For my international politics course, I’m going to cover the the financial crisis in Europe from the perspective of the Austrian School. However, I do have to frame the thesis towards political economy rather than a straight economics paper.
I’ve had some thoughts so far on how I might pursue this–I might cover Germany’s role during the crisis and its dissent and dislike of a independent, centralized central bank. While I do know that they tend to have a dislike for it, I’m not yet sure whether its due to Austrian influences or some more bizarre reasons, such as their blaming of “Greek” character for the bailouts in Greece.
If you have any resources (the more academic the better), or even some suggestions/ideas, I’d be much appreciated.
The first thing that came to my head was this article (and the text it is commenting on). Obviously the main focus of the text is on the Euro and not the financial bust specifically, but if you can get your hands on a copy I’m sure there is enough usable info in it to make it a decent source.
Here’s another.
Which political economy do you mean?
- Political economy most commonly refers to interdisciplinary studies drawing upon economics, law, and political science in explaining how political institutions, the political environment, and the economic system—capitalist, socialist, mixed—influence each other. “Traditional” topics include the influence of elections on the choice of economic policy, determinants of electoral outcomes, the political business cycles,[6] central-bank independence, redistributive conflicts in fiscal policy, and the politics of delayed reforms in developing countries and of excessive deficits. From the late-1990s, the field has expanded to explored such wide-ranging topics as the origins and rate of change of political institutions, and the role of culture in explaining economic outcomes and developments.[4] When more narrowly construed, it analyzes such public policy asmonopoly, market protection, institutional corruption,[7] and rent-seeking.[8] A more classical-liberal approach that dates from the 1970s that denotes ‘public-choice’ theory type approaches which question the benevolence of social planners to maximize the utility of a representative individual and instead stress how political forces affect the choice of policies that may not be so benevolent,
- Historians have employed political economy to explore the ways in the past that persons and groups with common economic interests have used politics to effect changes beneficial to their interests.[9]
- International Political Economy (IPE) is an interdisciplinary field comprising approaches to international trade and finance, and state policies affecting international trade, i.e. monetary and fiscal policies. In the U.S., these approaches are associated with the journal International Organization, which, in the 1970s, became the leading journal of international political economy under the editorship of Robert Keohane, Peter J. Katzenstein, and Stephen Krasner. They are also associated with the journal The Review of International Political Economy. There also is a more critical school of IPE, inspired by Karl Polanyi’s work; two major figures are Susan Strange and Robert W. Cox.[10]
- Economists and political scientists often associate the term with approaches using rational choice assumptions, especially game theory and social choice theory, in explaining phenomena beyond economics’ standard remit, in which context the term “positive political economy” is common.[11]
- Anthropologists, sociologists, and geographers use political economy in referring to the neo-Marxian approaches to development and underdevelopment postulated by André Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein.
- New political economy students treat economic ideologies as the phenomenon to explain, per the traditions of Marxian political economy. Thus, Charles S. Maier suggests that a political economy approach: “interrogates economic doctrines to disclose their sociological and political premises…in sum, [it] regards economic ideas and behavior not as frameworks for analysis, but as beliefs and actions that must themselves be explained.”[12] This approach informs Andrew Gamble’s The Free Economy and the Strong State(Palgrave Macmillan, 1988), and Colin Hay’s The Political Economy of New Labour (Manchester University Press, 1999). It also informs much work published in New Political Economy an international journal founded by Sheffield University scholars in 1996.[13]
- Guy Debord agrees: “The commodity’s domination was at first exerted over the economy in an occult manner; the economy itself, the material basis of social life, remained unperceived and not understood, like the familiar which is not necessarily known. In a society where the concrete commodity is rare or unusual, money, apparently dominant, presents itself as an emissary armed with full powers who speaks in the name of an unknown force. With the industrial revolution, the division of labor in manufactures, and mass production for the world market, the commodity appears in fact as a power which comes to occupy social life. It is then that political economy takes shape, as the dominant science and the science of domination.”[14]
Most definitely the first–I have to keep in mind that this is a politics class, and not an economic one. Focusing on economics alone is sure to merit a fail on the paper.
There are so many ways to approach this I think, but if it has to be politics I think starting with what the political philosophies are of the dominant parties might help. You could possibly discuss the origin of the political parties and which demographics they hope to attract. It seems to me that in a democracy, political parties survive by promising economic benefits to those who will vote for them. Maybe the German view on a central bank has something to do with that.