Week 15 — Readings & Resources · Political Economy & Global Issues

Course: Introduction to Political Science (POLS 1) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Halloran
Objectives covered: Objective 8 (international relations and global political economy).

How to use this page

Everything here is a link to an external resource — open it in your browser, the same way you'd open a YouTube link. Nothing needs to be downloaded, and there is nothing to buy.

This week's load is deliberately light: 2 short readings + 2 videos + the primary dataset you'll use in the workshop, grouped by the ideas from the lecture, plus a couple of optional references. Read or watch one item per group and you're ready for the quiz; do all of them and you'll be very comfortable. Total time is roughly 45–55 minutes if you do everything, far less if you pick one per group.

Order that matches the lecture: ① states, markets, and political economy → ② comparative advantage, trade, and globalization → ③ the week's primary dataset (for the workshop) — global poverty.

A habit to carry into the final two weeks: before you trust any global statistic — in these resources or anywhere — ask the questions from class: What exactly is measured? Over what population and period? What poverty line, or what definition? And is this a descriptive claim or a policy judgment?

① States, Markets & Political Economy

Maps to Lecture Segments 2 and 7. Where markets and states meet; political economy as the bridge between comparative politics, IR, and political theory.

Reading — "The Origins of International Political Economy" (OpenStax, Introduction to Political Science, §16.1)
🔗 https://openstax.org/books/introduction-political-science/pages/16-1-the-origins-of-international-political-economy
Why it's assigned: defines international political economy (IPE) plainly — the study of how political processes shape economic winners and losers — and walks through mercantilism as the historical backdrop against which modern market economies and today's states-markets spectrum developed.
⏱ ~10 min

Video — "Specialization and Trade: Crash Course Economics #2" (CrashCourse, YouTube)
🔗 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI9TLDIPVcs
Why it earns the click: a brisk, accurate walkthrough of comparative advantage — the descriptive economic concept behind this week's empirical/normative test. Watch for the distinction between absolute advantage (being better at everything) and comparative advantage (having a lower opportunity cost at something) — that's the concept the lecture builds on.
⏱ ~10 min

② Globalization, Trade & Global Challenges

Maps to Lecture Segments 3 and 6. Comparative advantage vs. trade policy; inequality (between vs. within countries); climate as a collective-action problem; migration.

Reading — "Considering Poverty, Inequality, and the Environmental Crisis" (OpenStax, Introduction to Political Science, §16.6)
🔗 https://openstax.org/books/introduction-political-science/pages/16-6-considering-poverty-inequality-and-the-environmental-crisis
Why it's assigned: covers this week's three global challenges in one place — poverty and inequality as debated features of market economies, and the environmental crisis (including the IPCC's finding on greenhouse gases) — with real, named perspectives on multiple sides. Heads-up: this section cites an older global-poverty figure (the pre-2025 $1.90/day line); this week's workshop uses the current World Bank line ($3/day, updated June 2025) — a live example of exactly the "check the date on any statistic" habit from class.
⏱ ~12 min

Video — "Globalization and Trade and Poverty: Crash Course Economics #16" (CrashCourse, YouTube)
🔗 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MpVjxxpExM
Why it earns the click: the hosts' own framing is exactly this week's evenhandedness lesson in miniature — "is globalization a good thing? …It's complicated" — covering aggregate gains alongside real, concentrated costs (job displacement, uneven regulatory readiness) without picking a side.
⏱ ~9 min

③ The Week's Primary Dataset (for the Workshop)

You'll analyze this in Political Analysis Workshop 15. Open it once before the workshop so you arrive ready to read it the way the read-the-data scaffold asks.

Primary dataset — Our World in Data, "Poverty" (collated from the World Bank's Poverty and Inequality Platform; continuously updated — verified live 2026-07-02)
🔗 https://ourworldindata.org/poverty
Why it's assigned: the standard public reference for global poverty data — real, current, sourced to the World Bank, and exactly the kind of dataset a political scientist reads professionally. This week you'll identify the poverty-line definition it uses right now, the specific long-run figures it reports, and what the trend does and does not prove.
⏱ ~10 min

Background reading (optional but useful) — "Extreme poverty: How far have we come, and how far do we still have to go?" (Our World in Data)
🔗 https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty-in-brief
Why it earns the click: the long-run historical picture (back to 1820), plus the article's own "last updated" note explaining how the World Bank's poverty-line methodology has changed over time — useful context for the workshop's AI-critique step.
⏱ ~8 min

Optional one-stop references (free online)

• OpenStax, Introduction to Political Science — the free survey text this course's link set returns to; Chapter 16 covers international political economy in full.
  🔗 https://openstax.org/details/books/introduction-political-science
• Our World in Data — Economic Growth. The companion topic page to this week's poverty data; useful if you want to see how growth and poverty reduction relate.
  🔗 https://ourworldindata.org/economic-growth
• Khan Academy — Macroeconomics (International Trade unit). Short explainers on comparative advantage and trade if you'd like a second walkthrough.
  🔗 https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/macroeconomics

Pick-one quick path (≈20 min total)

In a hurry? Do exactly these and you'll be ready for the quiz:
1. Watch CrashCourse Economics #2 (group ①) — comparative advantage in ten minutes.
2. Open Our World in Data, "Poverty" (group ③) — skim it once for the workshop.

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages, and — because this week's dataset updates continuously — the exact figures may shift slightly by the time you read this. If a link ever fails, tell Prof. Halloran and use the OpenStax contents page or the Our World in Data homepage above in the meantime.