Publications
The following are some select academic articles, chapters, and other publications. A full list publications is available via my CV.
Academic Scholarship
“Shocking Intellectual Austerity: The Role of Ideas in the Demise of The Gold Standard in Britain”
International Organization 70(1): 175-207 (2016) | Article | Extended Citations
Abstract: Britain’s 1931 suspension of the gold standard remains one of the most shocking policy shifts of the past century. Conventional explanations focus on changing international conditions alongside the rise of social democracy: when Britons refused to shoulder the increasing costs of defending the exchange rate, the Bank of England was “forced” to abandon the gold standard. This article refocuses attention on policy-makers’ causal ideas at critical moments. Drawing on numerous primary sources held in several archives, it reveals a cleavage within the Bank over the appropriate response to the flight from sterling. Following the nervous collapse of the Bank’s governor, the deputy governor shifted the Bank’s strategy from making defensive rate hikes to pursuing fiscal austerity. He then “temporarily” suspended gold convertibility in a gambit to forestall the election he (incorrectly) assumed would unseat the gold standard’s supporters in Parliament. When the unintended experiment with a managed float proved successful, Keynes was able to persuade policy-makers to embrace the new exchange rate regime.
“Before Hegemony: Adam Smith, American Independence, and the Origins of the First Era of Globalization”
International Organization 66(3): 395-428 (2012) | Article
Abstract: While extensive scholarship has shown that it is possible to maintain global economic openness after hegemony, economic liberalization is still thought to be unlikely prior to hegemonic ascent. This assumption is based on the conventional narrative that Great Britain “began lowering her trade barriers in the 1820s,” as it began its hegemonic ascent. This article shows that Britain began pursuing an open trading structure in the 1780s—in precisely the multipolar world that hegemonic stability theorists claimed would be least likely to initiate the shift. This change in commercial strategy depended crucially on the intellectual conversion of a key policymaker—the Earl of Shelburne—from mercantilist foreign economic policy to Adam Smith’s revolutionary laissez-faire liberalism. Using the case of “the world’s most important trading state” in the nineteenth century, this article highlights the importance of intellectuals—as well as their ideas—in shaping states’ foreign policy strategies. It also provides further evidence of key individuals’ significance and their decisions at “critical junctures.”
“This Means (Bank) War! Corruption and Credible Commitments in the Collapse of the Second Bank of the United States”
Journal of the History of Economic Thought 37(2): 221-45. (2015) | Link
Abstract: The demise of the US central bank in the 1830s “Bank War” remains one of the most significant shifts in the history of American political and economic development. Traditional accounts frame the bank as the casualty of the inevitable clash of hard-money and soft-money interests and ideologies. This paper re-examines this shift through the lens of modern international relations theory. It argues that this “war,” like so many interstate wars, could have been—and very nearly was—averted. In the months prior to the outbreak of hostilities, the bank’s president (Nicholas Biddle) and the US president (Andrew Jackson) agreed to a set of reforms that both sides preferred to fighting. Jackson, however, came to believe that no amount of reform could curb the bank’s hegemonic ascent. Facing the logic of preventive war, Jackson issued a decisive veto that initiated a “total war.” His triumph in the 1832 election sealed the bank’s fate. This paper thus offers a novel interpretation of this key historical episode; and it demonstrates the value of using international relations theory to understand intrastate political dynamics.
“Postscript: The Intellectual Origins of European Integration”
Book chapter in Alexandre Mendes Cunha and Carlos Eduardo Suprinyak, eds. Political Economy and International Order in Interwar Europe. (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021): 403-422. (with José Luís Cardoso). Link
Abstract: This chapter draws on the previous contributions in this volume to consider the intellectual origins of European integration. First, it analyses the many changes in, and responses to, the operation of “the state” wrought by the First World War and the calamities that followed. In this period, the classic questions surrounding the relationship between law, order, and liberty took on new meaning and inspired new ideas. Some of the more ambitious–even radical–responses suggested rewriting entirely the so-called “rules of the game.” Others sought to re-establish the old order on a more philosophically robust and practically pragmatic footing. These new ideas both followed from, and fostered, new approaches, methods, and academic collaborations across the traditional disciplinary, cultural, and national borders. For many, these dynamics brought a heightened urgency and a new sense of possibility to the age-old dreams of a united Europe. The chapter closes by reflecting on the work undertaken–and the work left unfinished–by the architects of the post-war European project.
“International Regimes and War”
Book chapter in Christopher J. Coyne, ed. The Handbook on the Political Economy of War. (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011): 356-375. (with Avery White). Link
“Hayek, Oakeshott, and the Concept of Spontaneous Order”
Book chapter in Peter McNamara and Louis Hunt, eds. Liberalism, Conservatism, and Hayek’s Idea of Spontaneous Order. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007): 87-105. (with Richard A. Boyd). Link
Additional Publications
“The May-Trump Special Relationship May Be Defined by How Donald Trump Views Women.” US-Centre Blog, LSE. 27 January 2017. Link
“Must this Brexit Break Britain?” Darhendrof Forum: Debating Europe. 15 July 2016. Link
“Dearly Bought Wisdom: My Experience with DA-RT.” International History & Politics Newsletter 1(2): 12-16. (2016) Link