3.0

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This seminar explores theoretical approaches to the multiple relations between political power and economic power, including pluralism, Marxism, and historical institutionalism. Major empirical transformations will provide the motivation: the rise of modern states, capitalism and social classes in Early Modern Europe, the creation of highly unequal societies in post-colonial Latin America and Africa, the varieties of Welfare State in the golden age of advanced capitalism (1950-75), and the powerful rebirth of inequality in advanced economies for the last 25 years. Theories of sources and interactions of political and economic power will be coupled with accounts of the effects of power and wealth on macroscopic change, especially democratization and economic development. Open to juniors, seniors, and graduate students.