Comparative and International Political Economy

The Political Economy track has been reformed in 2022 into the Comparative and International Political Economy track.

Track description

The Comparative and International Political Economy track focuses primarily on questions relating to the interconnectedness of social, political and economic realms with regards to domestic, comparative, and international economy. The overlapping processes of globalization, macro-regional integration and changing relations between public authorities and private market actors have prompted scholars to rethink a number of key assumptions and categories typical of the post-war order, to elaborate theoretical explanations for new politico-economic phenomena, as well as to empirically test these theoretical propositions.

The track seeks to attract students who are interested in those institutional and policy changes considered crucial in understanding this transformation; including but not limited to development, trade, international organizations, labour market trends, finance and financialization, social inequalities, digital social transformation, nationalism, global value and wealth chains, state capitalism, environmental crisis, global health, feminism, regional integration, etc. These substantive topics are studied with a focus on any particular country or region or many countries and/or organizations. The aim of the track is to enable students to address political economy questions, such as the variations in institutional settings and domestic and international economic policies both across countries and over time. Adopting an interdisciplinary perspective, courses offered in the CIPE track explore the causes and consequences of economic, political and social processes at domestic and international levels. Students are exposed to a variety of methodological approaches and have the option to specialize in one particular line of research.

There is a research group closely connected with the track: the Political Economy Research Group.