Prof Stephane Wolton

This course is available on the BA in Social Anthropology, BSc in History and Politics, BSc in International Social and Public Policy with Politics, BSc in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, BSc in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (with a Year Abroad), BSc in Politics, BSc in Politics and Data Science, BSc in Politics and Economics, BSc in Politics and History, BSc in Politics and International Relations, BSc in Politics and Philosophy, BSc in Psychological and Behavioural Science and BSc in Social Anthropology. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students.

Students are expected to have taken GV225 Public Choice and Politics, or EC201 Microeconomic Principles I, or equivalent, in a previous year. An introductory knowledge of economics and econometrics would be useful.

This course provides an overview of recent research in political economy. The focus will be on the applications of game theoretical and empirical approaches to the understanding of contemporary political issues. During the lectures, we will cover some seminal and some most recent models to think critically about the topics studied. In addition, we will go over papers testing or related to the theories we cover. Students will learn to assess critically the usefulness and limitations of theories and empirics alike. As such, this course allows students to understand how the tools they acquired in GV225 – Public Choice (or equivalent course) and GV249 – Research Design (or equivalent course) can be combined to study important political questions.

Themes covered change every year as a function of current debates in the scholarly community and of pressing problems in the world at large. In recent years, the topics studied in the course have included, among others, populism, media and democracy, autocratic politics, terrorism. Questions covered during the lectures have included the sources of populists’ success, the effect of biased media on political outcomes, the role of violence in securing autocratic regimes, or the evaluation of counter-terrorist policies, among many others.

This course is delivered through a combination of classes and lectures totalling a minimum of 40 hours in the Autumn Term and 5 hours in the Spring Term, with a reading week in Week 6 of the AT. There will be a two-hour mock exam and a two-hour revision lecture in the ST.

Students will complete one problem set to further their understanding of the concepts covered in the course and prepare for the coursework. There will also be a timed exam in ST Week 1 to allow practice on problem sets solving under exam conditions.

Canes-Wrone, Brandice, Michael C. Herron, and Kenneth W. Shotts. 2001. "Leadership and pandering: A theory of executive policymaking." American Journal of Political Science 45(3): 532-550.

Most of the reading is from journal articles; a complete list will be supplied at the start of the term. A useful overview of political economy topics in democracy is: T Besley, Principled Agents? Selection and Incentives in Politics, Oxford University Press, 2005.

Exam (50%, duration: 2 hours and 45 minutes, reading time: 15 minutes) in the spring exam period.
Coursework (50%) in the WT.