Political Science

This seminar presents and discusses the key institutions that govern market economies, seen as political and legal constructs. The focus is on core institutions like private property rights and its alternatives, all sorts of debts, wage labor and its variants or the architecture of individual markets (like those for global commodities or microcredit). A lot of attention is given to State institutions, including indeed the courts and the law, though non-State actors also play a great role in the regulation and maintenance of markets. Their mutual relations are of course of major interest. Every lecture is based on examples drawn from either developed or developing countries, today or in the more or less distant past, accompanied by readings of an article or book chapter.

This course introduces the political and economic interaction between Mainland China and Taiwan since 1949. It covers a wide range of topics divided into three parts. The first part deals with the economic interaction between Mainland China and Taiwan, including topics such as trade, investment, production network, and people mobility. The second part deals with the political foundation of Cross-Strait economic relations, including topics such as comparing capitalism across the Strait; Taiwanese identity; Chinese nationalism, and political development in Hong Kong. The third part deals with the grand strategy adopted by either side of the Strait, including topics such as Mainland China’s Taiwan policy; Taiwan’s Mainland China policy; U.S. Cross-Strait policy; Taiwan’s international space, and the future of Cross-Strait relations. 

This course focuses on the crisis of democratic politics in Europe, placing it in the wider context of the evolution of postwar democracy, as well as seeking to build accounts of our present politics. It develops a refined understanding of democratic politics in Europe, introducing academic accounts of party democracy, technocracy, and populism, and deploying them in the context of postwar European history. In so doing, this course enriches the understanding of commonly deployed notions and concepts for the purpose of contemporaneous political analysis, rendering more clearly both the disjunctures and continuities of Europe's Democratic Age.

From a political science perspective, this course investigates the stark material inequalities that exist between countries and world regions. It covers the transnational political-economy processes that shape inequalities within and between countries, including perspectives on the winners and losers of global trade, the deregulation of global finance, the precarity created along global production chains, tax evasion of multinational companies, migration, and the rise of global tech companies. The course reflects on the consequences of these processes for areas such as democracy, gender relations, and climate change.