Director of European Studies, expert in international political economy and international organizations, and Professor of Political Science and Public Affairs, Mark Copelovitch returns to UW this fall after a year on sabbatical in Berlin. He first traveled to Berlin during the global financial crisis, and spent his previous sabbatical there, in 2013-14, where he and his family fell in love with the city. When asked what it is about Berlin he enjoyed the most, he remarked about his fascination with the rich layers of history, and his appreciation for the food, the music, the culture, and his love of Union Berlin, the city’s soccer team in the Bundesliga. He also likened aspects of Berlin to Philadelphia, near where he grew up:, : “The people are gruff and it’s a gritty city of neighborhoods. It reminds me of home.” ; Describing it now as his family’s “home away from home,” it’s no wonder he’s been looking for reasons to return to Berlin since that first sabbatical, and so he found one last year with the American Academy in Berlin.
In the Spring of 2024, after one semester as a visiting scholar in the Transformations of Democracy research group at the Wissenschaftzentrum Berlin (Berlin Social Science Center), Mark was awarded the Axel Springer fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin, where he began working on his latest book project, entitled “Dollar Signs: The Myth of American Decline and the Future of the World Order.” In this project, he explores the case of why the dollar is the dominant global currency, why he believes it will remain so for decades to come, and what that means for American power and US foreign and economic policy. Discussing his motivations, he said, “almost every month in the news for the last five years, someone has written an op-ed about how the decline of the U.S. dollar is just around the corner. Likewise, for almost as long as I’ve been alive, people have been predicting the end of American hegemony in the world.” But Mark is skeptical of both of these notions. In the book, he explains why the supposed contenders to the dollar – the euro, the Chinese renminbi, and cryptocurrencies – don’t meet the economic and political requirements to supplant the dollar as the dominant currency, and why they almost certainly won’t in the future. And he argues that the dollar’s continuing dominance in global finance is the foundation of America’s enduring hegemony in the international system.
In contrast to his previous books, which Mark affectionately describes as “somewhat arcane, boring books that only academics will read,” Mark wanted this latest book project to be more public facing – “something [his] dad would read” – that would speak to a wider audience interested in current policy and political debates about the US economy and America’s role in world affairs. In pursuit of this goal, Mark’s research led him in a somewhat less familiar direction. Rather than speaking primarily with academics or other experts on global finance and international relations, he found himself speaking mainly to policymakers, think tank experts,, and even the general public. During his time at the Academy, Mark found that the subject of dollar dominance was something “everybody knows they should be concerned about, but don’t quite know how to wrap their heads around.” Enter Mark’s book. Through his research, he seeks to ease some of the worries he came across in Germany about America’s future military and economic role in Europe and the world- though many in Germany found his opinion to be rather optimistic. For many years, the German economy’s strength was built on manufacturing and exports, largely to the US and China, but with Germany being unable to fuel its manufacturing with Russian gas due to the war in Ukraine, and with rising tensions between the United States and China, many Germans and Europeans are worried about what their economic and geopolitical future holds, if they rely too much on the US for military security and China for economic prosperity, and if the dollar will remain a stable currency.
Something new Mark found during his research for the book is that he spent lots of time talking to people about the real-world consequences of his research. “I know a lot about global finance and the politics and economics of the world economy, and there were always people interested in the academic details of these topics. But explaining why these things matter for broader topics like American power and prosperity, to a public audience, is kind of new.” The interesting thing about it, in his opinion, was how similar it felt to teaching here at UW, stating, “I teach Introduction to International Relations, and taking complicated political science and international political economy topics and teaching them to undergraduates is actually not that different to talking to r a general public audience, who aren’t specialists in international affairs or political science or economics but are interested and know that they should know more about these important issues important.”
After a yearlong adventure abroad, the year ahead for Mark looks much like a return to form – teaching Poli Sci 140 and International Governance (Public Affairs 850), resuming his position as Director of European Studies, attending Forward Madison FC games, and continuing to work on his book, which he hopes to finish sometime this year, as well as a new project on how media and political talk networks shape public opinion on inflation and the economy in the US and Germany.
You can find a recording of Mark’s spring lecture at the American Academy in Berlin, where he lays out the basis for his book, here: https://www.americanacademy.de/event/dollar-dominance-and-the-future-of-american-power/