166-427 Global Economic Governance

Admission to the postgraduate diploma or fourth year honours in political science or development.

This subject is concerned with the complex relationships between political authority and markets in the global political economy. Our investigation rests on several fundamental premises. First, that the political and economic domains cannot be meaningfully separated. Second, that political interaction and political institutions are the means by which economic structures are established and transformed. Third, that as the market system becomes 'globalised' and therefore out of the direct control of national political authorities, it becomes necessary to understand the complex interactions of the domestic and the international, and the public and private domains. The focus of this subject is global economic governance. We begin by exploring theories of governance and institutions, applying them the particular problems of global governance. Then we examine some of the key multilateral institutions for global economic governance including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. We will also look at non-government organisations and social movements that contest global governance. Given their crucial role in shaping the policies of national governments, the organisations and arrangements that constitute global governance offer us a prism through which we can explore some of the central questions of international political economy.