Dr Mona Paulsen

This course is available on the LLM (extended part-time), LLM (full-time) and University of Pennsylvania Law School LLM Visiting Students. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course has a limited number of places (it is controlled access) and demand is typically high. This may mean that you’re not able to get a place on this course.

There are no prerequisites for this course, and it is intended to be both an introduction and a complement to other course offerings at LSE Law. Students with no previous background in public international law may find it helpful to consider consulting G. Hernandez, International Law (2019).

This course focuses on how international trade, investment, and financial rules and institutions (collectively, the international economic order) impact states’ development, and vice versa – that is, what political and economic forces shape the practices of development and how this, in turn, constitutes the international economic order.

We will situate our discussion of state’s development strategies against live debates about the resiliency of economic globalisation in the face of several international economic disruptions. A range of readings are assigned to enhance participatory learning, particularly country case studies, primary source materials, and scholarly work. This is an interactive course that engages with both theory and practice; it is dependent on class participation.

We begin by exploring various conceptions of development, with thoughtful attention as to how different theories of development have progressed over time. Thereafter, we will analyse the linkages between law and development, including discussion on the World Bank’s institutional account of the rule of law. This includes introduction into the different international economic institutions that enable states to integrate into the global economy. We close the first half of the seminar by examining the role of the State in economic development, setting up our study of China's approach to law and development later in the course.

In the second half of the course, we utilise our theory work to appraise the role of international institutions in the process of economic development in practice. What are the challenges that states face by adhering to the principles and rules driving a law-centred, liberal, multilateral economic order? We will consider the advantages and disadvantages of global engagement by thinking through the relationships between politics, economics, and law in the work of the IMF and World Bank, the role of developing countries at the World Trade Organisation, and why and how developing countries conclude investment treaties. Finally, we analyse emerging issues in the international economic order, such as injecting international rights in trade agreements, the expansion of national security policy preferences, climate change, and the future of the data-driven economy.

This course will have two hours of teaching content each week in Lent Term. There will be a Reading Week in Week 6 of Lent Term.

One 2,000 word formative essay during the course.

Reading lists will be provided for each seminar on Moodle. Where possible, readings will include relevant videos and podcasts to enhance student learning.

Readings will draw from materials authored by international institutions covered in the course, including the World Bank’s Development Reports and the World Trade Organization’s documents. Indicative scholarly readings include: A. Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (2005); A. Roberts and N. Lamp, Six Faces of Globalization (2021); M.J. Trebilcock and M. Moto Prado, What Makes Poor Countries Poor? Institutional Determinants of Development (2011); J. Bonnitcha et al., The Political Economy of the Investment Treaty Regime (2017); L. Eslava, Local Space, Global Life: The Everyday Operation of International Law and Development (2015); A. Narlikar, Power Narratives and Power Paradoxes in International Trade Negotiations and Beyond (2020); A. Santos et al., World Trade and Investment Law Reimagined: A Progressive Agenda for an Inclusive Globalization (2019); A. Sen, Development as Freedom (1999); N. Woods, The Globalizers: The IMF, the World Bank, and their Borrowers (2012); H. Wang, “The Belt and Road Initiative Agreements: Characteristics, Rationale and Challenges,” World Trade Review (2021); M. Erie, “Chinese Law and Development” 61(1) Harvard International Law Journal (2021); G. Shaffer, Emerging Powers and the World Trading System (2021); and, S. Pahuja, Decolonising International Law; Development, Economic Growth and the Politics of Universality (2011).

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours, reading time: 15 minutes) in the summer exam period.