Chinese Law
John Ohnesorge, UW-Madison Assistant Professor of Law

This seminar is designed to give students an appreciation of the role of law in Chinese society, in the past, and today.  We will begin the seminar with an examination of law in traditional Chinese society, which constituted perhaps the world's most influential alternative to the Western legal tradition.  We then look briefly at past efforts to "modernize" Chinese law, during the Republican period before 1949, and during the influence of Soviet law after 1949.  The remainder of the semester will be spent on China's current efforts to establish a legal system, focusing on topics such as constitutional law and human rights, intellectual property law, environmental law, or corporate law.  The exact topics covered will depend upon students' interests.  Students will write papers, and will present those papers to the class during the last few sessions.  Grading will be on the basis of the papers and the presentations.

Commodities in the Global Economy

Jane Collins, UW-Madison Professor of Women's Studies and Rural Sociology

A major goal of this course is to examine the various theories and methodologies used in commodity chain studies.  The course will begin with by covering basic concepts important to the study of commodity chains: What is a commodity? How do we understand its economic value, its cultural meaning and its significance in terms of social relations?  What is the commodity’s history?  Are land and labor true commodities?  Using this background as a foundation, we will examine the way researchers have analyzed commodities and commodity chains within several theoretical traditions.  While commodity chains have been studied from a wide variety of perspectives, we will focus on four of the most important ones: commodity systems analysis, regulation theory, world systems analysis and actor network theory.  In the final section of the course we will focus on classic and new case studies of commodities: sugar, coffee, milk, apparel as well as “alternative” fair trade and organic commodity chains. The aim of this course is to help all of us to build critical reading skills, but should also prove useful to students who are planning to use commodity chain analysis in their own research.

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D. Daniel Sokol, William H. Hastie Fellow at the UW-Madison Law School 

Kyle W. Stiegert, UW-Madison Associate Professor of Agriculture and Applied Economics

This course examines the development of antitrust policies and enforcement mechanisms across jurisdictions.  As countries have embraced market economies, economic liberalization has required setting up an appropriate regulatory framework and disciplines for controlling anti-competitive conduct.  To facilitate this new regulatory order, countries increasingly have looked to the implementation/enforcement of antitrust.  Once the purview of only developed countries, complex and formal antitrust policy frameworks have emerged in dozens of lower income countries.  Moreover, antitrust has entered a gilded age of increased international cooperation and enforcement at levels never before seen.  We examine the various international antitrust institutions and their interplay with domestic antitrust institutions.  We also explore different methods of identifying anti-competitive conduct and remedying such behavior.

Comparative Political Institutions
Nils Ringe, UW-Madison Assistant Professor of Political Science

This course examines the roles that a wide range of political institutions play in different parts of the world, in both theoretical and empirical terms.  This course covers a series of theoretical and conceptual approaches to the study of institutions in Political Science.  We will address questions like: What are institutions?  What functions do they fulfill?  How and why are they created?  How do they relate to individual preferences and behaviors?  This course also focuses on the empirical study of different institutions in a number of settings.  We will examine electoral systems and elections, presidential and parliamentary systems, legislatures, executives, political parties and party systems, federalism, economic governance, and the link between institutions and internationalization. 

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Entrepreneurship Theory & Research
Anne Miner, UW-Madison Professor of Business

Students in this course will engage with work in progress by top social science researchers who are advancing fundamental theories of technology entrepreneurship.  You will read papers by scholars in fields such as finance, sociology, law, management and organization theory, economics, agricultural economics and other key disciplines.  Research presented examines fundamental processes that underlie technology entrepreneurship and its impact on society.  Frameworks include individual, group, organizational and industry/population levels of analysis.  The seminar introduces major theories and substantive topics as well as different methodologies and paradigms.  This course is intended to enhance your knowledge of cutting edge research and your ability to critique current work, tackle research challenges in this area, and integrate findings into your own development as a researcher.

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Macroeconomic Policy and International Financial Regulation
Menzie D. Chinn, UW-Madison Professor of Public Affairs and Economics

This course surveys international macroeconomics, with special reference to international monetary policy and international financial market architecture. Topics include the structure of international financial markets; the role of central banks; exchange-rate systems; the determination of balance of payments and exchange rates; macroeconomics of open economies; policy analysis for open economies; policy coordination; the International Monetary Fund; and financial crises. The aim of this course is to provide an analytical background for those who plan to go into government service, international organizations and agencies, businesses involved in the global economy, nongovernmental organizations with international foci, and consulting firms analyzing international policy issues.

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China in World Politics
Edward Friedman, UW-Madison Professor of Political Science

The course focus is Chinese foreign policy in the post-Mao era. The goal is to explore diverse informed views on the causes of the economic rise of post-Mao China and the consequences thereof. Historical approaches, political science methodologies, and case studies of Chinese relations with different nations and issues (energy, environment, multilateralism, disease, war and peace) will be examined in depth to try to help clarify these causes and more or less probable future outcomes.

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The Environment and Global Economy
Daniel W. Bromley, UW-Madison Professor of Applied Economics

The global economy holds important implications for the global environment and for domestic economic conditions.  In this course we will explore topics concerning how humans impact nature, how we think of (and "construct") nature and the environment, how ethics and economics inform environmental policy, and how population growth affects levels of human consumption and therefore environmental quality.  In addition, we will explore how a modest level of economic knowledge can be useful for understanding issues of biodiversity and sustainability, the global economy, international trade in timber and oil, air pollution (greenhouse gasses that cause global climate change), and pollution of international rivers.  We will explore these topics from the economic way of thinking.  The intent here is to help you understand how an economic perspective can provide important insights into the causes and solutions of various global environmental problems.

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Globalization, Development, and Poverty
Brad Barham, UW-Madison Professor of Agricultural and Applied Economics
Ian Coxhead, UW-Madison Professor of Agriculture and Applied Economics, Southeast Asian Studies

What are the links between globalization, economic development, and poverty in low-income economies?  How do these links operate, and how are they mediated or altered by global and national policies and institutions?  In this course we review issues and debates on globalization, develop a theoretical framework within which to examine the effects of global economic interactions on developing economies, and in a set of empirical units and case studies, focus on some of the main forces of globalization: international trade, investment and capital flows, international migration, and development assistance.  Our goal is that students gain an understanding of the broad context of the economic dimensions of globalization as they affect development and poverty, acquire analytical tools for identifying relevant economic mechanisms and their effects, and bring these to bear on contemporary issues in which the economic welfare of poor countries and low-income households is affected by, and in some cases impacts upon, the evolving web of international economic relations.

International Business and Development
Frederick Bird, UW-Madison Associate Faculty of Religious Studies

This course will examine the varied roles of international businesses in developing areas.  The term "international businesses" includes multi-nationals, contractual partners of these firms working in developing areas, as well as developing areas firms as suppliers of other businesses in industrialized countries.  This course will examine the impact of international businesses on the social-economy of developing areas, especially their impact on poverty and development.  The course includes studies of businesses in a number of countries including Nigeria, India, China, Brazil, and South Africa, the role of free trade networks, as well as the impact of questionable financial transactions.

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International Relations from the Renaissance to the Modern Era
University of Wisconsin and Michigan Study Abroad Program, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy
Jeremi Suri, UW-Madison Professor of History

The Italian peninsula during the Renaissance gave rise to many of the diplomatic traditions that continue to dominate international relations. Diplomatic immunity and extraterritoriality are two examples of crucial innovations from the era. This course will examine the diplomatic creativity of the Renaissance, and then trace how the key diplomatic traditions from that time evolved during successive centuries. In particular, the course will focus on concepts of just war, international arbitration, and human rights since the Renaissance.

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The course will focus on the study of the growth and development experiences of a selected group of countries.  We start with a general introduction to the issues if development and economic growth.  The core part of the course will be devoted to the experiences of several countries from Latin America, East Asia and Central and Eastern Europe.

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The Past and Future of the European Union
University of Wisconsin and Michigan Study Abroad Program, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy
Jeremi Suri, UW-Madison Professor of History

The transformation of Europe from a crucible of war to a peaceful community of states is one of the foremost achievements of the post-1945 era. This course will examine how this transformation occurred. We will analyze the pre-twentieth century foundations for a “single European idea,” the Cold War origins of the European Union (EU), the influence of various European and non-European states, and the changes that have affected daily life across the continent. The course will weigh the various economic, political, and cultural influences on the EU. In our assessment of implications, we will look forward to emerging challenges for the EU, and what the history of this remarkable period foretells for the future. Students will read an interdisciplinary collection of materials on the EU. They will also use their presence in Europe to investigate how the EU really functions on a daily basis.

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The Politics of Globalization
Mark Copelovitch, UW-Madison Assistant Professor of Political Science

This course examines the politics of international economic relations. It focuses on the ways in which socioeconomic interests and political institutions affect both national economic policymaking and developments in the world economy. The course begins with a discussion of the analytical “building blocks” of international political economy, which we can use to understand and explain the causes and effects of trends in the world economy.  It then examines the rise, fall, and return of “globalization” –high levels of trade, monetary, and financial integration in the international economy –over the last 150 years. Our goal will be not only to describe this historical evolution of the world economy, but also to explain its causes and consequences.  Finally, the course examines a variety of key issues central to the current and ongoing debate about globalization.  These topics include: the role of the international financial institutions, trade and development, financial crises, and the relationship between globalization and inequality.

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Third World in the International System
Aseema Sinha, UW-Madison Associate Professor of Political Science

What is the meaning of the category called the “Third World” under which three quarters of the people of the world are subsumed?  What form does globalization take and how does it affect the developing world? Have the 1990s and 2000s witnessed forces of homogenization or differentiation across the Third World?  How do societal actors respond to transnational forces?  This course will focus on the relationship between the “third world” and the international system in order to answer these and other related questions. We will use crucial cases to highlight characteristic issues in the interaction between what is called the “Third World” and the international system.  Each of the cases will highlight the interplay between international and domestic forces in the developing world.  The key issues dealt with are: imperialism, development, international aid and its paradoxical consequences, intervention, security, and transnational protest.

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More courses will be posted shortly!

 

For professors interested in posting course information or syllabi, please email the pertinent information to wage@intl-institute.wisc.edu and we will post it to our course pages. We look forward to expanding our offerings and providing a central location for course options for students interested in globalization.