Syllabus for IR 500 C1: The Rise of the BRICS

brics syllabus_aug 28

Discussion (0) | September 1st, 2014 Categories: Uncategorized

Syllabus for IR 322: The politica economy of financial crises

IR 300 governing crises syllabus_aug 2014

Discussion (0) | September 1st, 2014 Categories: Uncategorized

Sovereign Debt, Austerity, and Regime Change The Case of Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania

East European Politics and Societies-2012-Ban-743-76

Discussion (0) | May 24th, 2014 Categories: Uncategorized

New syllabus for IR 702 (Methods for IR)

IR 702_methods

This course provides students with the basic tools for designing and researching rigorous research and policy papers in international relations M.A. programs. To this end it will provide answers to a few basic questions: How do you find and evaluate a good research puzzle? How do you write a good literature review and how do you use it to propose research hypotheses? How do you compare cases and how do you select them to extract maximum analytical leverage? How do you make causal and interpretive arguments? What do you need to know to do a good interview or carry out an online survey? What are the best ways to do an in-depth textual analysis? When do you use descriptive statistics and regression analysis and how do you interpret the results?

Discussion (0) | January 8th, 2014 Categories: Uncategorized

The state of my publications in 2014

Publications
Book manuscript (in progress): “Ruling Ideas: How Global Economic Paradigms Go Local”

Published articles
1. “Austerity versus Stimulus? Explaining Change on Fiscal Policy at the International Monetary Fund since the Great Recession", Governance, DOI: 10.1111/gove.12099
2. “Recalibrating Policy Orthodoxy: The IMF since the Great Recession," Governance (with Kevin Gallagher), DOI: 10.1111/gove.12103
3. “Brazil’s Liberal Neo-Developmentalism: Edited Orthodoxy or New Policy Paradigm?” Review of International Political Economy (Spring 2013).
4.“Economic Transnationalism and its Ambiguities: Romanian Migration to Italy”, International Migration (Fall 2012).

5. “Sovereign Debt, Austerity and Regime Change: The Case of Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania,” East European Politics and Societies (Winter 2012).
6.“The BRICs and the Washington Consensus” Review of International Political Economy (with Mark Blyth, April 2013).

7. “Heinrich von Stackelberg and the Diffusion of Ordoliberal Economics in Franco’s Spain,” History of Economic Ideas (Winter 2012)
Research notes
“Reframing the Postcommunist Political Economy: The Diffusion of Class Analysis in Romania,” forthcoming in East European Politics and Societies.
“Beyond Transitology: Revisiting the Political Economy of the Romanian Transition to Democracy,” forthcoming in Historein.

Special issue editor
1. “Dreaming with the BRICS? The Washington Consensus and the New Political Economy of Development”, Review of International Political Economy, spring 2013, (with Mark Blyth)
2. “The IMF since the Great Recession: Making Sense of Stability and Change,” forthcoming in Governance (with Kevin Gallagher)

Articles under review

Fiscal Policy in Financialized Times: Investor Loyalty and Financialization in the European Financial Crisis,” Journal of Common Market Studies (with Daniela Gabor)

“From Cocktail to Dependence: The Transformation of Romanian Capitalism,” Europe-Asia Studies.
“Geopolitics, Regime Type and the Internationalization of Economics Profession During the Cold War,” Journal of Cold War Studies

“Recalibrating Orthodoxy: The Economics Profession and Fiscal Policy during the Great Recession,” submitted to Journal of European Public Policy.

Articles in Progress
“Ruling Ideas: How Global Economic Paradigms Go Local,” prepared for World Politics

“Extending Varieties of Capitalism: Finance and Fiscal Policy Convergence,”
prepared for Socio-Economic Review.

Book chapters
(2012) “Was 1989 the End of Social Democracy?” in Vladimir Tismaneanu and Bogdan Iacob, eds., The End and the Beginning. The Revolutions of 1989 and the Resurgence of History, Central European University Press
(2005) “The Rule of Law and the European Human Rights Regime”, in Hoffmann, Matthew and Alice Ba eds., Coherence and Contestation: Contending Perspectives on Global Governance. London: Routledge (co- authored with Goldstein, Leslie F.).
(2007) “From Postcommunism to Social Europe? The EU and Labor Market Reforms in Romania (1997-2006)/De la postcomunism la Europa sociala? Uniunea Europeana si reformele pietei muncii in Romania/ in Dobre, Anamaria ed., Extinderea UE si Romania/EU Enlargement and Romania, Iasi: Polirom.

Book reviews

(2014) Review of Capital, Coercion, and Postcommunist States, by Gerald M. Easter Cornell University Press. 2012.

(2011) Review of The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe. Italy, Spain and Romania, 1870-1945, by David Riley, Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, Review of Politics, 73: 499-501.
(2008) Review of The Political Economy of Fiscal Reform in Central-Eastern Europe. Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic from 1989 to EU Accession, Northampton: Edward Elgar, for Political Studies Review.
(2008) Review of Towards the Completion of Europe. Analysis and Perspectives of the New European Union Enlargement, edited by Joaquin Roy and Roberto Dominguez (Miami: University of Miami Press, 2006, for Journal of Common Market Studies.
(2006) Review of Frank Schimmelfennig, EU, NATO and the Integration of Europe. Rules and Rhetoric. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, in Journal of South Eastern Europe, issue 31/32.
(2004) Review of David Barany, The Future of NATO Expansion: Four Case Studies, for East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 18, No. 4, 717–719.

Discussion (0) | May 10th, 2013 Categories: Uncategorized

Courses I teach next year

IR 759: Power, Ideas and Money: The Politics of International Finance

IR759 Power and Money-May 6

IR 592: International Economic Organizations and Development

development-and-ios_may 6

Discussion (0) | May 6th, 2013 Categories: Uncategorized

Special issue on the BRICs and the Washington Consensus (co-edited with Mark Blyth)

Link:
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rrip20/current

This special issue attempts to fill in this gap through six contributions that bring together scholars interested in the political economy of development and the sociology of ideational and institutional change. Their main finding is that the BRICs attempted to balance their adoption of select parts of the WC template while defending and often reinventing the relevance of state-led development policies under the guise of being compliant with the WC itself. In so doing, they have neither pioneered a post-neoliberal transformation, nor have they proved to be simply forces for the continuation of WC ideas and policies in the global economy.

Two questions therefore animate this special issue: What did the Washington Consensus look like in practice? And how have the BRICs appropriated, adopted, adapted, or abandoned specific aspects of this transnational policy paradigm? These are important questions for scholars of international political economy because they cut to the heart of ongoing debates taking place in several social science disciplines concerning the diffusion of liberal economic ideas and the remaking of global economy.

The BRICs have a special role in this drama. As a group of emerging economies, they started out as a mere Goldman Sachs investment meme a decade ago and yet went on to become one of the few beacons of the global economy during the Great Recession. They even formed an inter-governmental alliance of South-South cooperation with an ambitious agenda in international economic institutions. What makes them particularly interesting to us however is that although these countries went through their impressive growth spurts in an international context dominated by neoliberal economic ideas and narratives about the dos and don’ts of development, they nevertheless reclaimed the role of the state in development far beyond the limits of the WC framework. The BRICs have a greater degree of policy autonomy from WC core institutions -the World Bank and the IMF – then other states in the so-called ‘Global South’ (Woods 2006; Pop-Eleches 2008). Given this and their systemic importance in the global economy the BRICs stand as critical cases where we can examine the domestic dynamics of WC support and contestation.

The added value of this special issue is threefold. First, we examine the relationship between the BRICs and the Washington Consensus over time and attempt to extract the dynamics of this interaction for the BRICs as a group. As such, the contributors examine the ideas and institutions of this transnational policy paradigm while explaining why and how they were reproduced, modified, or contested in the domestic politics of each state. Second, while calls for interdisciplinarity are many, their realization in focused empirical work is harder to come by (e.g. Simmons et al 2008). This special issue contributes to this emerging literature by hosting contributions from political science and sociology. The efforts of four political scientists to illuminate the workings of the individual cases (Cornel Ban, Peter Rutland, Rahul Mukherji and Matthew Ferchen) are framed by the insights of sociologists working on the transnational institutional devices of the WC (Sarah Babb) and its economic ideas respectively (Marion Fourcade). Finally, the case studies approach the topic from varying theoretical perspectives that seek to specify the political conditions under which economic ideas play a critical role in institutional transformations.

Discussion (0) | April 18th, 2013 Categories: Uncategorized

Working paper revising scholarship on dependent market economies

Recent contributions to the comparative political economy of East European capitalisms have found that a distinctive variety of capitalism emerged in some new EU member states. The new variety has been dubbed “dependent market economy” (DME). This paper makes several contributions to this literature. First, it marshals evidence to show that this institutional variety now includes the political economy of Romania, a case previously excluded from it. More importantly, this analysis also finds that earlier scholarship on dependent capitalism has failed to capture crucial mechanisms of dependence created by transnationalized finance. Third, the paper suggests that some of the arguments made in the existing scholarship on the interests of foreign capital with regard to domestic innovation and labor training need to be qualified. Finally, by showing reflexivity towards select critiques of the dependent market economy framework, the analysis proposes by this paper is a self-limited attempt to bridge the differences between the varieties of capitalism and Polanyian analyses of capitalist diversity in semi-peripheral middle-income states.

Available on ssrn at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2233056

Cornel Ban_dependent market economy

Discussion (3) | March 18th, 2013 Categories: Uncategorized

Article on German Ordoliberalism and its Diffusion in Postwar Spain

I just published this in History of Economic Ideas, XX, 3, 2012

Economic historians regard Ordoliberalism as a school of thought whose reach was limited to Germany. Challenging this popular view, this study shows that Ordoliber- alism also had considerable impact on Spanish economics during the 1940s and 1950s, despite the fact that Spain’s policy establishment favored a state-led and predominant- ly antiliberal development model. This puzzling outcome was the result of the excep- tional ideational entrepreneurship of Ordoliberal economist Heinrich von Stackel- berg, who was a visiting professor in Madrid from 1943 until his death in 1946. His intellectual entrepreneurship in the Spanish economic profession proved to have lasting consequences, as the policy-oriented intellectuals he influenced came to occu- py leading positions in academia and economic policy institutions. This paper also contributes to the empirical literature on the diffusion of economic ideas across na- tional epistemic boundaries by highlighting the role of exceptional economists acting as carriers of new economic ideas. Finally, the study helps illuminate a critical junc- ture in the intellectual history of Spanish economics during the Francoist regime.

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ordoliberalism_spain_proofs BAN(1)

Discussion (0) | March 10th, 2013 Categories: Uncategorized

Hosting workshop on the IMF since Lehman: What has changed and what has stayed the same

Together with my colleague Kevin Gallagher I convened a workshop on the IMF since Lehman. We ask: What explains the variegated pattern of stability and change in the IMF’s substantive and procedural positions? Do existing explanations of the IMF’s reactions to previous crises survive the test of the current crisis, whose distinctiveness consists of its unprecedented size and its deep impact on the developed European core? Have the established patterns in IMF’s differential treatment of its members changed relative to past crises?

Grigore Pop-Eleches from Princeton University will do a systematic comparison of the crisis-ideology connection in IMF programs before and after 2008. Leonard Seabrooke and Emelie Nilsson from Copenhagen Business School undertake to examine changes in the IMF policy cliques tasked with international financial surveillance. André Broome from University of Warwick asks what roles have economic ideas played in IMF bailouts in a select population of crisis episodes while Cornel Ban of Boston University examines the role of staff research in facilitating the partial revisions of the IMF’s stance on fiscal policy. Aitor Erce Dominguez (Bank of Spain and Universidad Autonoma de Madrid)
studies how the relation between the Fund and sovereigns' creditors while Daniela Gabor (Bristol Business School) looks at the Fund’s changing positions on monetary and macroprudential issues. Sarah Babb from Boston College and Alex Kalentekis from Harvard University will write a framework article that reflects on the findings of all these papers.

The workshop is funded by our university's Center for Law, Policy and Finance.

Schedule:
IMF Workshop Schedule (draft)_cb edits

Discussion (0) | March 10th, 2013 Categories: Uncategorized