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Dr David Woodruff

This course is available on the MSc in Political Science (Conflict Studies and Comparative Politics), MSc in Political Science (Global Politics), MSc in Political Science (Political Science and Political Economy) and MSc in Political Theory. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

Available as an outside option for students on other programmes with the teacher's consent. This course is capped. In 2023/2024, all Department of Government students who wished to take the course were able to do so.

Compatibility and incompatibility of capitalism and democracy; Constitutional restraints on economic policymaking in central banking and property rights; Democracy and economic crisis; Democracy and economic inequality. This course examines the uneasy interaction between the two dominant concepts underpinning political and economic institutions in advanced industrial societies. It addresses questions about the relationship of capitalism to democracy, both conceptually and empirically. We consider whether democracy undermines or supports capitalism, focusing on policies relating to central banking, redistribution, and property rights, as well as how inequality affects elections and policymaking. We also examine how capitalism may undermine or sustain democracy and what circumstances heighten the tension between democracy and capitalism.

This course is delivered through a combination of seminars and lectures totalling a minimum of 30 hours in the Winter Term.

There will be a reading week in Week 6 of the WT.

All students are expected to submit one non-assessed essay.

Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. Holmes, 'Precommitment and the Paradox of Democracy'. Mill, Considerations on Representative Government. Lohmann, ‘An Information Rationale for the Power of Special Interests’. McNamara, ‘Rational Fictions: Central Bank Independence and the Social Logic of Delegation’. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. Kenworthy and Pontusson, 'Rising Inequality and the Politics of Redistribution in Affluent Countries'. Ferguson, ‘Deduced and Abandoned: Rational Expectations, the Investment Theory of Political Parties, and the Myth of the Median Voter’. Hopkin and Blyth, ‘The Global Economics of European Populism: Growth Regimes and Party System Change in Europe'.

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours) in the spring exam period.