and M. Summers (eds.): Vision and Method in Historical Sociology. Cambridge University Press. Granovetter, Mark (1985). Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness. AJS Vol. 91, pp. 481Ruggie, John G. (1982): International Regimes, Transaction and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order. International Organization. Week 6: Democratic corporatism: the secret of small states success (& Exam 1)

Required reading: Katzenstein, Peter J. 1986. Small States in World Markets. Industrial Policy in Europe. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press., Introduction pp. 17-38. Chapter 3 pp. 80-135, Conclusion, pp. 191-211. Topic for Presentation: How relevant is Katzensteins concept of economic openness and domestic compensation for the East European small states? Recommended readings: Schmitter, Philippe (1979): Still the Century of Corporatism? In: Schmitter, Philippe and Gerhard Lehmbruch (eds.): Trends Towards Corporatist Intermediation. Beverly Hills: Sage. Pp. 43-94 Maier, Charles S. (1984): Preconditions for Corporatism. In: John H. Goldthorpe (ed.): Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism. Studies in the Political Economy of Western European Nations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 39-60. Week 7: Institutional forms and regimes of accumulation: French regulation theory Required Boyer, Robert (1990): The Regulation Theory: A Critical Introduction. New York, Comumbia University Press, pp. 1-66, 98-111. Topic for presentation: Can major ideas and concepts of the regulation theory be used to understant the State Socialist System and its crisis? Recommended: Boyer, Robert and Ives Saillard (eds.) (2002). Regulation Theory: The State of the Art. London. Routledge Aglietta, Michel (1979). A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: The US Experience. London: NLB. Alain Lipietz (1987): Mirages and Miracles. The Crisis of Global Fordism. London, Verso.

Week 8: Institutions and firms: varieties of capitalism Required: Peter Hall, David Soskice (2001): Varieties of Capitalism. Introduction. Oxford, Oxford University Press

Topic for presentation: How relevant is the Variety of Capitalism Approach for explaining Eastern European capitalism? Recommended: Amable, Bruno (2003). The Diversity of Capitalism. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Comparative European Politics 2003 No. 2, pp. 203-250. Review Symposium on Varieties of Capitalism, with contributions by Mark Blyth, Robert E. Goodin and Matthew Watson, and a Response by Peter Hall and David Soskice. Pontusson, Jonas (1995): From Comparative Public Policy to Political Economy. Putting Institutions in their Place and Taking Interests Seriously. Comparative Political Studies. Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 117-147.

Part 3: Ideational approaches to political economy Week 9: Interests, institutions and how do ideas come in? Required: Hall, Peter (ed.) (1989): The Political Power of Economic Ideas. Keynesianism across Nations. Princeton, Princeton University Press. Chapters 1(Introduction), Chapter 14 (Conclusions, both by Peter Hall), and Chapter 13 (How the Keynesian Revolution was exported from the United States and Other Comments, by Albert O. Hirschman), pp. 3-27, 347-393. Recommended: Blyth Mark (1997): Any more bright ideas? The Ideational Turn of Comparative Political Economy. Comparative Politics, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 229-250. Topic for presentation: Tba. Week 10: Ideas at Work: Disembedding liberalism Required: Blyth, Mark (2002). Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the 20th century. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 3-47, 126-152. Topic for presentation: How to explain the rise of neoliberalism in Eastern Europe?

Recommended: Cockett, Richard (1995): Thinking the Unthinkable. Economic Think-Tanks and the Rise of Neoliberalism. London, HarperCollings. Plehwe Dieter, Walpen, Bernhard and Gisela Neunhffer (eds.) (2005). Neoliberal Hegemony: A Global Critique. Routledge Bockman, Johanna and Gil Eyal (2002): Eastern Europe as a Laboratory for Economic Knowledge: The Transnational Roots of Neoliberalism. American Journal of Sociology, volume 108 (2001), pages 310352. Szacki, Jerzey (1995). Liberalism after Communism. Budapest: Central European University Press, pp. 1-17, 119-170. Campbell, John L. and Ove K. Pedersen (eds) (2002). The rise of neoliberalism and institutional analysis. Princeton, NY Princeton University Press

Week 11 The rise of the competitiveness discourse Required: Rosamond, Ben (2002): Imagining the European Economy: Competitiveness and the Social Construction of Europe as an Economic Space. New Political Economy. Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 157-177. Van Apeldoorn, Bastiaan (2000): Transnational Class Agency and European Governance: The Case of the European Roundtable of Industrialists. New Political Economy, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 157-181. Topic for presentation: Evaluate how the discourse on competitiveness has shaped mainstream understanding of transformation failure and sucesses in the eight new EU member states.

Week 12: Exam 2 and concluding discussion