(Version 1: 12/18/15) POLI 227: Comparative Political Economy Winter 2015 Megumi Naoi Thursday 12-2:50 PM Office Hours: Fri 1-3 SSB 104 SSB 373 mnaoi@ucsd.edu This graduate seminar for Ph.D. students examines the interaction between politics and the economy. This seminar will focus on how politics in particular, political institutions shapes economic outcomes and how the economy affects politics. We will examine both developed and developing countries. The relative importance of domestic politics and international economic forces is also a theme. The course builds on 200C States and Markets. Readings are chosen not only to represent important debates in CPE but also to showcase works on different regions and countries using diverse methodologies (quantitative, qualitative, historical, formal, and experimental). The trade-off for the breath and diversity of this course is that few articles can be assigned on any given topic. My goal, however, is to introduce you to the seminal and current ideas in CPE and to help you identify research questions that you can pursue in your own work. Students will be encouraged to pay close attention to how these studies speak to each other and discuss how we can advance the literature. In addition to the readings and class participation, three major requirements for the course are presentations (see the end of this syllabus for details) and papers. Important Deadlines: : Referee report : Literature review January 28: One-page original research idea memo due. March 10: Upload Your Original Idea Slides REQUIREMENTS A. One Referee Report (15%) 1
A two-page, single-spaced referee report reviewing an article either (i) chosen from this syllabus, (ii) chosen by you (please consult with me beforehand), or, (iii) I was/am assigned to review (please request). Please turn in this referee report at the beginning of the class from which your article is assigned. I will go over how to write a referee report using actual examples during the first class. Those who received a grade lower than A- need to write a second referee report on a different article. B. Literature Review (25%) One 5-7 page, double-spaced, typed paper critically examining the readings due during the course. The literature review has to develop and defend your own critiques and discuss how to move the scholarship forward. During the first week, I will go over how to write a great literature review. Those who received a grade lower than A- need to write a second literature review on a different theme. C. Original Research Idea Paper (40%) You will prepare a 15 or longer page paper containing an original idea that has a germ for a potentially publishable work. Your new idea may be theoretical, empirical or methodological or combination of these innovations. I will give a detailed instruction in the class on how to write this paper. Please do not recycle research papers or dissertation chapters you have already worked on. It is fine to use this paper as a part of dissertation, but the idea here is to develop something new. Due Date: A preliminary, one-page proposal is due on January 28 at the beginning of class. The final paper is due of finals week xx by 5:00 pm. All late work will be penalized at the rate of 1/3 letter grade per day, including weekend days. D: Presentation (10%) Each class participant in the first and second years is required to do two presentations during the course in two capacities a data report presenter (explained in detail below) and a research idea presenter during the final 10th week. 2
Students in third years and beyond are required to do one presentation as on research idea during the course. For the data report, you will need to distribute a hand-out in class and upload it on TED. Grade Students are required to attend class and have done the readings in advance. Unless you have a well-documented reason (e.g., hospitalization over a week), absence in two more classes will result in B+ or lower grade. January 7 Week 1: Debates in Comparative Political Economy Persson, Torsten and Guido Tabellini. 2003. The Economic Effects of Constitutions. MIT Press. Read Chapters 1-3 and skim Chapter 6. Acemoglu, Daron. 2005. Constitutions, Politics, and Economics: A Review Essay on Persson and Tabellini s The Economic Effects of Constitutions. Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XLIII (December 2005), pp. 1025-1048 Boix, Carles. 1999. Setting the Rules of the Game: The Choice of Electoral Systems in Advanced Democracies, American Political Science Review, Vol:93, Issue 3 pp. 609- Cusak, Thomas, Torben Iversen, and David Soskice. 2007. Economic Interests and the Origins of Electoral Systems, American Political Science Review 101, August 2007. For Workshop II on How to Write a Literature Review, please read the following two literature reviews and assess how effective they are in (i) summarizing key literature, (ii) assessing the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches, and (iii) identifying promising lines of future research. Ana De La O. and Leonard Wantchekon. 2011. Democracy and Development in Druckman, James N., Donald P. Green, James H. Kuklinski, and Arthur Lupia, eds. Cambridge handbook of experimental political science. Cambridge University Press, 2011. 3
http://www.polisci.northwestern.edu/documents/undergraduate/cambridge-handbook.pd f Ross, Michael. 2013. The politics of the resource curse: A review. In Handbook on the Politics of Development. Oxford University Press, 2013. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/ross/ross%20-%20politics%20of%20the%2 0resource%20curse.pdf Workshop I: How to write a referee report (i.e., evaluate the contribution of your work and others) Workshop II: How to write a literature review. January 17. Week 2: Economic Growth Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson and James Robinson. 2001. The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation. American Economic Review 91 (5): 1369-1401. Rodrik, Dani, Arvind Subramanian, and Francesco Trebbi. 2004. Institutions Rule: The Primacy of Institutions over Geography and Integration in Economic Development. Journal of Economic Growth, 9(2), pp.131-165. Keefer, Philip. 2004. What Does Political Economy tell us about Economic Development and Vice Versa? Annual Review of Political Science. V. 7, 247-72. From settler mortality to patrimonialism: weaving the dynamics of political competition into the political economy of development, Political Economists (APSA Newsletter for Political Economy section), Volume XII, Issue 3. Micro and Historical Views: Stasavage, David. 2014. Was Weber Right? The Role of Urban Autonomy in Europe s Rise. American Political Science Review 108, no. 02 (2014): 337-354. Michalopoulos, Stelios, and Elias Papaioannou. 2013. Pre- Colonial Ethnic Institutions and Contemporary African Development. Econometrica 81, no. 1 (2013): 113-152. 4
Practical Issue: How should we use economic models in our political economy research? Data Report (Please Follow the Template at the End of this Syllabus): 1. What data measure economic growth? 2. What data measure the security of property rights? January 21 Week 3: Political Economy of Regime Type Przeworski, Adam and Fernando Limongi 1993. Political Regimes and Economic Growth Journal of Economic Perspectives 7, #3: 51-69. Boix, Carles and Susan Stokes. 1993. Endogenous Democratization, World Politics, Volume 55, Number 4, July 2003. Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi. 1997. Modernization: Theories and Facts World Politics 49(2):155-183 Ghandi, Jeniffer 2008, Political Institutions Under Dictatorship. Chapters TBA. Cambridge University Press. Bates, Robert and Da-Hsiang Lien. 1985. A Note on Taxation, Development, and Representative Government, Politics and Society. Vol.14, Issue 1. Micro-level Evidence within Countries (Read one of the two): Monica Martinez-Bravo, Gerard Padró i Miquel, Nancy Qian, Yang Yao, 2012. Elections in China NBER Working Paper No. 18101, Issued in May 2012 Devin Caughey One-party South? Practical Issue: How should we make the best use of typology in political economy research? Data Report: 1. What data measure different aspects of democracy and autocracy (e.g., 5
representation, checks and balances, and civil liberty)? 2. What data measure different aspects of democracy and autocracy within a country, such as subnational variations? January 28 Week 4 Inequality and Redistribution **One-page original research idea due** Boix, Carles. 2003. Democracy and Redistribution. Chapters TBA. Iverson, Torben and David Soskice, 2006. Electoral Institutions and the Politics of Coalitions: Why Some Democracies Redistribute More Than Others, American Political Science Review, Vol. 100, No. 2 May 2006 Piketty, Thomas, and Emmanuel Saez. 2006. The Evolution of Top Incomes: A Historical and International Perspective. The American Economic Review (2006): 200-205. Kuziemko, Ilyana, Michael I. Norton, Emmanuel Saez, and Stefanie Stantcheva. 2015. How Elastic Are Preferences for Redistribution? Evidence from Randomized Survey Experiments, American Economic Review, 2015, 105(4): 1478 1508. Scheve, Ken and David Stasavage. 2015. Taxing the Rich. (Book manuscript) Chapters 1, 3 and 6. (Will distribute hardcopy of page proof please do not share with anyone else). You can also compare these chapters with the following article to see what gets added vs. cut in a book and an article: Scheve, Ken and David Stasavage. 2012. Democracy, War, and Wealth: Lessons from Two Centuries of Inheritance Taxation, American Political Science Review. Vol.106, Issue 1: pp.81-102. Acemoglu, Daron and James Robinson, 2001. Inefficient Redistribution. APSR 95: 649-61. Practical Issue: How should we demonstrate empirically that institutions affect political economy outcomes such as degrees of inequality and redistribution? Data Report: Inequality and Redistribution 6
1. What data measure inequality? 2. What data measure government spending? 3. What data measure the extent to which governments redistribute wealth? February 4 Week 5: The Provision of Public Goods Keefer, Phillipe and Stuti Khemani, 2004. Why Do the Poor Receive Poor Services?, Economic and Political Weekly, February 28, 2004 Tsai, L. Lily, 2007. Solidary Groups, Informal Accountability, and Local Public Goods Provision in Rural China. American Political Science Review, 2007, 101:2:355-372. Alesina, Alberto, Reza Baqir, and William Easterly. 1999. Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 114(4): 1243-1284 Habyarimana, James, Macartan Humphreys, Daniel Posner and Jeremy M. Weinstein, 2007. Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision? American Political Science Review, 2007, 101:4:709-725. Olken, A. Benjamin. 2010. Direct Democracy and Local Public Goods: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia, American Political Science Review. Vol.104, No.2. Malesky, Edmund J., Cuong Viet Nguyen, and Anh Tran. 2014. The impact of recentralization on public services: a difference-in-differences analysis of the abolition of elected councils in Vietnam. American Political Science Review 108, no. 01 (2014): 144-168. Practical Issue: How should we identify & describe policy preferences in political economy research? Data Report: 1. What data measure the provision of public goods? 2. What data measure preferences of actors over different types of goods (citizens, public officials, firms etc)? 7
February 11 Week 6: Corruption and Resource Curse Rose-Ackerman, Susan, The Causes of Corruption, part III, pp. 111-174. Finan, Federico. 2008. Exposing Corrupt Politicians: The Effect of Brazil s Publicly Released Audits on Electoral Outcomes. The Quarterly Journal of Economics. May 2008, Vol.123, No.2:703-745. Michael L. Ross, 2001. Does Oil Hinder Democracy?, World Politics 53 (April 2001), 325 61 Robinson, James A., Ragnar Torvik, and Thierry Verdier. Political foundations of the resource curse. Journal of development Economics 79, no. 2 (2006): 447-468. Dunning, Thud. 2008. Crude Democracy: Natural Resource Wealth and Political Regimes, Cambridge University Press. Chapters TBA. Ross, Michael L. 2008. Oil, Islam, and women. American Political Science Review 102, no. 01 (2008): 107-123. Practical Issue: How do we study unobservables (or, observable phenomena with strong selection and reporting bias) such as corruption? Data Report: 1. What data measure corruption? 2. What data measure natural resource endowment? February 18 Week 7: Political Economy of Social Divisions Gourevitch, Peter. 1986. Politics in Hard Times. Cornell University Press. Chapters TBA. Iversen, Torben and Frances Rosenbluth 2006. The Political Economy of Gender: Explaining Cross-National Variation in the Gender Division of Labor and the Gender Voting Gap. American Journal of Political Science Volume 50 Issue 1. 8
Laitin, David. Hegemony and Religious Conflict: British Imperial Control and Political Cleavages in Yorubaland. Chapter 9 of Bringing the State Back In. Edited by Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol. Shayo, Moses. 2009. A model of social identity with an application to political economy: Nation, class, and redistribution. American Political Science Review 103, no. 02 (2009): 147-174. Jha, Saumitra. 2013. Trade, institutions, and ethnic tolerance: Evidence from South Asia. American political Science review 107, no. 04 (2013): 806-832. Data report: 1. What data measure degrees of ethnic and religious divides in societies? 2. What data measure salience of certain identities over others? February 25 Week 8: Elections, Parties, and Economics (Part I: Voters) Dusch, Raymond and Stevenson, Randolph. Economic Votes. Chapters TBA. Cambridge University Press. Bartel, Larry. 2008. Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. Chapter 2 and 4. Ansell, Ben. 2014. The political economy of ownership: Housing markets and the welfare state. American Political Science Review, 108(02), 383-402. Stokes, Susan. 2005. Perverse Accountability: A Formal Model of Machine Politics with Evidence from Argentina. American Political Science Review, Vol.99, No.3. Wantchekon, Leonard. 2003. "Clientelism and voting behavior: Evidence from a field experiment in Benin." World politics 55, no. 03 (2003): 399-422. Blaydes, Lisa. 2011. Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak s Egypt. Cambridge University Press. Chapters TBA. Data Report: 9
1. What data measure left vs. right orientation of political parties? How about left vs. right orientation of individual legislators? 2. What data allows us to test self-interests vs. socio-tropic economic voting? March 3 Week 9: Elections, Parties and Economics (Part II: Organized Interests) Grossman, Gene M., and Elhanan Helpman. 1994. Protection for Sale. The American Economic Review 84, no. 4 (1994): 833-850. Bombardini, Matilde, and Francesco Trebbi. 2011. Votes or money? Theory and evidence from the US Congress. Journal of Public Economics 95, no. 7 (2011): 587-611. Kayser, Mark and Ron Rogowski. 2002. Majoritarian Electoral Systems and Consumer Power: Price-Level Evidence from the OECD Countries. American Journal of Political Science, 46(3): 526-39. Kasela, Kumuli. 2007. Tax Me if You Can: Ethnic Geography, Democracy, and the Taxation of Agriculture in Africa. American Political Science Review, Vol.101, Issue 1:159 Shih, Victor, Christopher Adorph and Mingxing Liu. 2012. Getting Ahead in the Communist Party: Explaining the Advancement of Central Committee Members in China. American Political Science Review. February 2012. Bonica, Adam. 2013. Ideology and interests in the political marketplace. American Journal of Political Science 57, no. 2 (2013): 294-311. Hall, Andrew and Alexander Fouirnaies, 2015. The Exposure Theory of Access: Why Some Firms Seek More Access Than Others. Working Paper. Data Report: 1. What data measure influence and preferences of organized interests over public policies? March 10** Week 10: New Questions in Comparative Political Economy & 10
Conference on Your Original Research Ideas (Note: I will be out of town to give a talk, so need to reschedule) We will discuss the following works and reviews for the first 20 minutes and then will have a Conference on Your Original Research Ideas. Before the class, please upload maximum four slides on TED summarizing (i) Research question and its importance (one slide), (ii) Argument, Hypotheses and/or Novel Research Strategy (1-2 slides), (iii) Data and Methods (one slide). Political Economy of Violence Weinstein, Jeremy. 2011. Inside the Rebellion. Cambridge University Press. Chapters TBA. Political Economy of Public Health Carpenter, Daniel. 2012. Is Health Politics Different? Annual Review of Political Science. Political Economy of Environment TBA Political Economy of Education TBA Data Report You will report on data that are used to conduct question that the student chooses. The student will briefly describe the report in class (5-10 minutes each). Data can be cross-national, subnational, or a country-specific (e.g., individual-level). For a country-specific data report, you will need to address contextual/country-specific issues that are reflected in the data collection effort (e.g., In Russia, published data on labor strikes is known to be biased and politicized, and hence Graeme Robertson used internal police reports to calculate the data etc). The best synopses will: 11
Describe the conceptual variable(s) that are being measured by the data that is the topic of the report; Describe what data exist on the topic; Give (brief) examples of how the data have been used; Discuss (briefly) any significant controversies that exist regarding measurement; and Provide links to relevant codebooks or data sets. The synopses should be brief (1-2 pages), with useful links to data, codebooks, or especially relevant bibliographic resources. Students should prepare the hard-copy handouts for the class and all reports should be posted to the course website before the class. Students can choose which question to answer with only one person working on each topic. Also, the questions are suggested if a student would like to pose and answer a different data question, including data questions about archives or other important resources for qualitative research, they can do so with my approval. Sources of Ideas & Being Informed Newspapers & Magazines Wall Street Journal Financial Times New York Times Equivalent of above papers of the country/region that you study The Economist Recently Published Papers and Working Papers In addition to usual suspects in political science (APSR, AJPS, JOP, IO, WP, CPS etc), check out some of the economics journals: American Economic Review Econometrica 12
Quaterly Journal of Economics Review of Economics and Statistics Journal of Political Economy Tuesday Political Economy Lunch Group reading list (UCSD) http://pelg.ucsd.edu Harvard Political Economy Lunch Group International Political Economy Society Past Programs 13