Comparative Political EconomyPolitical Science 413

MWF 1:00-1:50 PM, 115 TalbertSpring semester, 2011

Instructor: Jason SorensOffice Hours: W 2-4 PM and by appointment; 419 Park Hall

Email: jsorens@buffalo.edu (preferred)Phone: 645-8436

Course Description

This course is an introduction to comparative political economy, the comparative politicsof domestic economic policies. Topics include: market reforms in developed, developing,and postsocialist countries, varieties of welfare capitalism, income inequality and politicalstability, (de)regulation and privatization, federalism, the effects of political institutions oneconomic development, interest groups, property rights, the rule of law, and corruption.We will look in depth at both developed and developing countries, with an emphasis onunderstanding why they choose (or end up with) the policies and institutions that theyhave, even when in some cases these policies and institutions might hamper development orincrease poverty. You need to have taken Politics Abroad before taking this course, and abackground in principles of microeconomics and macroeconomics and in statistics (throughbasic regression) is extremely helpful.

Course Requirements and Grading

Class will combine lectures and discussion sessions, and attendance is required. You must doall the reading for a particular class meeting before that class. Class participation (qualityand quantity) comprises 25% of your course grade. The exam will draw on all materialcovered in class, from both readings and lectures. There is a 1500-word essay on an assignedtopic due Wednesday March 9, which will count as 20% of your grade. In the final twoclass periods we will hold in-class team debates on different topics. Your preparation foryour debate comprises 15% of your grade. There will be a take-home essay final exam, whichcounts for 40% of your course grade. This exam must meet all the requirements of a standardacademic paper, includng citations of sources (see section on Academic Integrity).

Please note the cancelled classes below.

Readings

All readings are required. Readings not drawn from the books are available on the course’sBlackboard site. I have chosen the following books for the course, all of which are availableat the bookstore:

• Scott, James C., Seeing like a State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).

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• Olson, Mancur, The Rise and Decline of Nations, (New Haven: Yale University Press,1982).

• Bates, Robert H., Markets and States in Tropical Africa, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 2005).

• Vogel, Steven K., Freer Markets, More Rules (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).

In addition, some recommended texts are available at the bookstore. The required read-ings from these books are all on the Blackboard site, but you may want to purchase or rentthe books anyway, especially for midterm paper and final exam research. The recommendedbooks are these:

• Persson, Thorsten, & Guido Tabellini, The Economic Effects of Constitutions (Cam-bridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).

• Tsebelis, George, Veto Players (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

• Swenson, Peter, Capitalists Against Markets (New York: Oxford University Press,2002).

Remember to bring to class all the readings assigned for a particular day. That meansthat you will need to print out Blackboard readings.

Academic Integrity

I have noticed that many UB students are not adequately familiar with the scope, content,and importance of academic integrity. According to UB Rules and Regulations:

’The University has a responsibility to promote academic honesty and integrity and todevelop procedures to deal effectively with instances of academic dishonesty. Students areresponsible for the honest completion and representation of their work, for the appropriatecitation of sources, and for respect for others’ academic endeavors. By placing their nameon academic work, students certify the originality of all work not otherwise identified byappropriate acknowledgments.’

Academic dishonesty includes:

(a) Previously submitted work: submitting academically required material that has beenpreviously submitted in whole or in substantial part in another course, without priorand expressed consent of the instructor;

(b) Plagiarism: copying or receiving material from a source or sources and submitting thismaterial as one’s own without acknowledging the particular debts to the source (quota-tions, paraphrases, basic ideas), or otherwise representing the work of another as one’sown;

(c) Cheating: receiving information, or soliciting information, from another student or otherunauthorized source, or giving information to another student, with the intent to de-ceive while completing an examination or individual assignment;

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(d) Falsification of academic materials: fabricating laboratory materials, notes, reports, orany forms of computer data; forging an instructor’s name or initials; resubmittingan examination or assignment for reevaluation which has been altered without theinstructor’s authorization; or submitting a report, paper, materials, computer data, orexamination (or any considerable part thereof) prepared by any person other than thestudent responsible for the assignment;

(e) Misrepresentation of documents: Forgery, alteration, or misuse of any University orOfficial document, record, or instrument of identification.

(f) Confidential academic materials: procurement, distribution or acceptance of examina-tions, laboratory results without prior and expressed consent of the instructor.

(g) Selling academic assignments: No person shall, for financial consideration, or the promiseor financial consideration, prepare, offer to prepare, cause to be prepared, sell or offerfor sale to any person any written material which the seller knows, is informed orhas reason to believe is intended for submission as a dissertation or thesis, term paper,essay, report or other written assignment by a student in a university, college, academy,school or other educational institution to such institution or to a course, seminar ordegree program held by such institution.

(h) Selling computer assignments: No person shall sell or offer for sale to any person enrolledin the State University of New York any computer assignment, or any assistance in thepreparation, research, or writing of a computer assignment intended for submission infulfillment of any academic requirement.

UB guidelines currently provide the instructor with a wide range of discretion as tothe penalties to pursue for any violation of academic integrity. For clear and particularlyserious violations of academic integrity such as cheating, my policy, with no exceptions, isto fail the student in the course. For lesser violations such as low-degree plagiarism, severepoint deductions, up to failure of the assignment, is standard. Regarding plagiarism, pleasenote that you must cite every idea or piece of evidence in your paper that youderived from someone else. In addition, encyclopedias such as Wikipedia and biasedpublications from activist organizations are not acceptable sources for scholarly research,although they may well be appropriate places to begin your research. Use primary sourcessuch as news articles for establishing facts and refereed, published research for establishinggenerally accepted relationships and ideas.

Schedule of Topics and Readings

1. Tools for Analysis

Wednesday January 19: No reading.

Friday January 21: Olson, chapter 1.

2. Interest Groups in High-Income Democracies

Monday January 24: Olson, chapter 2.

Wednesday January 26: Olson, chapters 3 & 4.

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3. Interest Groups in Less Developed Countries

Friday January 28: Bates, Introduction.

Monday January 31: Bates, Part I.

Wednesday February 2: Bates, Part II; William Easterly, Elusive Quest for Growth:Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (MIT Press), pp. 217-239.

4. The Modernist State

Friday February 4: Scott, chapter 1.

Monday February 7: Scott, chapter 2.

Wednesday February 9: Scott, chapters 6 & 8.

5. Political Institutions and Policies

Friday February 11: Tsebelis, chapter 1.Five-pager topic announced.

Monday February 14: Kathleen Bawn and Frances Rosenbluth (2006), “Shortversus Long Coalitions: Electoral Accountability and the Size of the Public Sector,”American Journal of Political Science 50 (2): 251-65.

Wednesday February 16: Persson & Tabellini, chapter 2.

NO CLASS FRIDAY FEBRUARY 18

Monday February 21: Tsebelis, chapter 8; Persson & Tabellini, chapter 4.

6. Political Institutions, Transaction Costs, and Development

Wednesday February 23: Douglass C. North and Barry R. Weingast (1989), “Con-stitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice inSeventeenth-Century England,” Journal of Economic History 49 (4): 803-32.

Friday February 25: David Stasavage (2002), “Credible Commitment in EarlyModern Europe: North and Weingast Revisited,” Journal of Law, Economics, andOrganization 18 (1): 155-86.

Monday February 28: Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson, and Simon Johnson(2001), “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investiga-tion,” American Economic Review 91: 1369-1401.

7. Federalism

Wednesday March 2: Yingyi Qian and Barry R. Weingast (1997), “Federalism asa Commitment to Preserving Market Incentives,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 11(4): 83-92.

Friday March 4: Jason Sorens (2010), “The Institutions of Fiscal Federalism,”Publius: The Journal of Federalism.

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8. Resource Curses

Monday March 7: Michael Ross (1999), “The Political Economy of the ResourceCurse,” World Politics.

Wednesday March 9: Karen Remmer (2004), “Does Foreign Aid Promote theExpansion of Government?” American Journal of Political Science 48 (1): 77-92.Five-pagers due.

9. Electoral Politics and the Economy

Friday March 11: William Nordhaus (1975), “The Political Business Cycle,” Re-view of Economic Studies 42 (2): 169-90.

NO CLASS MARCH 14-19 (SPRING RECESS)

Monday March 21: Douglas A. Hibbs, Jr. (1977), “Political Parties and Macroe-conomic Policy,” American Political Science Review 71 (4): 1467-87.

Wednesday March 23: William Roberts Clark (2003), Capitalism, Not Globalism:Capital Mobility, Central Bank Independence, and the Political Control of the Economy(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), pp. 1-19, 31-39.

10. Redistribution and Welfare

Friday March 25: Gøsta Esping-Andersen, Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism(Polity), chapter 3.

Monday March 28: Swenson, chapter 1.

Wednesday March 30: Swenson, chapter 2.

NO CLASS APRIL 1 & 4

Wednesday April 6: Michael Wallerstein (1999), “Wage-Setting Institutions andPay Inequality in Advanced Industrial Societies,” American Journal of Political Science43 (3): 649-80.

Friday April 8: F. David Rueda (2005), “Insider-Outsider Politics in IndustrializedCountries: The Challenge to Social Democratic Parties,” American Political ScienceReview 99 (1): 61-74.

11. Deregulation in High-Income Democracies

Monday April 11: Vogel, Introduction & chapter 1.

Wednesday April 13: Vogel, chapter 2.

Friday April 15: Vogel, chapter 3.Debate teams and topics announced.

Monday April 18: Vogel, chapters 10 & 11.

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12. Economic Reform in Less Developed Countries

Wednesday April 20: Jeffrey Sachs, Poland’s Jump to the Market Economy (MITPress), chapter 1.

Friday April 22: Sachs, chapter 2.

Monday April 25: Joel S. Hellman (1998), “Winners Take All: The Politics ofPartial Reform in Postcommunist Transitions,” World Politics 50 (2): 203-34.

Wednesday April 27: Gregg B. Johnson (2008), “Policy Change in PresidentialDemocracies: The Differential Determinants of Market-Oriented Reforms in LatinAmerica”

13. Student Debates April 29 & May 2 (final exams handed out)

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