Andrew Sobel

Andrew Sobel

Professor of Global Studies
Professor of Political Science (by courtesy)
Coordinator, Development and International Affairs concentrations
PhD, University of Michigan
research interests:
  • Global Finance
  • Domestic Explanations of International Behavior
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    • Washington University
      MSC 1217-137-255
      One Brookings Drive
      St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
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    ​Professor Sobel specializes in the politics of global finance with a focus upon domestic explanations of international behavior. He is the author or editor of six books and numerous articles.

    Professor Andrew Sobel is a political scientist in the Global Studies Program at Washington University in St. Louis. He specializes in international political economy with a focus upon domestic explanations of international behavior; specifically the political economy of global finance, globalization, and development.

    Professor Sobel earned his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. Before coming to WU, he was a Fellow at the Brookings Institution, the Albert Gallatin Fellow at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, and a Visiting Fellow at the Foundation for Advanced Information and Research in Tokyo. Professor Sobel first came to WU as a Fellow at the Center in Political Economy and then joined the Department of Political Science, later moving to Global Studies after 20+ years. He has been a Visiting Fellow in the Wallis Institute of Political Economy at the University of Rochester and a Summer Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study of the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto. He served as the series editor at Georgetown University Press for its Series on Public Policy in a Global Economy. Professor Sobel has been on the Faculty Advisory Councils for the Center for the New Institutional Social Sciences at WU, the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at WU, and on the Global Advisory Committee at the Brown School of Social Work. He chaired WU’s Faculty Senate Council. He served as Director of Global Studies and is a former Program Director of the M.A. Program in International Affairs in University College at Washington University.

    He is the author or editor of six books and numerous articles. His first book, Domestic Choices, International Markets, examines the politics underpinning the liberalization and globalization of national securities markets in Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. His second book, State Institutions, Private Incentives, Global Capital, explores the extraordinary transformation and reawakening of global financial markets, systematic differences in access for borrowers in the global capital pool, and the effects of national political institutions in explaining this metamorphosis and the differential access. Congressional Quarterly Press published his third book, Political Economy and Global Affairs. In his fourth book, The Challenges of Globalization, he edited a volume of papers from a conference on Globalization, State and Society. His fifth book, Birth of Hegemony: Crisis, Financial Revolution, and Emerging Global Networks, came out in the summer of 2012 from the University of Chicago Press. This book explores the public and private financial foundations of liberal hegemonic leadership by examining the three cases of such leadership over the past 400 years—the Dutch Netherlands, England, and now the United States. A sixth book, International Political Economy in Context: Individual Choices, Global Effects, was released by Sage/CQ Press in September 2012.

    Recent Courses

    International Relations

    Globalization, the accelerating rate of interaction between people of different countries, creates a qualitative shift in the relationship between nation-states and national economies. Conflict and war is one form of international interaction. Movement of capital, goods, services, production, information, disease, environmental degradation, and people across national boundaries are other forms of international interactions. This course introduces major approaches, questions, and controversies in the study of international relations. We will explore seminal literature at the core of modern international relations theory. We will examine the building blocks of world politics, the sources of international conflict and cooperation, and the globalization of material and social relations.

      Politics of Global Finance

      Global finance underwent stunning transformations over the past thirty years. The changes contribute to interdependence, challenge national sovereignty, alter state-society relations, affect economic development, and influence the distribution of wealth and power in the global political economy. The seminar examines the political economy of monetary relations, the globalization of capital markets, and their effects upon domestic and international affairs.

        State Failure, State Success and Development

        Why do some nations develop while others languish? This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to examining the role governments play in development and economic outcomes. Knee-jerk ideologues from all parts of the political spectrum make competing arguments, most of which are overly simplistic and ignore good social science. Some argue that state involvement in the economy hinders economic activity and development, while others argue for greater state involvement. Such arguments are often poorly informed by systematic rigorous research. We will look at some of the competing arguments about governments in failed and successful states and compare those arguments to the empirical world, or data. In so doing we will recognize that how governments affect development and economic outcomes in society is neither straightforward nor consistent with any of the simplistic ideological screeds that often dominate public discourse.

          International Politics

          Globalization, the accelerating rate of interaction between people of different countries, creates a qualitative shift in the relationship between nation-states and national economies. Conflict and war is one form of international interaction. Movement of capital, goods, services, production, information, disease, environmental degradation, and people across national boundaries are other forms of international interactions. This course introduces major approaches, questions, and controversies in the study of global political-economic relations. In a small group seminar we will examine the building blocks of world politics, the sources of international conflict and cooperation, and the globalization of material and social relations.

            Selected Publications

            Sobel, Andrew C. 2013. International Political Economy in Context: Individual Choices, Global Effects,  Washington D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press.

            Sobel, Andrew C. 2012. Birth of Hegemony. Crisis, Financial Revolution and Emerging Global Networks, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

            Sobel, Andrew C. (ed.). 2009. Challenges of Globalization: Immigration, social welfare, global governance, Routledge Press.

            Sobel, Andrew C. 2006. Political Economy and Global Affairs, Washington D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press.

            Sobel, Andrew C. 1999. State Institutions, Private Incentives, Global Capital. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

            Sobel, Andrew C. 1994. Domestic Choices, International Markets: Dismantling National Barriers and Liberalizing Securities Markets. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.