Module 2300
Political Economy of Agriculture in Developing and Emerging Economies
Instructor
Professor Dr Thomas Herzfeld (herzfeld@iamo.de) is head of the Department Agricultural Policy, IAMO and taught courses in Agricultural and Food Policy, Microeconomics, and Economic Modelling at Universities in Kiel, Wageningen and Halle-Wittenberg.
Course Description
The course takes place at IAMO, Conference Room II, Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), Theodor-Lieser-Str. 2, 06120 Halle. The course would be taught every (even) year in October.
This one-week course will introduce PhD researchers to the major theories and models of the Political Economy of Agriculture, will discuss them based on a simulation, and will apply them to empirical cases from developing countries and countries in transition.
Learning objectives
In this module, students will
- be introduced to different theoretical approaches which are commonly used in the political economy of agriculture.
- discuss under which conditions which kind of theoretical approach may be most suitable to apply.
- learn how to analytically differentiate and apply concepts of different theoretical approaches, based on a simulation that they will carry out within this module.
- read and discuss applications of theoretical concepts in academic papers.
Course Outline
The course consists of lectures, individual assignments and one simulation. In a simulation, a real-world situation is recreated in which participants take up different roles in order to explore key mechanisms that are at work in such a situation. After the simulation, different theoretical approaches will be presented and discussed in their applicability to phenomena in the simulation. Furthermore, participants will be introduced to case studies from Africa and Asia and will apply theories to analyse those case studies.
Organization and time
This is a one week block course which will be held at IAMO. There are some preparatory tasks to be fulfilled before the course takes place.
Before the course
Three to two weeks before the Module starts, participants will be sent an outline of the different stakeholders in the simulation. They are asked to send a brief introduction to their educational background and a short motivation for favouring a certain role in the simulation. They will then be allocated a role, which they fulfil together with another PhD student. The team of two will prepare a role strategy before the course begins, which they send to the lecturers one week in advance. Additionally, participants are expected to read one paper out of a selection which will be distributed before the course starts.
One week Module
The course will be divided into three parts:
- Simulation: A simulation in the beginning of the week will support researchers’ experiential learning about a contemporary agrarian issue in a developing / transition country. This part will take place from Monday afternoon to Tuesday afternoon and involve active participation in the simulation, the writing of a strategy paper and of a debriefing paper.
- Theoretical lectures: Using examples from the simulation, lectures on theories and models of the political economy of agriculture follow. This part will consist of morning lectures, and take place from Wednesday until Friday. Lectures will be grouped thematically:
- Lectures on Wednesday will introduce to the principles of Political Economics and Political Ecology as a critical theory that contextualizes agriculture within societal dynamics. Theories that focus on politicians’ orientation towards voters’ preferences will illustrate how the agricultural sector fares rather differently under governments with different political orientations.
- Lectures on Thursday will focus on the political economy of non-democratic systems and the pro-consumer policy often observed in the South, including models focusing on the role of agriculture as a source of public revenues.
- Lectures on Friday will discuss the shift from taxing to subsidising agriculture observed in several middle-income countries and introduce theories which will be able to explain this development.
- Country cases: After each block of theory, participants will work in small groups to discuss how they would apply theories to certain cases or to participants’ own research. This part will take place in the afternoon of Wednesday and Thursday, and consists of group work and a short presentation of discussion results at the end of each session.
The course would hence provide a rich combination of theoretical and experiential learning on the political economy of agriculture in developing / transition countries, as well as learning on the application of theories.
Schedule
| Time | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 09:00 – 13:00 | Welcome / Introduction | Simulation | Introduction to theories, Voting Models | Autocracies Explaining pro-consumer/ urban policy bias | Explaining the shift to pro-agricultural policies, Applications: Comparison of agricultural support/taxation between DCs and HICs |
| 13:00 – 14:00 | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch | Lunch | Comparison of approaches |
| 14:00 – 17:00 | Simulation | Simulation | Applications | Applications |
Core literature
Anderson, K., G.C. Rausser, and J.F.M. Swinnen. 2013. "Political Economy of Public Policies: Insights from Distortions to Agricultural and Food Markets." Journal of Economic Literature 51(2):423-477.
Exemplary case on the use of a simulation in agro-environmental contexts:
Stefanska, J., P. Magnuszewski, J. Sendzimir, P. Romaniuk, T. Taillieu, A. Dubel, Z. Flachner, and P. Balogh. 2011. “A Gaming Exercise to Explore Problem-Solving versus Relational Activities for River Floodplain Management.” Environmental Policy and Governance 21:454 – 471.
There may also be additional background material for the theory parts in the book 'Reasons behind estimated distortion patterns of the past five decades' published by K. Anderson and co-authors, which is available (freely) under the link https://goo.gl/w39hEh as a working paper series.