The Rhodes Center Podcast with Mark Blyth – Details, episodes & analysis

When it comes to governing our economy, estimates rule the day. We want to know what effect a policy might have on the government’s budget, on economic growth, on employment…in the next 1 year, 5 years, 10 years…you get the idea. If you want to make (or critique) public policy, you better have numbers to back it up. 

To get those types of estimates, economists and politicians often rely on institutions like the Office for Budget Responsibility in the UK, or the Congressional Budget Office in the United States. As a result, their estimates and fiscal projections form crucial data points in our modern politics and policymaking. 

We like to think that these estimates and projections (not to mention, the people who make them) come from somewhere outside of our partisan politics. That while our values might be debatable, the numbers, at least, aren’t.

But, as Mark Blyth’s guest on this episode explains: that idea is a fantasy, and to the extent it obscures the values and politics that are baked into organizations like the Office of Budget Responsibility, it’s a dangerous one. 

On this episode, Mark Blyth talks with Ben Clift, author of “The Office for Budget Responsibility and the Politics of Technocratic Economic Governance.” In it, he pulls back the curtain on Britain's Office for Budget Responsibility, and reveals the hidden processes and ideologies that shape the estimates and projections that come out of it. In doing so, he shows how the OBR – and other institutions like it – are much more political than they appear. 

Learn more about and purchase “The Office for Budget Responsibility and the Politics of Technocratic Economic Governance”

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts

When you think of high-end luxury commodities, you might imagine yachts, private jets, or even whole islands. But in the last few years, another commodity has started to receive a lot of attention from the world’s wealthiest people: citizenship. 

With enough money, people can buy their way into becoming a citizen of a growing list of countries around the world. While this trend has garnered lots of attention in the last few years, as our guest on this episode explains, there’s so much more to the story than meets the eye. 

Kristin Surak is a sociologist and author of the new book “The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires.” In it, she pulls back the curtain on this rarified luxury market — who’s buying, who’s selling, and the complex web of middlemen that make it all work. 

On this episode, Mark Blyth talks with Surak about what might be called the “citizenship industrial complex”’ and what it says about our global economy. 

• Learn more about and purchase “The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires”
• Learn more about our other podcasts at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs

The history of international politics since 1945. The role of values in the global economy. The future of America’s relationship with China. All three of these would be ambitious topics for a work of political economy. But combining them? That’s not for the faint of heart.  

However, that’s exactly what Sir Paul Tucker has done in his new book, “Global Discord: Values and Power in a Fractured World Order”. 

Tucker is a former central banker, and a current research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. In this episode, Mark Blyth talks about the book with Paul and political economist Aditi Sahasrabudde. 

Learn more about and purchase “Global Discord: Values and Power in a Fractured World Order”

Watch Sir Paul Tucker’s recent talk at the Rhodes Center

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts 

One concept that comes up a lot on the Rhodes Center Podcast: the idea of the 'free market’.

The idea, as you might know it, begins with John Locke, is fashioned fully by Adam Smith, and is delivered to us gift-wrapped (after some delays) by the likes of Hayek and Friedman in the mid 20th century.

But as our guest on this episode explains, the idea of the free market is hardly so straightforward. Jacob Soll is a professor of philosophy, history, and accounting at the University of Southern California, and in his book “Free Market: The History of an Idea,” he begins way back in ancient Rome, stops in 17th-century France with Louis XIV’s minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, and, on the way to the present, barely mentions Adam Smith at all. 

No matter what you think of when you hear the words ‘free market’, Jacob's incredibly informative – and highly readable – history will make you see the concept in a whole new light. 

Learn more about and purchase Jacob’s Book “Free Market: The History of an Idea”

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts 

On the last episode of the podcast, Mark talked with two experts regarding the Inflation Reduction Act, and the political and logistical challenges of accelerating a ‘Green Transition’ in the US. 

Which makes for an interesting comparison to our topic today.

Because these days, when people want to critique how slow and ineffective the US government can be, they often compare it to another country – one that we tell ourselves is where big government projects happen faster and better than almost anywhere: China.

But as Iza Ding, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh, explains to Mark on this episode, China’s government might not be quite as dominant and proficient as we think. And nowhere is this more clear than at the local level, as Iza explores in her recent book, “The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China.”

Even though the book focuses on aspects of environmental governance like conservation and pollution mitigation, her conclusions are far-reaching. Primarily, the idea that even so-called strong states have weaknesses, and when they are asked to address them, they often ‘perform’ the task of governing in informative and surprising ways. 

Learn more about and purchase Iza Ding's book "The Performative State: Public Scrutiny and Environmental Governance in China".

Learn more about other podcasts from the Watson Institute. 

Over the last two years, if you had asked Mark Blyth if the Biden administration would ever do anything meaningful to fight climate change, he’d have said “no.” These feelings only got stronger in 2021, after the Democrats failed to pass their first big attempt at climate legislation, known as ‘Build Back Better.’

But then, something changed. The Inflation Reduction Act became law. And despite the name, it’s a decarbonization bill, and a better one than Mark ever thought we were going to get. (It might also reduce inflation, but that’s for another episode).

In this episode, Mark talks with two experts about why climate legislation was finally able to get passed in the United States, and what it means for the country and the planet. 

Tim Sahay is a physicist, Senior Policy Manager of Green New Deal Network, and Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. Ted Fertik is a historian, and Senior Strategist for Policy and Research with the Working Families Party. As they both see it, this bill has the potential not just to curb the worst of climate change, but to transform our society. 

Watch Mark, Tim, and Ted’s recent event at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. 

(An updated slide deck for presentation can be found here.)

Learn more about the Rhodes Center.

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

In the last few years, globalization has gotten an increasingly a bad rap. Whether because of increasing geopolitical tensions over high end computers chips, or the realization that when you outsource your manufacturing base it’s quite hard to make things in a hurry (see: the pandemic), people across the political spectrum are calling time on ‘make it there, ship it here.’ 

It seems that politicians of all stripes want to roll back global supply chains and ‘friendshore’ all our wants and needs. The problem with doing so however lies at the level of the firm, as has recently been pointed out by Jonas Nahm. And for a number of reasons, it won’t be an easy transition. 

Jonas is an Assistant Professor of Energy, Resources, and Environment at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and author of the recent and excellent book Collaborative Advantage: Forging Green Industries in the New Global Economy. 

On this episode, Mark talks with Jonas about all the ways that private firms, domestic institutions, and national industrial policies mesh together to produce outcomes that are more than the sum of their parts. 

Watch Jonas’s presentation at the Rhodes Center.

Learn more about and purchase Collaborative Advantage: Forging Green Industries in the New Global Economy.

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts. 

This episode is a little different than the type of conversation you normally have on the show. 

Last year, Mark spoke with Oded Galor about his book The Journey of Humanity, a long-run take on why humanity changed so little for so long, and then all of sudden changed tremendously, mostly for the better. 

It’s a fascinating idea, but of course nobody actually experiences that long-run journey, or compares their daily life to distant ancestors. People typically think on the much shorter timescale of a lifetime, maybe a generation or two. 

At that scale, for many people in America today, it can seem like much of life has gotten worse, and are continuing to do so. 

Put another way: it looks like the American Dream is dead.

But is that true? What does it mean for a dream to die, anyway? And if it is dead, is there a way to revive it? 

These sound like questions for a philosopher. 

Someone who has thought about this a great deal is Josh Preiss. He’s a philosopher, Professor at Minnesota State University, and author of Just Work For All: The American Dream in the 21st Century. 

On this episode, Mark talks with Josh about the ideas behind what we call ‘The American Dream,’ and looks at the reality behind its decline: what’s gotten worse for who, and what’s needed to make things better. 

Learn more about and purchase Josh Preiss’s book.

Watch Josh’s talk at the Rhodes Center.

Find more information about all our episodes, including transcripts, on our website. 

On this episode Mark talks with Oded Galor, Professor of Economics at Brown University, and author of the new book The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality. 

In this book Oded survey’s 200,000 years of human history to create a theory for why societies and economies grew so slowly for so long – and why, starting about 200 years ago, that began to change very rapidly. 

It’s a sweeping history that puts the work of many influential economists into a new light – from Adam Smith to Karl Marx to Paul Romer. But Oded’s story is about much more than economics. It’s about technology, geography, psychology, and politics. In short, it’s about the nature of humanity. 

Mark and Oded discuss all of this, as well as how – as we stumble through a global pandemic and catastrophic climate change – we can grow in ways that benefit us all.

Learn more about and purchase Oded’s book The Journey of Humanity.

Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts.

There’s a standard story economists and historians use to explain the global economy over the last 100 years: there was the gold standard, which gave way to the Bretton Woods system, which gave way to “neoliberal globalization”. 

But on this episode of the Rhodes Center Podcast, Mark talks with someone whose work challenges this story by attacking its foundational myth with deep archival work. 

James Ashely Morrison is an associate professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and author of the new book England’s Cross of Gold: Keynes, Churchill, and the Governance of Economic Beliefs. 

In it, he recounts the fight over Britain’s return to the Gold Standard after World War I, and comes to a bold conclusion: there never really was a “gold standard” – at least, not as we understand it. As James makes vividly clear, the “gold standard” was always more of an idea about a perfect state of the world, rather than an economic reality. As such, fights over it have always been less about actual monetary policy, and more about how people believe the economy is supposed to work. 

James’ work not only adds depth and nuance to this misunderstood turning point in 20th century economics. As he and Mark discuss, it also forces us to reconsider so many of the more contemporary stories we’ve been told about how our economy works, and why. 

Learn more about James’ book England’s Cross of Gold: Keynes, Churchill, and the Governance of Economic Beliefs. 

Watch the talk James’ gave at the Rhodes Center this Spring.