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Categorizing Ideological
Varieties of Capitalism
January 2009
In this paper, I will
argue that varieties of
capitalism are
institutional
manifestations of a
taxonomy of political
philosophies. The
paper begins with the
premises that politics
is driven by ideology
and is concerned with
the use of coercion.
It then deduces a
general categorization
of political
philosophies and defends
its explanatory value:
First, it critiques the
view that, because
differing ideologies
generate divergent
political behavior,
universal laws of
politics cannot exist.
Next, the paper argues
that such laws should
describe how ideologies,
rather than more
concrete variables such
as institutions, shape
political activity
through processes of
path dependence.
It concludes with an
appeal for future
research along these
theoretical lines.
Coordinated Wage
Bargaining, Inflation,
and Unemployment
December 2008
In
this paper, I will argue
that Peter Hall and
Robert Franzese’s
portrayal of coordinated
wage bargaining
overemphasizes that
institution’s importance
to political economy
and, instead, can be
subsumed under a
politics-based approach
to studying economics.
The paper begins by
examining the
time-inconsistency
problem of monetary
policy and explaining
how Hall and Franzese
elaborate upon it. It
then critiques their
economic model of a
collective action
problem among wage
negotiators, and next
reveals an empirical
weakness of their claim
that coordinated wage
bargaining facilitates
collective action.
Finally, the paper
proposes that wage
negotiations, like
central bank
independence, may be
explained better by Adam
Posen’s politics-based
approach.
The Influence of
Political Philosophy on
Postwar Monetary Policy
November 2008
In
this paper, I will argue
that states’
international monetary
policies represent their
underlying political
philosophies and that
discord between their
philosophies breeds
conflict between their
economic policies. The
paper will begin by
investigating the
political foundations of
the Bretton Woods
financial order, and
then will explain how
states that embodied a
divergent philosophy
undermined that postwar
regime.
Proposal for a
Libertarian Peace Theory
October 2008
“[T]he most useful way
to test the causal
claims of the democratic
peace theory,” writes
Miriam Elman in
Paths to Peace,
is to study what
democracies do when they
“come into conflict.”
Yet this method only
lets us determine the
impact of a state’s
“democratic nature” upon
those conflicts. We
cannot ascertain whether
two states’ “democratic
nature” causes them not
to have “opposing
interests” in the first
place. Other studies
also ignore this
possibility: qualitative
analyses have trouble
accounting for
“non-events,”
and quantitative surveys
tend not to discriminate
among them.
Nevertheless, this paper
argues that one variant
of democracy –
libertarianism –
generates a harmony of
interests among the
states that adopt it.
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