Prof Mark Thatcher

This course is available on the BSc in Economics, BSc in Environmental Policy with Economics, BSc in Government, BSc in Government and Economics, BSc in Government and History, BSc in International Relations, BSc in Management, BSc in Politics and Philosophy and BSc in Social Policy with Government. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course is available to General Course students.

Students will normally be expected to have taken GV101 Introduction to Political Science or equivalent, in a previous year. An introductory knowledge of economics would be useful.

The aim of this course is to look at political science explanations of changes in public policy, and to apply that literature to major cases of economic policy (both contemporary and historical). In particular, it aims to examine the extent to which economic policy change is affected by ideas, interests and institutions, and the interaction between international and national factors. The material for the course is drawn mainly from the comparative literature on the politics of markets in industrialised countries. Course topics will include privatisation, delegation to non-majoritarian institutions, varieties of capitalism, regulatory reform and supranational regulation of markets.

8 hours of lectures, 10 hours of classes and 2 hours of workshops in the MT. 8 hours of lectures, 10 hours of classes and 2 hours of workshops in the LT.

W. Streeck and K Thelen eds, Beyond continuity: institutional change in advanced political economies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), V Schmidt and M Thatcher (eds), Resilient Liberalism: Comparative Political Economy in Europe through boom and bust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2013); C Hood, Explaining Economic Policy Reversals (Buckingham: Open University Press,1994), Blyth, M (2002) Great Transformations. Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century (CUP), V S. Schmidt, The Futures of European Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), PA Hall and D Soskice (eds),. Varieties of Capitalism. The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage.(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); O Fioretos, Creative Reconstructions: Multilateralism and European Varieties of Capitalism after 1950 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press). M Thatcher, Internationalisation and Economic Institutions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

Exam (75%, duration: 2 hours) in the main exam period.
Essay (25%) in the ST.