POL298: What are the bases of disagreement between the three theoretic traditions in IPE: International Political Economy Assignment, MU, Singapore

Questions

Conceptual Approaches and Traditions in IPE
1. What are the bases of disagreement between the three theoretic traditions in IPE?
2. What do the three theoretic traditions share in common?
3. Do these theories matter? How do they influence the way we understand international economic issues today?

Globalization and its Transformations
1. How has globalization been conceptualized and evaluated by different IPE scholars drawing on different theoretical approaches?
2. Has globalization weakened states?
3. What has been the impact of globalization on inequalities between and within states?

US Leadership and the Bretton Woods Institutions
1. What did the Bretton Woods Conference seek to achieve? How does this relate to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank), and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)?
2. Why, and in what ways, did the United States play a leadership role in establishing the Bretton Woods order?
3. Why, and in what ways, did the roles and purposes of the IMF begin to change from the 1970s?

The International North-South Divide and the Bretton Woods Institutions
1. What are the main claims and concepts of ‘dependency theory’?
2. What is ‘import substitution industrialization’? What conceptual approach/es in IPE does it draw on, and does experience show it to be a failure as a development strategy?
3. What are ‘structural adjustment policies’, and why have the IMF and World Bank advocated such policies as a solution to under-development?

The Globalisation of Trade, Investment, and Production
1. What have been the main interests, institutions, and political ideologies driving economic liberalization in the IPE? What political agreements and changes to government economic policies have liberalization necessitated?
2. What is FDI, why has it grown so dramatically in recent decades, and what trends are evident in its distribution between states?
3. How has the globalization of production changed the international division of labor between states and what are some of the implications of these changes for different actors/interests in the IPE?

The Globalisation of Money and Finance Capital
1. Briefly explain what is meant by the dollar/gold exchange standard. Why did the dollar/gold exchange standard collapse in 1971 and has it mattered?
2. Briefly explain what is meant by floating exchange rates. Do floating exchange rates empower, or discipline nation-states in terms of their economic policies/strategies?
3. Briefly explain, giving examples, how the current global monetary order uses both fixed and flexible exchange rates. What international tensions/conflicts has this caused?

Globalization, China, and the Rising Powers
1. In what ways and to what extent has China’s rise been ‘peaceful’?
2. Explain Ikenberry’s argument that the liberal international order is “hard to overturn and easy to join”. Is this argument compelling when considering economic institutions today?
3. What are the main characteristics of China’s ‘authoritarian state capitalism? Is it inconsistent with the (neo)liberal world order?

The Political Economy of Global Crisis
1. What causes crises under capitalism?
2. In what ways did develop states respond to the global financial crisis of 2008 and how effective have these responses been?
3. What has been the impact of the crisis on the IMF and other international economic governance institutions?

The European Union’s Regional Political Economy and its Crises
1. What different models of political economy are evident among EU states? How is this reflected in different conceptions of the euro and its purposes?
2. What, if anything, does Britain’s decision to leave the EU to tell us about the efficacy of the EU’s form of monetary union?
3. Can the EU survive its recent spate of crises?