International Relations and Political Regimes

The purpose of this seminar is to familiarize participants with the ongoing developments in international political economy and political science theorizing that is necessary to understand the contemporary developments observed since the mid-1980s.

The three decades since the mid-1980s can be characterized as a period in which political liberalization (i.e. the “third wave” of democratization) and market liberalization (i.e. economic globalization) have spread geographically, probably to its limits of late. Such parallel transformations can be ascribed to newly democratizing regimes adopting open-market economic reforms (the “Washington Consensus”) to promote growth under the auspices of international economic arrangements and organizations. Noteworthy of this process is the fact that: (a) Western developed democracies had pioneered neoliberal economic reforms prior to developing countries; (b) their dominance of international organizations— especially the IMF and the World Bank rather than the GATT-WTO —and their use of extensive trade agreements have dictated the terms of developing economy integration into the global economy: and that (c) the diffusion of transnational neoliberalism was bounded by domestic resistance within developed democracies and international hostility of authoritarian leaders towards open-market reforms and international arrangements dictated by Western democracies.

Ongoing theoretical developments on political regimes operates help us understand: (a) why developing countries differ in their degree of capital liberalization, which makes open-economic growth an attractive option for development but at the costs of enhancing the power of multinational corporations and increasing the role of IMF as the promoter of the Washington Consensus; (b) why only liberalizing political regimes can credibly commit to open-market reforms and join extensive trade and investment agreements as the key vehicle for market opening, given the stagnation of the WHO Doha round; (c) why domestic opposition in developed and developing democracies shape the degree and conditions of extensive economic agreements, and (d) how the spread of extensive trade agreements forces illiberal authoritarian leaders to choose between loosening their grip on the economy at the risk of strengthening political challenges or to explore revisionary development strategies and seek economic cooperation and security alliances with non-Western regimes.

By reviewing the analytical frameworks that help us answer these questions, this course enables us to understand the aforementioned developments in the global political economy.