Seminar Abstract

From the 1980s there was a strong trend in major journals and in top university press monographs in International Political Economy (IPE) towards using a mixed methods approach. This development was mirrored in International Relations and related fields. By the 1990s mixed methods had become the gold standard in IPE methodology: there was now a clear disciplinary hierarchy with quantitative methods as the core approach and with qualitative methods seen as a useful supplement for researchers seeking to investigate and assess alternative causal mechanisms. Today, this methodological consensus is subject to growing criticism that it underestimated the difficulties of causal influence in these fields and that “experiments” of different varieties can fill this gap. This seminar will consider the consequences of this ongoing debate for higher research in the field.

About the Speaker

Andrew Walter is Professor of International Relations in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne. He has M.Phil. and D.Phil. degrees from Oxford University. His previous academic positions were at Oxford University and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has published numerous articles on the political economy of international money and finance and their governance among and within countries. His most recent book is The Wealth Effect: How the Great Expectations of the Middle Class Have Changed the Politics of Banking Crises (Cambridge University Press, 2019, with Prof Jeffrey Chwieroth). His other books include Governing Finance: East Asia’s Adoption of International Standards (Cornell, 2008), Analyzing the Global Political Economy (Princeton, 2009), China, the United States, and Global Order (Cambridge, 2011, with Rosemary Foot), East Asian Capitalism (Oxford, 2012, ed. with Xiaoke Zhang), and Global Financial Governance Confronts the Rising Powers (CIGI, 2016, ed. with C.R. Henning). His current research projects include the politics of wealth and financialisation (with Jeffrey Chwieroth), emerging countries in global financial and monetary governance (with Randall Henning), and financialisation and populism.