Undergraduate Program Status
Elective | Political Science - Specialization |
Following decades of political liberalization and increasingly globally integrated markets, domestic politics in many democratic countries have begun to swing towards de-globalization and de-liberalization as mainstream policy objectives. Within this contemporary context, this 2-credit advanced elective course will overview an academic literature that examines how the economic consequences of globalization affect domestic political behavior. The first three sessions will review the canonical economic models of international trade, international factor mobility, and protectionist trade policy. We will then cover contemporary research that quantitatively relates domestic politics to the following issues of economic integration: international trade, immigration, labor-saving technology diffusion, global macroeconomic business cycles, populism and (dis-)integration. The overarching goal of the course is to encourage original thought as to how a political interpretation of standard international economic theory may be useful in explaining current political trends towards de-globalization. The literature covered is all from the quantitative social sciences and, as such, literacy in basic economic theory and inferential statistics is a pre-requisite. Previous coursework in regression analysis is an advantage, but not required.
Upon successful completion of this course, students will have attained the following research skills:
- Think broadly about how economic globalization affects domestic economies within the context of international economic theory
- Evaluate the theoretical and empirical distributional consequences of policies that promote or restrict economic globalization
- Analyze how the distribution of economic gains and losses from globalization affects domestic political behavior
- Critically appraise cutting-edge quantitative research methods in the social sciences and work to incorporate the methods into individual research questions
- Develop and refine a literature review that cuts across international economics and political science
- Attendance and participation: 9%
- Reading response notes: 32%
- Discussion opener(s): 24%
- Final research assignment: 35%
Reading response notes: Starting from the fourth class session, students are required to submit brief critical notes on one of the required readings. The notes should be between 500 and 1000 words and conclude with at least one suggested in-class discussion point (or critical question). Students should consider the questions that will guide discussions (above)
when drafting their reading notes. Students are required to submit eight reading response notes (can miss one week), of which the lowest scoring note will not be included in the final grade calculation. The notes should be submitted before 10 AM on the day of class meetings. Late submissions will not be considered.
Discussion opener:Starting from the fourth class session, each student will be required to serve as the discussion opener for at least one of the required readings and one of the further readings over the course of the term. The discussion opener should provide a brief overview of the paper and launch the discussion in the paper in the direction of their choosing. Discussion openers should be critical of the text and enable a discussion of extensions of the research question and/or research methodology of the paper.
Final research assignment:The final research assignment is to produce a short document of between 2000 and 4000 words, which provides one of the following research outputs:
- An annotated reading list that builds on the readings from one of the sessions,
- A proposal for a research project with a well-developed research question that
- A preliminary statistical analysis that builds on the readings from one of the sessions.
- builds on the readings from one of the sessions, or