Offizielle Kursbeschreibung
Political Economy is the subfield of Political Science that investigates who gets what and why. Comparative Political Economy (CPE) studies the relationship between politics and economics in a comparative manner. It focuses on differences and similarities across distinct national models of capitalism in order to gain a better understanding of how economy and society, states and markets shape each other and develop.

This course surveys the main contemporary debates in CPE with a focus on European economies, and addresses the following questions: how does the contemporary literature analyse the relation between political institutions and the economy in different models of European capitalisms? How does CPE explain diversity and convergence in different models of capitalism? And what factors shape the economic and social performances of European capitalist economies?

The introduction of the seminar draws on the classics of political economy to tease out the theoretical underpinnings of the main competing contemporary perspectives in the field. The second part provides an in-depth understanding of three crucial contemporary approaches: Varieties of Capitalism, Welfare Capitalisms, and the Growth Models. With the analytical tools offered by these competing approaches, the seminar explores the main European capitalist economies, and the drivers of their institutional organization of the economy as well as of their differentiated economic and social performances. In the final three classes, the course analyses commonalities and differences of Eastern and Southern European peripheral capitalisms and the role of European Union integration in shaping the national economies of the Member States.

Online-Angebote
moodle

Semester: WiSe 2020/21