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Course Overview

We start the first session describing the course, its teaching and evaluating methodologies, and its mandatory bibliography and supplementary texts. Then, there is a space for both the teacher and the students to introduce themselves. The latter ones will also talk briefly about the questions: ¿Is the state necessary? And ¿why? After everybody has shared their thoughts, the class will create a word cloud (with Menti or another app) suggesting the three most relevant concepts mentioned by its classmates. The results will be then discussed until the session is over, in order to have a general diagnostic of the expectations and interests that students may have, which will orientate the following sessions.

• Larraín, G. (2019), The Constitution of Economic System (mimeo). Chapter 2. This book is in the process of being published.
• Atria, Fernando; Larrain, Guillermo; Benavente, José Miguel; Couso, Javier y Alfredo Joignant (2013), The Other Model. From the neoliberal order to the public regime, Editorial Debate (Tercera Parte) 125-157.

 

This session objective is to analyse the historical progress, until the present day, the State’s role and the social contract’s role (focussing on the undermining of the social contract) expressed in the Constitution. This aims to position the main ideas that led to the establishment of a republican state with its distinctive features in the western world. Also, we will analyse some distinct notions about the role that the State should take in society, its relative size and power to interfere in different markets, looking as well to the utilitarianism and contractualism perspectives in those issues.

• Glaeser, Edward, L. and Andrei Shleifer (2003). "The rise of the regulatory state". Economic Literature Magazine, 41 (2).
• Chibbek, Vivek. (2005). “Reviving the Developmental State? The Myth of the “National Bourgeoisie“”.  Socialist Register 2005: The Empire Reloaded. Vol. 41.

 

This session is composed of two parts: The first one’s objective is to provide definitions, explore challenges and recognize problems surrounding the property rights (studying its current critics) and the economic nature of the goods (defining a criterion of categorization and addressing its specificities). The last part aims to come to an understanding of some types of goods, analysing them from the perspective of the property right of the person that produces it.

• Atria, Fernando; Larrain, Guillermo; Benavente, José Miguel; Couso, Javier y Alfredo Joignant (2013), The Other Model. From the neoliberal order to the public regime, Editorial Debate (Tercera Parte) 158-170.

 

The fourth session aims to talk about social rights, focussing on its production, use, enjoyment and gain, by analysing cases, discussing issues related to those social rights and, specially, tackling contemporary problems: (1) Own definition of social rights. (2) Struggle between surplus and social rights. (3) Private or State providing of social rights. Y (4) analysing and discussing cases.

• Atkinson, Anthony B, (2001), The Economic Consequences of Rolling Back the Welfare State, Munich Lectures in Economics, MIT Press (chap. 1.2)
• Tirole, Jean (2016), Economics for the Common Good, Princeton University Press (ch. 2, The moral limits of markets).

 

This session aims to study the specific case of Chile, a country disrupted by the social riots and the pandemic, which finds itself in historical voting to decide if the national constitution will be changed by elected constitutional representatives. We will analyse the national context, the events occurred since 2019, and the main challenges that Chilean society needs to tackle. Finally, we will discuss the main motives of the social outbreak and propose and contrast some possible solutions to the social issues that caused it.

• Larraín, G. (2019), La estabilidad del contrato social. Caps. 6 y 7.

 

The constitutional convention simulation will have students tackle three fundamental subjects: Government regime (presidential, parliamentary or mixed); Regional autonomy (centralized versus decentralized government); And civic methods of participation. In this instance, students will have a case with given information from which they will have to reach an agreement (or otherwise vote) to settle about the constitutional convention text (using an adaptation of the rules of an actual constitutional convention, this means that if ten people constitute the convention only seven are needed to agree to approve the document). Moderators will circulate between the discussion groups watching over the correct development of the exercise.

 

The final essay is where the students use the analytical and theoretical tools learned throughout the sessions to explore and comprehend a subject of their interest to propose a solution to an issue of institutional nature. The main point of this assignment is for students to be able to extrapolate the knowledge and questionings gathered in this course applying them in a case of their own communities and doing the theoretical exercise of proposing, arguing and defending an idea that aims to give a solution to that institutional issue. This essay will have evaluation guidelines and a guiding brief to orientate the expected results. Finally, a course summary will be written, containing its application and main challenges, as a formal product of these sessions.

 

Assignments and Assessment

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Tags: economic policy | financial policy | fiscal policy | industrial policy | market-state relation | policy | state | state control | state intervention | teaching