The 2024 PPE Centenary Lecture will take place on Wednesday 13 November 2024, from 5.30 till 6.30pm online via Zoom.
Booking will open shortly.
The Centenary Visiting Professorship in PPE is a unique collaboration between Queen’s and Univ that the colleges jointly launched in 2021. This partially endowed Visiting Professorship rotates annually between the two colleges and the individual subjects that make up the PPE course.
Professor Christina L. Davis will join as the second Centenary Visiting Professor in PPE for the 2024-25 academic year, along with her role as a Supernumerary Fellow at The Queen’s College. She is currently at Harvard University’s Department of Government and holds the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professorship at the Radcliffe Institute, as well as the Edwin O. Reischauer Professorship in Japanese Politics.
Economic Diplomacy and Balance of Power
How do governments manage trade as a tool of diplomacy and commerce? This dual nature of trade policy requires calibration within domestic decision-making institutions and global governance. Going too far in either direction – using trade to advance foreign policy goals or to maximize income – could stifle growth or heighten security risks.
The long history of “Rich nation, strong army” as a development mantra and weaponized interdependence as a coercive tactic have gained new prominence amid the US-China rivalry. The leading organization for economic governance, the World Trade Organization, struggles to address demands for national security exceptions to free trade rules. This lecture explores economic security as a concept, and examines the conditions that shape the practice of economic statecraft.
Historical cases show that political interests and status ideas influence why some industries are deemed strategic for national interest. A cross-national comparison highlights that the nature of the political system and interstate rivalries shift how governments balance the weight of diplomacy and commerce in the design of trade policy. Statistical analysis of multilateral cooperation also reveals both formal and informal pathways through which economic and security interests determine which states cooperate. While economic diplomacy contributes to the balance of power between states, the structure of domestic and international institutions – not military strategy and threats – determine how states use this power.
