Political Economy & Governance
Why good economics wins or loses in the real world of power.
Institutions, state capacity, collective action, and the political economy of reform — plus the public-choice analysis of voting, bureaucracy, and interest groups, and the economics of corruption and governance. The half of policy that pure economics leaves out.
By the end
- ✓Explain why the same policy succeeds in one country and fails in another
- ✓Analyse a reform through the lens of who wins, who loses, and who is organised
- ✓Read governance and corruption indicators critically
- ✓Apply public-choice reasoning to budgets, regulation, and deficits
- ✓Diagnose the binding institutional constraint behind a development failure
Prereqs
- •Microeconomics basics help
- •Interest in how power shapes policy
Courses
Political Economy & Institutions
IntermediateWhy the same policy succeeds in one country and fails in another. The incentives of states, not just markets — institutions, state capacity, collective action, and the political economy of reform, read for African contexts.
Public Choice & Collective Decisions
IntermediatePolitics without romance — the economic analysis of voting, bureaucracy, and interest groups. The Virginia school applied to how budgets, regulations, and deficits actually get made.
Governance, Corruption & State Capacity
IntermediateWhat governance means measured honestly, why corruption is an equilibrium rather than a moral failing, and the anti-corruption and capacity-building interventions that actually move the needle — grounded in the audit-experiment evidence.