- Enseignant-e: Katharina Fleiner
Economic relationships between states form some of the most critical aspects of international relations and cooperation. International development, finance, and trade provide countries with the resources essential for their growth, economic security, and ability to exert influence over other nations in pursuit of economic and non-economic interests.
Like all international relations, international economic relationships are characterised by uneven power dynamics. The field of international relations, which closely investigates international economic relations – international political economy – focused on affluent, developed Western democracies as the powerful actors in international economic relations for most of the 2000s and early 2010s. Countries such as the US and, to a lesser extent, France, the UK, and Germany use their bilateral economic relations as well as their influence in powerful international economic organisations such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organisation to shape political and economic landscapes in other countries to their interests and extract benefits for themselves. However, the rise of China, as well as the increasing influence of different economic actors such as multinational corporations and private financial market actors, has had severe implications for power balances in the international economic sphere.
In the 12 sessions of this course, we will learn about and discuss how different actors can and do wield power in international economic relations. We will discuss different forms of power, how countries use them and to what ends. Students will also be introduced to various influential academic literature in the field, which uses qualitative and quantitative methodologies to test theories about power in international economic relations. At the end of this course, I expect students to (1) have a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the politics of the global economy, (2) improve their ability to theorise about power relations in the global economy, (3) have gained an insight into different methodologies that can be used to test such theories.