International Political Economy

This course explores the ever-increasing linkages between Politics and the Global Economy. These economic developments have consequences for our roles as citizens, consumers, employees/employers, and we need to understand the underlying structures of international trade and the policies connected to it. 

The module will mainly study the complexities of the Neoliberal Order, based on the following principles:  Privatisation of nationalized firms; Competition as basis for regulating the economy (and the society); Restructuring of labour market through anti-union and anti-welfare laws; State needed to both protect and promote the market; International Financial Institutions and interventions; Globalized version of capitalism: outsourcing production.  

Students delve into the systemic crises of this order as well as its exploitation of ‘disposable bodies’. In that sense, the course derives as a struggle against Ortega y Gasset’s“mass man” and Marcuse’s “one-dimensional man”, in which the Western individual becomes more and more indoctrinated without being conscious about it.