Course Information

Instructor: Dr. Timur Ergen (iawlehre@uni-bremen.de)
Institution: University of Bremen, Institute Labor and Economy (iaw)
Course Code: 08-POL-BA-2-M13.1-5
Semester: Winter 2026/27
Schedule: Mondays 12:00–14:00, weekly (from 19/10/26)
Location: UNICOM 3.0210

The course examines reconfigurations of economic policy in the 21st century with an emphasis on the evolution of Europe in the international political economy. The guiding thread of the course is the question of the resilience of neoliberalism as an economic policy paradigm since the early 2000s. A major feature of the class is to bring into common view multiple key fields of contemporary economic policy-making – such as competition, environmental, fiscal, labour, industrial, monetary, regulatory, and security policies. The course is organised in three major parts. In a first part, the course explores foundational debates on neoliberalism, its global regime features, and international varieties. A second part introduces five key arenas of cutting-edge analyses of recent economic policy experimentation marking a shift away from the neoliberal script: state responses to emergencies and crises, the return of infrastructures as public policy concerns, the greening of economic policies, the revived interest in industrial and innovation policies, and the geo-politicisation of economic policy. The last third of the course explores major political economic takes on how to think about an emerging ‘postneoliberal’ order.

Besides introducing students to cutting-edge debates in political economy in multiple fields, the class deploys the problem of emerging postneoliberal orders to develop a range of foundational ideas in comparative, historical, and international public policy analysis and political economy. Key debates touched upon concern problems of business power, concepts of institutional and policy change, the evolution of democratic capitalism, European integration, institutional constraints on policy-making, problems of state capacity and bureaucratic competences, multilevel politics and policy implementation, policy instrument design, and varieties of growth regimes. Methodologically, students will be acquainted with a broad range of contemporary research designs in comparative and international political economy. As a research-led course featuring multi-disciplinary high-level publications, the class furthermore helps to familiarize students with techniques to craft and situate scholarly arguments in fields of ongoing scholarly debate, ranging from data-driven, historical, and comparative designs through to policy-oriented arguments connecting to current public policy debates.

Course Materials
  • Complete Syllabus — Full course syllabus with detailed information and requirements

Assessment

Students are required to prepare one brief presentation and submit a final term paper. The presentation builds on the session on varieties of neoliberalism. In sessions 4 through 12, students will present brief analyses of national political economies of their choice, with an emphasis on diagnoses of the given country’s economic policy trajectories under neoliberalism (10 minutes each, in groups of two). Emphasis of the presentations must be on the given country’s institutional idiosyncrasies, political economic structure, and historical evolution. Detailed instructions and the allocation of countries will be discussed in session 3, as will deadlines, subjects, structure, and requirements for the final paper.

Offline Commitment

This class will commit itself to being an offline space. We work with printed texts, and with pens and paper. Laptops, tablets and phones stay stashed away during our sessions, and we aim to not use language models, neither for summaries, preparation, or for written work. If you print the ca. 340 pages we read in the seminar at the SUUB, the full reader will amount to around €17. This is not about being against technology. At its core, the craft of a social scientist is reading and working your way through texts and writing texts of your own: following a line of argument, challenging it, and developing your own arguments. This ability only comes with practice, and it is increasingly under pressure because summarizing, phrasing and structuring have become so easy to outsource. Whatever you outsource, you won’t learn, making you increasingly dependent on an industry promising to eventually sell you ‘intelligence on a meter’ to a degree that justifies multi-trillion-dollar valuations. The effort of reading a difficult text multiple times, or of rewriting a clumsy paragraph again and again, is not a detour on the way to a clear thought. It is the very process of thinking we are practising in universities.

Part 1: Neoliberalism as a Policy Paradigm

Session 1: What was neoliberalism?

October 19, 2026

Required Reading:

  • Mudge, S. 2008. “What is Neo-liberalism?” Socio-Economic Review 6(4): 703–731.

Further Readings:

  • Blyth, M. 2002. “Disembedding Liberalism: Ideas to Break a Bargain.” In Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 126–151.
  • Majone, G. 1997. “From the Positive to the Regulatory State: Causes and Consequences of Changes in the Mode of Governance.” Journal of Public Policy 17(2): 139–167.
  • Hay, C. 2004. “Re-Stating Politics, Re-Politicizing the State: Neo-liberalism, Economic Imperatives and the Rise of the Competition State.” The Political Quarterly 75: 38–50.
  • Warlouzet, L. 2017. Governing Europe in a Globalizing World: Neoliberalism and its Alternatives following the 1973 Oil Crisis. London: Routledge, Ch. 8.

Session 2: The Washington consensus

October 26, 2026

Required Reading:

  • Babb, S. 2012. “The Washington Consensus as Transnational Policy Paradigm: Its Origins, Trajectory and Likely Successor.” Review of International Political Economy 20(2): 268–297.

Further Readings:

  • Slobodian, Q. 2023. “Competing Projects in Global Governance.” Business History Review 97(3): 626–631.
  • Bockman, J. & G. Eyal. 2002. “Eastern Europe as a Laboratory for Economic Knowledge: The Transnational Roots of Neoliberalism.” American Journal of Sociology 108(2): 310–352.
  • Kentikelenis, A. & S. Babb. 2019. “The making of neoliberal globalization: Norm substitution and the politics of clandestine institutional change.” American Journal of Sociology 124(6): 1720–1762.

Session 3: Varieties of neoliberalism

November 2, 2026

Required Reading:

  • Fourcade, M. & S. L. Babb. 2002. “The Rebirth of the Liberal Creed: Paths to Neoliberalism in Four Countries.” American Journal of Sociology 108(3): 533–579.

Further Readings:

  • Brenner, N., J. Peck, and N. Theodore. 2010. “Variegated Neoliberalization: Geographies, Modalities, Pathways.” Global Networks 10(2): 182–222.
  • Birch, K. & V. Mykhnenko. 2009. “Varieties of neoliberalism? Restructuring in large industrially dependent regions across Western and Eastern Europe.” Journal of Economic Geography 9(3): 355–380.
  • Jabko, N. 2006. Playing the Market: A Political Strategy for Uniting Europe, 1985–2005. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, Chapter 2.

Part 2: Arenas, Issues, and Challenges

Session 4: States of emergency

November 9, 2026

Required Reading:

  • Chwieroth, J. M., and A. Walter. 2022. “Neoliberalism and Banking Crisis Bailouts: Distant Enemies or Warring Neighbors?” Public Administration 100(3): 600–615.

Further Readings:

  • Hancké, B., T. Van Overbeke & D. Voss. 2022. “Crisis and Complementarities: A Comparative Political Economy of Economic Policies after COVID-19.” Perspectives on Politics 20(2): 474–489.
  • Massoc, E. C. 2021. “Having Banks ‘Play Along.’ State-Bank Coordination and State-Guaranteed Credit Programs during the COVID-19 Crisis in France and Germany.” Journal of European Public Policy 29(7): 1135–1152.
  • Seabrooke, L. & E. Tsingou. 2018. “Europe’s fast- and slow-burning crises.” Journal of European Public Policy 26(3): 468–481.
  • Streeck, W. 2011. “The Crises of Democratic Capitalism.” New Left Review 71: 5–29.
  • Woll, C. 2014. The Power of Inaction: Bank Bailouts in Comparison. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, Chapters 1, 2 & 8.

Session 5: Investment and productivist states

November 16, 2026

Required Reading:

  • Lepont, U. & M. Thiemann. 2024. “The European Investor State: Its Characteristics, Genesis, and Effects.” Competition & Change 28(3–4): 381–396.

Further Readings:

  • Blyth, M. & D. Driscoll. 2024. “Decarbonizing National Growth Models: Derisking, ‘Hobbled States,’ and the Decarbonization Possibility Frontier.” Manuscript.
  • Bremer, B., D. Di Carlo & L. Wansleben. 2023. “The constrained politics of local public investment under cooperative federalism.” Socio-Economic Review 21(2): 1007–1034.
  • Klein, E. 2022. “What America Needs is a Liberalism that Builds.” New York Times, May 31, 2022, A17.
  • Wong, F. & K. S. Rahman. 2023. “The Productivist Era Has Begun.” Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, no. 69 (Summer).
  • Zeitlin, J., D. Bokhorst & E. Eihmanis. 2024. “National recovery and resilience plans.” In Research Handbook on Post-Pandemic EU Economic Governance and NGEU Law, edited by F. Fabbrini & C. A. Petit. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar: 145–159.

Session 6: Green states

November 23, 2026

Required Reading:

  • Gabor, D. & B. Braun. 2023. “Green Macrofinancial Regimes.” Review of International Political Economy 32(3): 542–568.

Further Readings:

  • Ban, C. & J. Hasselbalch. 2025. “Green economic planning for rapid decarbonization.” New Political Economy 30(2): 287–299.
  • Copley, J. 2023. “Decarbonizing the downturn: Addressing climate change in an age of stagnation.” Competition & Change 27(3–4): 429–448.
  • Ergen, T. & L. Schmitz. 2025. “Picking losers: Managed decline in the European Union.” Regulation & Governance 19(2): 383–398.
  • Kim, S. Y. & E. Thurbon. 2015. “Developmental environmentalism: Explaining South Korea’s ambitious pursuit of green growth.” Politics & Society 43(2): 213–240.

Session 7: Entrepreneurial states

November 30, 2026

Required Reading:

  • Di Carlo, D. & L. Schmitz. 2023. “Europe First? The Rise of EU Industrial Policy Promoting and Protecting the Single Market.” Journal of European Public Policy.

Further Readings:

  • Amsden, A. H. 2001. “The Rest Will Rise Again.” In The Rise of “The Rest”: Challenges to the West From Late-Industrializing Economies. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Evenett, S., A. Jakubik, F. Martín & M. Ruta. 2024. “The Return of Industrial Policy in Data.” The World Economy 47(7): 2762–2788.
  • Weber, I. M. 2018. “China and Neoliberalism: Moving Beyond the China Is/Is Not Neoliberal Dichotomy.” In The SAGE Handbook of Neoliberalism, 219–233.

Session 8: Geopolitical states

December 7, 2026

Required Reading:

  • Farrell, H. & A. L. Newman. 2019. “Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Economic Networks Shape State Coercion.” International Security 44(1): 42–79.

Further Readings:

  • Balfour, R. et al. 2024. “Geopolitics and Economic Statecraft in the European Union.” Carnegie Europe.
  • Farrell, H. & A. L. Newman. 2023. “The New Economic Security State: How De-Risking Will Remake Geopolitics.” Foreign Affairs October: 106–122.
  • Weinhardt, C., K. Mau & J. Hillebrand Pohl. 2022. “The EU as a Geoeconomic Actor? A Review of Recent European Trade and Investment Policies.” In The Political Economy of Geoeconomics: Europe in a Changing World, edited by M. Babić, A. D. Dixon, and I. T. Liu. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan: 107–136.

Midterm reflection: Bring your own news piece!

December 14, 2026

No new readings. Bring a current news piece on economic policy, and be prepared to discuss it in light of the perspectives covered so far.

December 21, 2026 – January 3, 2027: winter break

Part 3: An Emerging Age of Fracture?

Session 9: Ceremonial postneoliberalism

January 4, 2027

Required Reading:

  • Gabor, D. 2023. “The (European) Derisking State.” Stato e mercato 2023-1: 53–84.

Further Readings:

  • Ban, C., G. Scheiring & M. Vasile. 2021. “The political economy of national-neoliberalism.” European Politics and Society 24(1): 96–114.
  • Bulfone, F., T. Ergen & M. Kalaitzake. 2023. “No strings attached: Corporate welfare, state intervention, and the issue of conditionality.” Competition & Change 27(2): 253–276.
  • Slobodian, Q. & D. Plehwe. 2020. “Lifeboat Neoliberalism.” In Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, edited by D. Plehwe, Q. Slobodian, and P. Mirowski. London: Verso: 7–11.
  • Schmidt, V. A. & M. Thatcher. 2013. “Theorizing Ideational Continuity: The Resilience of Neo-Liberal Ideas in Europe.” In Resilient Liberalism in Europe’s Political Economy, edited by V. A. Schmidt and M. Thatcher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1–50.

Session 10: Postneoliberalism in hiding

January 11, 2027

Required Reading:

  • Block, F., M. R. Keller & M. Negoita. 2024. “Revisiting the Hidden Developmental State.” Politics & Society 52(2): 208–240.

Further Readings:

  • Dewey, M. & D. Di Carlo. 2022. “Governing through Non-enforcement: Regulatory Forbearance as Industrial Policy in Advanced Economies.” Regulation & Governance 16: 930–950.
  • Hopewell, K. 2021. “Strategic Narratives in Global Trade Politics: American Hegemony, Free Trade, and the Hidden Hand of the State.” The Chinese Journal of International Politics 14(1): 51–86.
  • Mertens, D. & M. Thiemann. 2017. “Building a Hidden Investment State? The European Investment Bank, National Development Banks and European Economic Governance.” Journal of European Public Policy 26(1): 23–43.
  • Negoita, M. 2014. “Globalization, state, and innovation.” Regulation & Governance 8: 371–393.

Session 11: Postneoliberalism by example

January 18, 2027

Required Reading:

  • Alami, I. & A. D. Dixon. 2024. “State Capitalism Begets State Capitalism: On Combination and Political Multiplicity.” In The Spectre of State Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 112–140.

Further Readings:

  • Hopewell, K. 2015. “Different Paths to Power: The Rise of Brazil, India and China at the World Trade Organization.” Review of International Political Economy 22(2): 311–338.
  • Rogers, S. 2022. “Illiberal capitalist development: Chinese state-owned capital investment in Serbia.” Contemporary Politics 28(3): 347–364.
  • Weber, I. 2023. “State capitalism, imperialism and China: Bringing history back in.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 55(3): 774–781.

Session 12: Technocratic postneoliberalism

January 25, 2027

Required Reading:

  • van ’t Klooster, J. 2022. “Technocratic Keynesianism: A Paradigm Shift without Legislative Change.” New Political Economy.

Further Readings:

  • Blyth, M. & L. Downey. 2025. “Macrofinance the Green Transformation: Nudging, Attracting, and Coercing Capital Towards Decarbonization.” Review of International Political Economy 32(3): 529–541.
  • Deyris, J. 2023. “Too green to be true? Forging a climate consensus at the European Central Bank.” New Political Economy 28(5): 713–730.
  • Smolenska, A. & J. van ’t Klooster. 2022. “A Risky Bet: Climate Change and the EU’s Microprudential Framework for Banks.” Journal of Financial Regulation 8(1): 51–74.
  • Thiemann, M. 2024. Taming the Cycles of Finance? Central Banks and the Macro-Prudential Shift in Financial Regulation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–22; 250–264.