ABSTRACT
For the purpose of analysis, the world can be understood by looking at the structures that frame the relationships between nation-states and global markets. Strange (1988), in the context of her work on the international political economy (IPE), identified these structures as: security; production; finance; and knowledge. In all of this, the key question is, as Strange asks, cui bono? (who benefits?). Balaam and Veseth (1996: 101) describe why this seemingly simple question is fundamental: ‘Asking this question forces us to go beyond description to analysis. To identify not only the structure and how it works, but its relationship to other structures and their role in the international political economy [an understanding which] therefore becomes a matter of holding in your mind a set of complex relationships and considering their collective implications’.
