The writing is superb—witty and engaging. The substantive discussions clarify and summarize without oversimplifying. Cohen is an ideal guide for this entertaining journey through the history of the field.
Crystal, Fordham University. International Political Economy Benjamin J. Illus: 7 halftones. Overview Author s Praise 6. Robert Powell , for example, suggests that both structural realism and neoliberal institutionalism are special cases of a single model of states attempting to pursue their interests under conditions of anarchy and constraints imposed by different capabilities among the actors in the system.
Yet others disagree with the implicit assumption that neoliberal institutionalist cooperation is good , that cooperation necessarily leads to more peaceful, more materially comfortable, and more emancipatory outcomes Keeley, ; Kokaz, ; Marchand, The intellectual history by Cohen provides an overview and assessment of the development of regimes theory.
The other major stream of liberalism diverges from the neoliberal institutionalism and the Keynesian emphasis on coordination through regulation of global economic interactions. The neoclassical liberals, including economists of the Austrian School and leading U. Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich A.
Milton Friedman similarly argued in favor of letting markets operate without government intervention. Government policies that seek to manipulate markets for political outcomes are unavoidable errors, in his view. In an article coauthored with Anna J. Schwartz, the economists conclude that. Nevertheless, we also believe that the same [political] forces that prevented that outcome in the past will continue to prevent it in the future.
Proponents of the Washington Consensus placed efficiency of the economy as their highest objective. Further, they did so under the assumptions that efficiency was good and that they understood mechanisms of economics sufficiently to identify good, efficient policies Williamson, , p.
As Dani Rodrik sardonically recounted:. Any well-trained and well-intentioned economist could feel justified in uttering the obvious truths of the profession: get your macro balances in order, take the state out of business, give markets free rein. Ultimately, the popularity of the Washington Consensus waned as it failed to produce positive economic growth in developing countries. The failure of the Washington Consensus cast attention back onto other liberal, but not neoclassical, political economy theories, specifically those dealing with how institutions can resolve externalities and other forms of market failure in an otherwise liberal global political economy.
In the wake of the decline of the Washington Consensus and the financial crisis beginning in , special mention of the scholarship of Susan Strange must be made.
Strange, who could be classified, broadly, as a liberal in her understanding of markets and efficiency, strongly criticized the neoclassical position. She understood that markets did not function in the absence of good governance. Indeed, in and again in she analyzed a global political economy in which states had ceded control to markets, with the expectation of disastrous results for volatility and the health of the global economy Strange, , She saw clearly the danger of fast-moving financial flows in a global political economy in which no government provided the appropriate regulation to ensure fair dealing and protect against the negative externalities that result when rational self-interested agents pursue their self-interest in the absence of such regulation.
No one has been overseeing the global financial system, and the result has been, as Strange predicted, serious harm. Landmark works in the empirical study of financial crisis and contemporary inequality such as Picketty and Tooze are essential contributions to the study of the contemporary salience of finance and financial crisis in contemporary global capitalism.
Indeed, as John Ikenberry observes, the liberal international order faces grave challenges from resurgent economic nationalisms and social conservatisms.
In addition to this 21st-century political challenge, the liberal tradition has historically been most broadly and deeply challenged by Marxian theories of global political economy. Karl Marx, along with Friedrich Engels and later Vladimir Lenin, is considered the progenitor of a political economy that emphasizes the role class plays in society. Marx, writing in the mid- 19th century , combined philosophical investigation of political economy with activism.
He witnessed a world that was being changed by industrial development, in which the workers were increasingly subject not just to the authority of the state but also to the control of the capitalist. This notion of the dialectic and the teleological view of history—that these contradictions would inexorably lead to a communist society as the predictable end state and ironically, somewhat self-contradictorily that this unavoidable revolutionary change should be fomented—has not been borne out and, arguably, has been contradicted.
In terms of the development of political economy, Marx broke with the liberals in his identification of the sphere of production, as opposed to the sphere of exchange, as the focal point of sociopolitical and economic dynamics.
Market mechanisms were relatively fixed, but the politics of production—whether it is on land used to grow food or on the shop floor—determined the nature and dynamics of the social order.
A long period characterized by slavery followed, where some people subjugated others to the status of chattel and appropriated their labor power directly. This system is inefficient and comes to be plagued with high costs involved in maintaining order and overseeing production. In Europe, the period of slavery is followed by feudalism, where direct ownership of individuals ends, but peasants are nonetheless tied to the land, which itself can be owned.
The peasant thus owes the owner of the land a level of labor dues. The transition to capitalism emerges when the social relations of production the social overlay of the feudal system in this latest stage become impediments to further development. They are stripped of their land and put in a position where they must sell their labor power in the market for a wage. Marx extended this concept of alienated labor in two ways that are important for the study of global political economy.
First, he emphasized the alienation of labor as the definitive element in the capitalist system. The division of labor in an industrializing society meant that workers would have no choice but to sell their labor power as a commodity to survive.
In doing so, the worker sells his power of production to the capitalist. The alienation of the worker from his own labor gives a special viciousness to the class relations that characterize the capitalist mode of production Marx, a.
As capitalism became more advanced, the accumulation of surplus value led to the concentration of ownership through the rise of monopolies. Bank ownership became concentrated and closely interconnected with the interests of monopoly capital. The consequence, Lenin wrote, was a shift in capitalism. Furthermore, imperialism was the natural result, as finance capital moved to expropriate the raw materials of the colonies. The ultimate contradiction between capitalism and monopoly and the push for domination eventually must lead, Lenin stated, to inter-imperialist rivalry and, finally, the decay of monopoly capitalism.
Where Marx saw the spread of the capitalist mode of production to all societies as inevitable, other critical scholars were concerned that capitalism was creating not models of itself but of a new kind of social order. Dependency scholars argued that instead of facilitating the growth of capitalism in the third world, capitalist and imperialist actions were leading to a system where real capitalism could not possibly develop.
Dependency scholars argued that capitalist interests often strengthened precapitalist forms of exploitation. Hence, large landowners would solidify their position in a society by reaping the benefits of a captive population of laborers in a system more akin to feudalism than capitalism, but without the internal contradictions that would lead to its transformation. Amin, for example, examined how accumulation differs in the core of developed countries and the periphery of developing countries.
In the wealthier core, the masses are essentially co-opted through the production and availability of the consumer goods needed to satisfy them. In the periphery, production is focused on luxury goods and exports, thereby further enriching the dominant classes and leaving the needs of the masses unfulfilled and the people marginalized.
Marxist scholars considered this analysis to be flawed by its concern for actions taking place in the sphere of exchange trade between core and periphery and not the sphere of production more class-based analysis. Supporters of the original Marxian formulation like Laclau and Warren produced critical analyses of dependency arguments. Dependency scholarship was quite popular given its ability to explain both underdevelopment and the failure of class politics to grow along traditionally identified Marxist paths.
In the s, Immanuel Wallerstein brought dependency and a desire to reconceptualize the developmental paths of the advanced industrial states in the long-term approach of Fernand Braudel — together to form world-systems analysis. He was able to add political and cultural conditions to the essentially materialist analyses of longer-term critical history. Wallerstein understands a world-economy as. A large geographic zone within which there is a division of labor and hence significant internal exchange of basic or essential goods as well as flows of capital and labor.
A defining feature of a world-economy is that it is not bounded by a unitary political structure. Rather, there are many political units inside the world-economy, loosely tied together in our modern world system in an interstate system.
And a world-economy contains many cultures and groups—practicing many religions, speaking many languages, differing in their everyday patterns. This does not mean that they do not evolve some cultural patterns, what we shall be calling a geoculture. It does mean that neither political nor cultural homogeneity is to be expected or found in a world-economy. What unified the structure most is the division of labor which is constituted within it.
Scholars like Chase-Dunn and Hall , sought to push the elements of world-system analysis to earlier eras in explicitly comparative work. All these works are essentially emancipatory in their intent. They share the view that poverty is a central problem, that global inequalities should be addressed, and that remedies must be adopted. Italian communist Antonio Gramsci continues to have a major influence on the field of international political economy.
Gramsci, who was influenced by Marx, Lenin, and other socialist and communist thinkers, contributed the concept of Gramscian hegemony to the study of IPE. While in liberal and realist IPE, hegemony simply refers to a single state having a preponderance of power, Gramsci looked at the complex interconnection between the material and productive base of the social order the structure and philosophy, ideas, culture, and relationships the superstructure.
Henk Overbeek , however, emphasizes that hegemony in the global political economy has to do more with dominance of a class—specifically of the capitalist class. As Robert W. Cox , p. Like Gramsci, Karl Polanyi saw society resisting the negative consequences of capitalist markets. Polanyi also saw the relationship between society, markets, and the state as historically situated, with technological and policy innovations leading to changes in society.
Gramscian global political economy has been particularly relevant to the study of globalization and the spread of liberal markets around the world. These approaches to global political economy suggest that the existing tension in the world between the antiglobalizers and the proglobalizers has at root a dialectical contestation between hegemonic and counterhegemonic groups.
These authors focus on the importance of groups and other nonstate actors, as well as states, since civil society within the global political economy includes a variety of types of actors. The global financial crisis of provided the impetus for Marxian-influenced scholarship focusing on globalization. Marxian analyses of global financial crises differ from their liberal counterparts in emphasizing the structural nature of these periodic crises.
That is, Marxian theorists tend to locate the tendency for economic crisis in the very nature of the system, as a necessary and relatively predictable feature, impossible to explain by reference to the individual decision-making of leaders and firms alone Harvey, ; Krippner, Important actors in the analysis, be they firms and consumers, states, or classes, are all engaged in buying and selling, producing goods and services for sale, and seeking wealth Tickner, Feminist approaches to global political economy highlight two important points that are usually overlooked.
Second, productive i. These reproductive activities are almost universally associated with feminine characteristics and are not considered by mainstream global political economy analyses. Peterson b argues, however, understanding the analytical implications of gendered hierarchies provides a more complete understanding of processes of the global political economy see also Griffin, The approach by J.
Gibson-Graham to decentering and reconceptualizing the capital-labor relation opens an analytical space for feminist theorizations of GPE along these lines. The marketization of the global political economy, including the integration of emerging market economies, also has important gender implications.
As some scholars note, these changes are not necessarily simply good or bad. Consequently, a further contribution of feminist GPE has been to challenge the pervasive association of the study of the global or the totality with a masculine drive to dominance.
Instead of combatting the impulse to study the global by turning to a study of microrelations, feminist GPE has developed theories and methods for understanding gender as a mechanism of producing and rationalizing the inequalities within global capitalism Bhattacharya, ; Fraser, ; Tepe-Belfrage, Hozic and True bring together a variety of feminist and queer perspectives on global financial crisis, highlighting how these concerns cannot be consigned to the margins of the study of global economic processes.
A burgeoning literature in postcolonial political economy has emerged through critical conversation with traditional IPE. This literature mobilizes a critique of Eurocentrism in political economy and foregrounds the structural impact that colonial histories continue to exert on global economic life Dirlik, ; Grovogui, ; Lowe, ; Shilliam, Robbie Shilliam , b , for example, theorizes about Atlantic slavery and its consequences for our understanding of liberal and Marxian IPE. Debates continue over whether Marxian theory is essential to a postcolonial project of emancipation and self-determination Rao, An influential Marxian critique of postcolonial studies can be found in Chibber Notwithstanding these tensions, scholars continue to draw inspiration from both postcolonial theory and Marxian theory to construct critiques of contemporary global capitalism.
Prior to the s, research on China generally focused on processes of development and modernization of a peripheral country. As China made initial changes to its economy and began to participate more in global trade, new questions emerged. Jacobson and Okensenberg , for example, examined the impact of the participation of China, a developing country with a command economy, in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank it had been a member since and the likely consequences for the global economic order of its signing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
These changes spurred assessment of the IPE implications of China as a rising power. Instead, this trend provides empirical and theoretical analysis of how China reshapes but does not necessarily remake global capitalism—not overturning global capitalism and the neoliberal order but rather exerting influence on and shaping its contours Hung, , This stream of research avoids theorizing China as a unitary actor and instead looks closely at the global consequences of how the Chinese economy is organized domestically and in the global context.
China has been able to maintain strong growth and an export-driven trade policy in this unstable circumstance only because of overconsumption and debt in the United States. Disruption of neoliberal globalization is another important theme. For example, Hopewell argues that Chinese inconsistency—sometimes supporting and sometimes contesting neoliberal rules—is the root of its disruptiveness.
Weinhardt and ten Brink suggest that explanation for this inconsistency can be found in domestic differences in the structure and degree of government intervention in sectors. McNally identifies the source of instability in the contradictions of Sino-capitalism, described as both neoliberal and neostatist and as organized top-down by the state and bottom-up through networks of entrepreneurs.
The second trend, queer global political economy, can be seen within the broader category of queer international relations IR theory Weber, , while overlapping substantially with feminist and other critical approaches.
Queer IR theory uncovers and problematizes the political consequences of assumptions, grounded in naturalized cultural practices, of binary constructions of identity—of assuming the world is divided into male and female or similarly into normal and abnormal, heterosexual and homosexual, or other taken-for-granted dichotomies. This framing of the issue of precarious labor, however, is not without its critics.
With a properly global analytic lens, some argue, precarity does not appear to be a new phenomenon at all but a condition that has characterized the Global South since its inception and which now threatens the North as well Scully, Moreover, as Ritu Vij , p. It is also worth mentioning a trend that seems to have petered out. At the time the original version of this article was drafted, communitarianism seemed to be a promising, emerging stream of normative research that would address problems of global capitalism.
Largely associated with the work of Amitai Etzioni , , communitarianism can be seen as a countertheory to the idea that liberal markets are natural and that men and women are naturally economically rational, self-interested agents.
The local, national, and global political economies are in essence communities. The connection to community seems to draw on the feminist idea of an ethic of care Tronto, Communitarian global political economy, however, failed to gain traction, perhaps because other, more normatively progressive critical approaches came to the fore.
As this article was being prepared for publication May , it became difficult to ignore the severe implications of the COVID pandemic for the global political economy. The robust literature dealing with the global history of pandemics and the dangers that a new pandemic would pose in a world marked by increasingly intensifying processes of economic globalization are highlighted here.
The work of Pirages , , deserves special mention for its wide historical and geographical scope and its sensitivity to the intersections between international politics, infectious disease transmission, and the coordinated social responses or lack thereof that have been implemented historically to combat the worst consequences of infectious disease. Sell and Owain D. Though this observation focuses on health more generally, the global, national, and local responses to pandemics are certainly a part of the larger global health system.
Three of the articles are especially relevant to the GPE aspects of pandemics and other instances of the spread of infectious disease. Rebecca J. Hester and Owain D. Stefan Elbe and Christopher Long explore global assemblages of medical molecules that become valuable for biodefense against disease outbreaks, bioterrorist attacks, and the like.
Much of the salient research on the global politics of infectious diseases prior to COVID has occurred in fields of global health governance Huang, ; Youde, and security studies Davies, ; Price-Smith, , and these studies will likely prove essential for future pandemic-related knowledge production in GPE.
New materialist approaches that privilege the impact of nonhuman life processes will likely contribute in important ways to pandemic research White, Though COVID was only recognized as a global pandemic in March , the sheer scope of the crisis resulted in immediate scholarly attention.
Notable analyses of the pandemic and its reverberations in the global economy include the world-systems approach of Silver and Payne and a short but generative series of contributions to the journal of Foreign Policy Walt et al.
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Johnson David K. Keywords international political economy global political economy mercantilism economic nationalism classical liberalism neoliberal institutionalism neoclassical liberalism Marxism feminism postcoloniality.
Updated in this version Light revision throughout, added discussions of postcoloniality and Covid Introduction Research in the field of international political economy, as described in this overview, includes work grounded in different schools of thought and drawing upon distinct conceptualizations of important concepts, relationships, and causal understandings.
Mercantilism The two-volume history of mercantilism by Eli Heckscher outlines at least four elements of this school of thought. Economic Nationalism The 20th century marked a shift in theoretical labels. Economic Nationalism and Development For many theorists, however, economic nationalism takes on a more positive hue when argued from the position of infant industries and developing country economies that need to develop internally before they can compete in global markets.
From Classical Liberalism to Neoliberal Institutionalism and Neoclassical Liberalism In contrast to the emphasis on state power and state interests that characterizes mercantilism and economic nationalism, liberalism emphasizes possessive individualism and the individual as the bearer of rights Macpherson, Early Liberal Writers Among the most important of these liberal rights from the perspective of political economy is that of property.
The purpose of political economy, according to Smith , was first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services.
Comparative Advantage An important question for international political economy is, Why engage in international trade? For example, Michael Storper finds that the world of production has changed fundamentally since the time of Ricardo. Two Strands of Liberalism: Keynesianism and Neoclassical Liberalism As the questions raised by strategic trade theory suggest, liberals wrestle with the appropriate role of the state in the economy. Integration Theory An important inference from Keynesianism is that institutions and governance can be used to create better political, social, and economic outcomes.
He wrote: If one were to visualize a map of the world showing economic and social activities, it would appear as an intricate web of interests and relations crossing and recrossing political divisions comes that would be conducive to commercial, but a map pulsating with the realities of everyday life.
Mitrany, , pp. Interdependence, Regimes, and Neoliberal Institutionalism Although it soon became apparent that the hopeful expectation about how international organizations would foster integration and peaceful cooperation would not come to fruition, the main liberal tenets of integration theory continued to play a role in IPE theory. Krasner, b , p. Neoclassical Liberalism The other major stream of liberalism diverges from the neoliberal institutionalism and the Keynesian emphasis on coordination through regulation of global economic interactions.
Schwartz, the economists conclude that leaving monetary and banking arrangements to the market would have produced a more satisfactory outcome than was actually achieved through governmental involvement. Wallerstein understands a world-economy as A large geographic zone within which there is a division of labor and hence significant internal exchange of basic or essential goods as well as flows of capital and labor. Postcolonial Approaches A burgeoning literature in postcolonial political economy has emerged through critical conversation with traditional IPE.
Funded by a libertarian nonprofit educational organization, the online library has many key liberal texts available in an easy-to-read format. Project Gutenberg. Volunteers upload plain text versions of public domain texts.
A useful source for older, well-known works. The Internet Modern History Sourcebook. Though focusing on history, several of the references here have relevance for international political economy. Resources for the Study of International Relations. An excellent source of general international relations documents, with a broad selection of documents specifically relevant to international political economy.
Collected by Vincent Ferraro. References Agarwala, R. Informal labor, formal politics, and dignified discontent in India. Agathangelou, A. Desire industries: Sex trafficking, UN peacekeeping, and the neo-liberal world order.
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Global political economy: Theory and practice 7th ed. Colbert, J. Excerpt from Memorandum on trade. Translated by R. Halsall Ed. Original work published in Cooper, R.
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London, UK: Macmillan. Original work published Cox, R. Approaches to world order. Civil society at the turn of the millennium: Prospects for an alternative world order. Review of International Studies , 25 1 , 3— Davies, S. Securitizing infectious disease. International Affairs , 84 2 , — Davis, M.
The monster at our door: The global threat of Avian Flu. The Monster Enters. New Left Review , , 7— Deciancio, M. All Azimuth , 9 2 , — China Inc. Review of International Political Economy , 27 2 , — Deudney, D. The resilient order. Foreign Affairs , 97 4 , Deutsch, K. Political community and the North Atlantic area: International organization in the light of historical experience.
Dirlik, A. Critical Inquiry , 20 2 , — The structure of dependence. American Economic Review , 40 2 , — Drezner, D. Globalization and policy convergence. International Studies Review , 3 1 , 53— Dulles, J. Interdependence, basic concept of the mutual security program. Department of State Bulletin , 38 , — Elbe, S. Written in a concise, accessible style by an experienced teacher and scholar, it combines theoretical perspectives, real-world examples, and comparative policy analysis. The text offers students an in-depth, balanced understanding of the contrasting core perspectives in IPE, allowing them to critically evaluate and independently analyze major political-economic events.
This thoroughly updated second edition is essential reading for students of international political economy, economics, political science and global governance. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Remember me Log in. Lost your password?
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