INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY

'International political economy' ('IPE') is an academic discipline within the social sciences that analyzes international relations in combination with political economy. As an interdisciplinary field it draws on many distinct academic schools, most notably political science and economics, but also sociology, history, and cultural studies. The academic boundaries of IPE are flexible, and along with acceptable epistimologies are the subject of robust debate. This debate is essentially framed by the discipline's status as a new and interdisciplinary field of study.
Despite such disagreements, most scholars can concur that IPE is ultimately concerned with the ways in which political forces (states, institutions, individual actors, etc.) shape the systems through which economic interactions are expressed, and conversely the effects that economic interactions (including the power of collective markets and individuals acting both within and outside of) have upon political structures and outcomes.
IPE scholars are at the center of the debate and research surrounding globalisation, both in the popular and academic spheres. Other topics that command substantial attention among IPE scholars are international trade (with particular attention to the politics surrounding trade deals, but also significant work examining the results of trade deals), development, the relationship between democracy and markets, international finance, global markets, multi-state cooperation in solving trans-border economic problems, and the structural balance of power between and among states and institutions. Unlike conventional international relations power is understood to be both economic and political, which are interrelated in a complex manner.

Contents

Origin

Notable IPE scholars

External links

Origin

IPE emerged as a heterodox approach to international studies during the 1970s as the 1973 world oil crisis and the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system alerted academics, particularly in the U.S., of the importance, contingency, and weakness of the economic foundations of the world order. IPE scholars asserted that earlier studies of international relations had placed excessive emphasis on law, politics, and diplomatic history. Similarly, neoclassical economics was accused of abstraction and being ahistorical. Drawing heavily on historical sociology and economic history, IPE proposed a fusion of economic and political analysis. In this sense, both Marxist and liberal IPE scholars protested against the reliance of Western social science on the territorial state as a unit of analysis, and stressed the international system.

Notable IPE scholars

★ Theodore Cohn

★ Helen Milner

★ Robert Putnam and his two-level game theory

★ Peter A. Hall

★ Susan Strange

★ Geoffrey Garrett

★ Jeffry Frieden

★ Barry Eichengreen

★ Ronald Rogowski

★ Beth Simmons

★ Francis Fukuyama

★ John Ruggie

★ Gary Gereffi

★ Peter B Evans

★ Robert Bates

★ Robert W. Cox

★ Stephen Gill

★ Stephen D. Krasner

★ Robert Gilpin

★ Immanuel Wallerstein

★ Peter J. Katzenstein

★ Jagdish Bhagwati

★ Jonathan Nitzan

External links

★ International Political Economy Network

★ The Review of International Political Economy

★ MA in Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex

★ M.A. in Global Political Economy at Kassel University

★ International Political Economy Links

★ The International Political Economy Major at Carthage College

★ The International Political Economy Major at Fordham

★ The Program in International and Comparative Political Economy at Yale

★ The B.Sc. in International Business & Politics at Copenhagen Business School

★ The International Center for Business and Politics at Copenhagen Business School

★ International Political Economy at IDSS, Nanyang Technological University

★ International Political Economy at The University of Puget Sound

★ International Political Economy at Colorado College

★ International Political Economy at Albertson College of Idaho