In this interview with faculti, Ben Clift summarises key insights and themes from his recent OUP book about the Office for Budget Responsibility. These include the politics of technocracy, the fiscal politics of tackling climate change, and how the rise of populism threatens the foundations of expert-led economic governance.

Many congratulations to Sam Pordale who has been recognized for his work on the national campaign ‘lift the ban’, which advocates for asylum seekers to be given the right to work, and his service as youth advocates for Refugee Education UK

This EASG-CSGR-PAIS talk, delivered by Norbert Gaillard, Fumihito Gotoh and Rick Michalek is based on the recently published book, The Future of Multilateralism and Globalization in the Age of the U.S.–China Rivalry. It investigates how a new modus vivendi between China and the United States in the post-globalized world requires increased economic interdependence. This is because, despite the distrust between G20 economies, heightened international cooperation is required in order to avert a shift to nationalism and protectionism and to fight financial and climate crises. The seminar will discuss several topics: the respective characteristics of Chinese and U.S. capitalisms; the way China is reshaping the international financial architecture; and the initiatives to secure critical mineral supply chains and global value chains. A comparison of Chinese capitalism with American and Japanese models will be presented, along with a case study on China's vehicle electrification.

Norbert Gaillard is an economist and independent consultant. He has taught at the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris, the University of Geneva, and the Graduate Institute. He has served as a consultant to various international institutions and financial firms. His main areas of expertise are public debt and sovereign risk, local government debt and subnational risk, credit rating agencies, country risk, and moral hazard.

Fumihito (Fumi) Gotoh is a lecturer in East Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield. Previously, he was a teaching and research fellow in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. His research interests include comparative capitalisms (particularly between Anglo-American countries, Japan, and China) and the politics of finance.

Rick Michalek is an independent consultant and the senior partner of RJM Consulting, a legal and financial consulting group based in the New York area. A graduate of Columbia University with both a JD and an MBA, he worked as a former senior credit officer and legal analyst at Moody’s in the structured derivatives group. Rick has authored and co-authored and co-edited (with Norbert Gaillard) a number of academic articles and books as a part of their series, International Studies in Money and Banking.

Date: Tuesday, 16/01/24
Time: 16:15 -17:30
Venue: OC1.02, The Oculus

North American Regionalism: Stagnation, Decline, or Renewal?, edited by Tom Long and Eric Hershberg (American University), was published on 1 December by University of New Mexico Press. Although North America was a central case in the development of IR’s study of regionalism in the early 1990s, the region has garnered less attention in recent years—even as the study of regions in IR dramatically expanded. This volume reconnects North America with this body of scholarship, asking both what the North American case can contribute to how IR scholars understand regionalism, and what new currents in IR can help us understand about North America. It includes the work of scholars from Canada, Mexico, the United States, and Europe, with themes including region-building, migration, security, trade, and institutions. The book is the culmination of the Robert A. Pastor North American Research Initiative, a multinational research network based at American University and chaired by Tom Long since 2016.

Kristian Magnus Hauken finished his dual degree Ph.D. at the University of Sheffield, School of East Asian Studies and Tōhoku University, Graduate School of Law in 2020. His research interests include Japanese foreign relations and domestic sources of change in Japan’s foreign policy, as well as sources of status, prestige and stigma in international relations. Kristian is currently employed as a teaching associate in East Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield, School of East Asian studies, where he is teaching mainly postgraduate students in topics relating to the political economy and international relations of East Asia. His current research focuses on how practices, norms and capabilities generate or detract from social standing in international society, with a geographic focus on North-East Asia.

This talk takes the premise that just as individual human beings, states experience social stigma, that in turn affect their behaviour within the international system. Taking the ‘comfort women’ issue as a starting point, I argue that a leading cause for the change in the diplomatic stance of Japan in the ‘comfort women’ issue is the relative success of one conception of national stigma within the Japanese political establishment. This talk explores how specific politicians in Japan have been able to have their own views on this fraught historical issue crystallise into increasingly more accepted Japanese foreign policy, especially in the Japanese-Korean relationship.

Date: Friday, 01/12/2023
Time: 17:15-18:30
Venue: S0.17, Social Sciences Building