Case Studies in International Political Economy

Description

The course is designed as a workshop to help enhance the participants’ ability to conduct empirical research and compile professional policy reports (or working papers) in international political economy. The participants will have a firsthand chance to experience how to formulate relevant research puzzles based on cutting edge academic work, how to efficiently conduct social research, and the pedagogical merits of peer reviews and criticisms.

The course is composed of three parts: At the first class meeting, participants are expected to declare the tentative topic of his/her paper. During the first part of the course (week 2 to 5), the class will read the works of the leading scholars on the topics chosen by the participants. Thus, prior to the first meeting, everyone is expected to have in mind an author and/or articles the person wishes to dissect in class, selected by referring to either my international political economy course syllabus from <http://web.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~hiwatari/> or the table of contents of recent issues of major journals in international political economy (such as, International Organization, World Politics, International Studies Quarterly, International Interaction, Journal of Conflict Resolution, etc.). The purpose of the first four weeks’ exercise is to familiarize oneself with how his/her topic is argued by top researchers as well as the basic structure of academic/professional papers. Among the scholars listed in my syllabus, people such as Mansfield-Milner (trade), Simmons (investment and finance), Rodrick (development), Bernhard-Leblang, (currency), Quinn (capital liberalization), Jensen (Investment), Busch-Reinhardt (WTO), Dreher-Veeland (IMF), etc, are likely to appear as one’s choice.

Each participant is required to file his/her paper topic by the end of the fifth week. By then, each participant is likely to realize that research papers in international political economy are usually structured in the following manner, regardless of whether it is a quantitative and large-n or a qualitative and small-n research:

International economic policy/relations = political independent variables + economic control variables

In the second part of the course (week 6 to 9) we will read Designing Social Inquiry by Gary King, Robert O. Keohane and Sidney Verba (Princeton U.P. 1994) (either the English edition or the Japanese translation) and chapters from Henry E Brady and David Collier edited, Rethinking Social Inquiry (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004) as well as related articles (if necessary) in order to understand the effective ways to conduct and avoid pitfalls of scientific research. Since Designing Social Inquiry has in mind large-n quantitative research, we will expand our methodological horizons by consulting Rethinking Social Inquiry and related articles for those planning to conduct qualitative or small-n research. In other words, ones paper does not have to be quantitative.

By the end of week 9, everyone is expected to hand in a research paper prospectus stating what the dependent variable and the basic hypothesis of the paper is, what the political independent and economic control variables are, and what kind of data or materials will be used to substantiate the hypothesis.

The final stretch of the course (after week 10) will be consumed by in-class progress report presentations. Everyone will take turns in reporting how their paper is progressing while others will make suggestions and criticisms on how each reporter should proceed in finishing the paper. Everyone is expected to use the summer recess to write up his/her research paper and to present the paper in a mini-conference after recess (mid-September)

Course materials

 

Evaluation