PLCP 7500-1: POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC REFORM IN ADVANCED INDUSTRIALIZED NATIONS (Spring 2010)
Tuesday 7:00-9:30 pm in Nau 142
web version at http://www.people.virginia.edu/~ljs2k/cp7500.html

Prof. Len Schoppa
Office: South Lawn S461 (tel: 924-3211)
Hrs: Wed and Thurs 3:30-5 pm (or appointment)
e-mail: schoppa@virginia.edu

This course examines the role political and economic institutions play in shaping the preferences and behavior of political actors and policy outcomes, while at the same time asking where these institutions come from and what drives changes in these institutions. For the past two decades, “institutionalism” in various guises has been the dominant paradigm in scholarship on the political economy of advanced industrialized nations, but this literature has focused primarily on the first of the causal relationships listed above: institutions as the independent variable shaping political behavior and policy. But institutions do not emerge de novo out of the ether, and they are not static. In recent years, scholars have begun to pay much more attention to the process of institutional change.

This seminar examines some of these efforts, with a particular focus on studies of how Japan, Europe, and the United States are adapting to several simultaneous changes in their socioeconomic environments, including globalization, gender role change, and the rise of the service economy. All of these nations have struggled in recent years to adapt to a world in which capital flows more freely, a larger share of goods and services are traded, women are entering the workforce in higher numbers, and the very nature of the economy is changing as the share of industrial production declines and the share of services grows. As nations have struggled to adapt to these forces, they have bumped up against the institutions that have grown up around and reinforced existing ways of doing business. Economic institutions (e.g. corporatist wage bargaining, labor market structures), the institutional structures that make up the political party system, and even electoral rules have come under challenge. If institutions don’t simply dictate policy outcomes but are themselves subject to change when faced with major socioeconomic changes, how can we make sense of the political world? Are institutions merely epiphenomenal? Or do they shape the process through which they change in ways we can actually theorize?

This course is designed for graduate students with some background in graduate level work on comparative politics, ideally with expertise in the politics of at least one of the industrialized areas of the world.

Requirements:

The grade in this seminar will be based on participation (50%) and a paper (50%). The paper should do two things: 1) review and reflect on the literature covered in the class and 2) apply one or more of the perspectives in the literature to a specific topic of interest to the student. To prepare for the first part of the paper, students are asked to write two-page summaries of the readings assigned each week. These will not only provide raw material for incorporating into the final paper, they will also help you prepare to participate actively in discussions of the readings. I have set aside the final two weeks for student presentations of your papers. Please circulate an abstract of your paper before the class session when you are to present. Your participation grade will be based on the quality of your paper-presentation and your participation on a weekly basis throughout the term. Attendance at all seminar sessions is mandatory. Final drafts of the paper are due on Tuesday May 4, at classtime. Papers should be 25-35 pages in length and should explore some issue with relevance to themes explored in the seminar.

Readings:

Readings marked with a (*) are available on the Collab site for this class, under “resources.” Books not marked with a (*) are available at the University Bookstore:

I. Course Introduction: What Impact Do Institutions Have? And Do They Lock Us In? (1/26)

*Sven Steinmo and John Watts, "It’s the Institutions, Stupid!: Why the United States Can't Pass Comprehensive National Health Insurance," Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law 20: 2 (1995), pp. 329-372.

*Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments: An Introduction,” in Lipset and Rokkan, eds., Party Systems and Voter Alignments (New York: Free Press, 1967), pp. 1-64.

Be prepared to present your thoughts on additional books and arguments you have encountered in previous coursework

II. Institutional Constraints: The Historical Institutionalist View (2/2)

Paul Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).

Steve Vogel, Freer Markets, More Rules (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).

*Richard Katz and Peter Mair, “Party Organization, Party Democracy, and the Emergence of the Cartel Party,” Party Politics 1:1 (1995), pp. 5-28.

*Jacob Hacker, “The Historical Logic of National Health Insurance: Structure and Sequence in the Development of British, Canadian, and U.S. Medical Policy,” Studies in American Political Development 12 (Spring 1998): 57-130.

Additional Reading: Paul Pierson, "The New Politics of the Welfare State," World Politics 48 (January 1996): 143-79; Paul Pierson, "Three Worlds of Welfare State Research," Comparative Political Studies 33:6/7 (August/September 2000): 791-821; Paul Pierson, ed. The New Politics of the Welfare State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen and Frank Longstreth, eds., Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis (Cambrdige: Cambrdige University Press, 1992); Mark Tilton, Restrained Trade: Cartels in Japan's Basic Materials Industries (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).

III. Institutional Constraints: The Rational Choice View (2/9)

*Gary W. Cox and Matthew D. McCubbins, “The Institutional Determinants of Policy Outcomes,” in Stephan Haggard and Matthew McCubbins, eds, Presidents, Parliaments, and Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 21-63.

* James E. Alt and Kenneth A. Shepsle, "Rules, Restrictions, Constraints: Structure and Process in the New Institutional Economics," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 154: 4 (1998): 735-43.

*John M. Carey and Matthew S. Shugart, "Incentives to Cultivate a Personal Vote: A Rank Ordering of Electoral Formulas," Electoral Studies 14:4 (1994), pp. 417-439.

Margarita Estevez-Abe, Welfare Capitalism in Postwar Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008): 19-167.

Additional Reading: Brian Woodall, Japan Under Construction: Corruption, Politics, and Public Works (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Gary Cox and Matthew McCubbins, Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the House, 2^nd ed, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); J. Mark Ramseyer and Frances Rosenbluth, Japan’s Political Marketplace (Harvard University Press, 1993).

IV. Institutional Constraints: The Sociological View (2/16)

Torben Iversen, Capitalism, Democracy and Welfare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 3-179.

*W. Carl Kester, “American and Japanese Corporate Governance: Convergence to Best Practice?" In Suzanne Berger and Ronald Dore, eds. National Diversity and Global Capitalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 107-137.

*Mary Brinton and Takehiko Kariya, “Institutional Embeddedness in Japanese Labor Market,” in Brinton and Victor Nee, eds., The New Institutionalism in Sociology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 181-207.

Leonard Schoppa, Race for the Exits: The Unraveling of Japan’s System of Social Protection (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), pp. 36-66.

Additional Reading: Ronald Dore, Flexible Rigidities (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986); Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); David Soskice, “Divergent production regimes: Coordinated and uncoordinated market economies in the 1980s and 1990s,” in Herbert Kitschelt, Peter Lange, Gary Marks, & J. D. Stephens,eds., Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 101-134; Peter Hall and David Soskice Varieties of Capitalism: the institutional foundations of comparative advantage (Oxford, 2002).

V. Institutional Change: The Historical Institutionalist View (2/22)

Kathleen Thelen, How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Kimberly Morgan, Working Mothers and the Welfare State: Religion and the Politics of Work-Family Policies in Western Europe and the United States (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006).

Additional Reading: John Myles and Paul Pierson, "The Comparative Political Economy of Pension Reform," in Paul Pierson, ed., The New Politics of the Welfare State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001): 305-333.

VI. Institutional Change: The Rational Choice View (3/2)

*Douglass North and Barry Weingast, “Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England,” in Alston, Eggertsson, and North, eds., Empirical Studies in Institutional Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 134-165.

*Gary Cox, The Efficient Secret (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), chapter 6, pp. 45-67.

Margarita Estevez-Abe, Welfare Capitalism in Postwar Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008): 199-286.

Additional Reading: Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Gerald Curtis, The Logic of Japanese Politics: Leaders, Institutions, and the Limits of Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); Gary Cox, Michael Thies, and Frances Rosenbluth, “Electoral Reform and the Fate of Factions: The Case of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party,” British Journal of Political Science 29:1 (1999): 33-56.

VII. Institutional Change: The Sociological View (3/16)

Torben Iversen, Capitalism, Democracy and Welfare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 180-277.

T.J. Pempel, Regime Shift: Comparative Dynamics of the Japanese Political Economy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998).

VIII. Institutional Change: Hirschman’s View (3/23)

Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970).

Leonard Schoppa, Race for the Exits: The Unraveling of Japan’s System of Social Protection (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), everything but 36-66.

*Robert Bates and Da-Hsiang Donald Lien, “A Note on Taxation, Development, and Representative Government,” Politics and Society 14:1 (1985): 53-70.

*Duane Swank, “Globalisation, Domestic Politics, and Welfare State Retrenchment in Capitalist Democracies,” Social Policy and Society 4:2 (2005): 183-195.

Additional Reading: Henry Laurence, Money Rules: The New Politics of Finance in Britain and Japan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001); Duane Swank, “Political Institutions and Welfare State Restructuring: The Impact of Institutions on Social Policy Change in Developed Democracies,” in Paul Pierson, ed., The New Politics of the Welfare State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001): 197-237.

IX. Case Study: The Last Big Transformation (3/30)

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (New York: Beacon, 1944).

X. Case Studies of Electoral Reform (4/6)

*Kenneth Benoit, “Models of Electoral System Change,” Electoral Studies 23:3 (September 2004), pp. 363-389.

*Kenneth Benoit and Jacqueline Hayden, "Institutional Change and Persistence:  The Evolution of Poland's Electoral System, 1989-2001," Journal of Politics 66:2 (2004): 396-427.

*Kathleen Bawn, “The Logic of Institutional Preferences: German Electoral Law as a Social Choice Outcome,” American Journal of Political Science 37:4 (November 1993), pp. 965-989.

XI. Case Studies of Party System Change (4/13)

Peter Mair, Party System Change: Approaches and Interpretations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).

*Leonard Schoppa, “Path Dependence in the Evolution of Japan’s Party System Since 1993,” in Leonard Schoppa and Aiji Tanaka, eds., The Evolution of Japan’s Party System, Politics and Policy in an Era of Institutional Change (manuscript, forthcoming).

XII. Case Studies of Economic and Financial Reform (4/20)

*Peter A. Hall and Kathleen Thelen, “Institutional Change in Varieties of Capitalism,” Socio-Economic Review 7 (2009): 7-34.

Jennifer A. Amyx, Japan's Financial Crisis: Institutional Rigidity and Reluctant Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004)—choose this book or the next.

Yves Tiberghien, Entrepreneurial States: Reforming Corporate Governance in France, Japan, and Korea (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007).

XIII. Student Topics (4/27)

XIV. Student Topics (5/4)

Paper Due: Monday, May 4, at 10 am