Event: Dr. Layna Mosley Lecture on International Political EconomyOn July 8, 2010, students rushed to the Annenburg Auditorium to listen to Dr. Mosley, a professor from the prestigious  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, deliver a lecture about international politics in a “cut throat world.” The competition for resources across countries is a particularly relevant issue for the cosmopolitan group of BFTF fellows, and they certainly tuned into her lecture. Her engaging style of teaching and knowledge were reflected in her style of presentation, and in her remarkable research record.Dr. Mosley began her lecture by defining international political economy (IPE) as a field within political science. “Political science is concerned with the concentration of power,” she explained to the Fellows. Her slides then related her area of study to political science: “IPE is the reciprocal interactions between wealth (economy) and power (politics).” In other words, Dr. Mosley began her address by emphasizing the significance of trade and economy in the realm of international relations, a hot topic for many of the students sitting in the audience. Efthymios from Greece nodded when she mentioned Greek’s financial crisis, and many of the Western European students looked up when she mentioned the impact of the international institutions such as the EU, WTO, IMF and G-20.Most of Dr. Mosley’s lecture focused on labor rights, a subject that triggered a question about Chinese hypocrisy from Luis (Portugal). Dr. Mosley explained the structure of international human rights groups and domestic lobbies, and their impact on the passage of legal provisions allowing international trade from countries such as China.Globalization can “have either positive or negative” impacts on developing countries, and depending on which countries are developing, argued Dr. Mosley. She spent the last ten minutes of her lecture explaining her research published in her book Labor Rights and Multi National Production. By giving examples that distinguished international corporations from international sub-contractors, Dr. Mosley began to add detail to the students’ conception of what globalization looks like in the everyday.  An international corporation such as Apple that owns a branch in Asia normally generates positive advantages for itself and the region abroad. The multi-national corporation will invest and care for the best practices of its workers. However, Dr. Mosley explained that a corporation that hires an international sub-contractor generally is trying to skirt labor regulations in its host country, opens shop in a less economically regulated country, and generally has little incentive to care for its workers’ labor rights.In conclusion, Dr. Mosley constructed a very sophisticated case about how democracy is the most significant determinant of labor conditions – not globalization itself. The fellows will have a lot to talk in the days ahead!