Z: **Archived**: Political Economy 101

PE 101 Sections

M 1-2P, 20 WHEELER
Tu 1-2P, 228 DWINELLE
W 2-3P, 121 WHEELER
W 3-4P, 251 DWINELLE
F 9-10A, 20 WHEELER
F 10-11A, 55 EVANS

For Students Who Have Not Taken PE 100...

As many people have pointed out, it is profoundly silly for me to have designed my syllabus for PE 101 assuming that people had taken PE 100 beforehand, when two-thirds of the class has not. Students who haven't taken PE 100 and want to get an idea of what they are missing should read:

Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers
Raymond Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought I: Montesquieu, Comte, Marx, Tocqueville, and the Sociologists and the Revolution of 1848

And perhaps:

Raymond Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought II: Durkheim, Pareto, Weber

Political Economy 101, Fall 2007

Political Economy 101: "Modern" Political Economy

http://delong.typepad.com/pe101/

J. Bradford DeLong: 601 Evans Hall, 925-708-0467, delong@econ.berkeley.edu, office hours T 12:30-2:30 and by appointment.

Class lectures: TTh 11-12:30 Hearst Annex A1

Introduction to the course

Schedule and readings

Web assignments: virtual discussions

Short papers

Lecture notes

Political Economy 101: Introduction

Political Economy 101: Introduction:

Brad DeLong, U.C. Berkeley

This is--at least the way those who designed the major thought of it, which is often very different from how things work on the ground--the last core course for the political economy major.

Political economy, at least as we here at Berkeley define it, is a group of four interlinked intellectual bets:

• that the separation a century ago of the social sciences into walled, warring camps was--at least for undergraduates and at least for bird's-eye understanding--a mistake.

• that there is, nevertheless, great value in the individual social sciences' analytical modes.

• that there is even greater value in the classical social theory tradition--that set of thinkers from Nicky Machiavelli to Barry Moore who we retrospectively identify as grappling for the first time how a modern human society--one not dominated by louse-riddem thugs with spears and perfumed thugs with styluses, and composed overwhelmingly of malnourished peasants living and dying early in the small villages in which they were born--actually worked.

• that there is great value in studying the nineteenth and early twentieth-century history of western Europe and North America: Marx was wrong in claiming that the "more advanced" shows the "less advanced" the image of its own future, but they do provide a very useful set of benchmarks, yardsticks, and comparisons.

Now that was a mindful. Catch your breath and think about that for a while.

This course--the last core course--is supposed to be the payoff. This is where we cash in our winning intellectual bets, tie all the threads together, and come up with running code for a rough-and-ready framework for thinking about everything that happens at the crossroads where history and politics meet economies and sociologies in a world where village elders along the Zambezi lecture the principal deputy managing director of the Imternational Monetary Fund on the implications of the Republican convention.

However, each version of Political Economy 101 is different. We agree that these are winning intellectual bets. We do not agree on what the winnings are. My version of PE 101 is different from Bev Crawford's or Heath Pearson's or Dariush Zahedi's. This is, I think, a constructive tension. This is my version.

We are going to try to draw all the threads together by running the readings of this course along two tracks. One will gallop in a cursory and superficial way through the global history of the past century. The second, much meatier, track will consist of thinkers from Joey Schumpeter to Joey Stiglitz who try to use and develop both their disciplinary anlaytical modes and the classical social theory tradition to interpret and change the history in which they are embedded. We are going to read major chunks by nine such thinkers: Joseph Schumpeter, John Maynard Keynes, Karl Polanyi, Milton Friedman, Charles Lindblom, Benedict Anderson, James Scott, Jessica Stern, and Joe Stiglitz. I think these people are very smart, broadly right, and where they are wrong they are wrong in interesting ways. Four are economists (Schumpeter, Keynes, Friedman, and Stiglitz): I am an economist, after all, and they sing to me in the ways that others do not. Two are postmodern anthropologists (Benedict Anderson and James Scott). One is a sociologist (Karl Polanyi). One is a political scientist (Charles Lindblom). And one--Jessica Stern--is a combination of international relations specialist and cultural sociologist specializing in Al Qaeda studies. All are very much worth reading. Except for the first couple--which are online--their books are or should soon be at the bookstore and on reserve at Moffitt.

We will also have a bunch of other articles--online--to read, and my lecture notes--which should also be online week-by-week--covering both the thinkers and the history.

You can take a look at the grading policy.

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Audio File

Grading PEIS 101, Fall 2007

The current plan is to have three kinds of exercises will be graded: web assignments--an experiment to see if we can use modern technologies to create a worthwhile virtual discussion--two short papers; and a police-the-reading final.

Plans may change if things are not working: you are guinea pigs, and should expect to be treated like guinea pigs.

We are going to have fifteen web assignments,--requirement that you contribute to an online virtual discussion--roughly one a week. Each of them is worth three points, graded on the following scale:

• Didn't complete the assignment on time: 0
• Completed the assignment on time, but didn't really contribute to the virtual discussion: 1
• A solid contribution to the ongoing discussion: 2
• A contribution that taught the teaching staff something new: 3

We are going to have two short papers, each of them worth ten points if handed in on time, five points if handed in up to a week late, and zero point thereafter:

• First paper, due 5 PM October 19: Pick a thinker whom you studied in PE 100 (or would have studied if you had taken PE 100 yet). Write a paper of 1000 words or so about what things that happened in the first half of the twentieth century would have struck them as most surprising and what things would have struck them as most in accord with their intellectual positions. How do you think they would have changed their minds had they seen
• Second paper, due 5 PM December 4: Pick an issue in contemporary political economy connected with your four-course Political Economy concentration-to-be. Briefly!--in 1000 words--use what you have learned in your historical context courses and in Political Economy 100 and 101 to set out a framework for analyzing that issue.

You can do well on the web assignments and the short papers without actually doing (much of) the reading. So there will also be a police-the-reading final exam, worth twenty-five points, on the evening of December 15.

This is a smart class of well-prepared people who work hard, so expect the curve for the class to be accordingly high.

First Paper: What Is Most Surprising in the Twentieth Century?

Due 5 PM October 19.

Pick a thinker about economy, polity, society, and culture whom you studied in PE 100 (or would have studied if you had taken PE 100, or whom have read and who struck you as especially interesting). Write a paper of 1000 words or so about what things that happened in the first half of the twentieth century would have struck them as most surprising and what things would have struck them as most in accord with their intellectual positions. How do you think they would have changed their minds and altered their positions had they seen what we have seen?

Web Assignment 14: Improvement

Surf over to http://delong.typepad.com/PE101/webassignments.html and then to http://delong.typepad.com/PE101/2007/08/web-assignme-14.html. Write a comment of at least 100 words on how you think this course can be improved for the next year. Contribute to the discussion that is ongoing at http://delong.typepad.com/PE101/2007/08/web-assignme-14.html--that is, react and respond to the extent it is appropriate yo the earlier posters and commenters on the webpage.

Do this by 5 PM on December 11.

Web Assignment 13: Joe Stiglitz's International Anti-Neoliberalism

Of all those arguing that the world economy was being badly managed in the interests of the rich in the 1990s and early 2000s, the most articulate was Joseph Stiglitz. This week we read his new book on how to do globalization right.

Surf over to http://delong.typepad.com/pe101/virtual_discussions/ and then to http://delong.typepad.com/PE101/2007/08/web-assignme-13.html. Write a comment of at least 200 words on what you think of some aspect of Stiglitz's position on how the world should be governed. Contribute to the discussion that is ongoing at http://delong.typepad.com/PE101/2007/08/web-assignment-13.html--that is, react and respond to not just Stiglitz but, to the extent it is appropriate, the earlier posters and commenters on the webpage.

Due by 5 PM on November 27

Chaubey Students: http://delong.typepad.com/pe101/2007/11/web-assignmen-5.html
Durham Students: http://delong.typepad.com/pe101/2007/11/web-assignmen-3.html
Peacock Students: http://delong.typepad.com/pe101/2007/11/web-assignmen-4.html

Web Assignment 12: Taliban Studies

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Loving and Kind...

The age when humans in large numbers said: "BELIEVE IN MY LOVING GOD, OR DIE!!" was supposed to have ended centuries ago--with the murder of 20,000 Protestants in Paris to celebrate St. Bartholomew's Day, or with Count Tilly's sack of Magdeburg during the Thirty Years' War. Yet now it seems that this age is back.

Surf over to http://delong.typepad.com/pe101/virtual_discussions/ and then to http://delong.typepad.com/pe101/2007/08/web-assignme-12.html. Write a comment of at least 200 words on whether you think Jessica Stern does or does not make sense of the conceptual world of the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and their ilk. Contribute to the discussion that is ongoing at http://delong.typepad.com/pe101/2007/08/web-assignme-12.html--that is, react and respond to not just Stern but, to the extent it is appropriate, the earlier posters and commenters on the webpage.

Due by 5 PM on November 20

Chaubey Students:http://delong.typepad.com/pe101/2007/11/web-assignmen-2.html
Peacock Students: http://delong.typepad.com/pe101/2007/11/web-assignmen-1.html
Durham Students: http://delong.typepad.com/pe101/2007/11/web-assignmen-1.html

Web Assignment 11: Is Francis Fukuyama Insane?

Web Assignment 11: Is Francis Fukuyama Insane? Is modern neoliberalism in fact the end of history? Surf over to http://delong.typepad.com/pe101/virtual_discussions/ and then to http://delong.typepad.com/pe101/2007/08/web-assignme-11.html. Write a comment of at least 200 words telling us what you think of his argument. Contribute to the discussion that is ongoing at http://delong.typepad.com/pe101/2007/08/web-assignme-11.html--that is, react and respond to not just Fukuyama but, to the extent it is appropriate, the earlier posters and commenters on the webpage.

Due by 5 PM on November 15

Peacock students
Chaubey students
Durham students