ABSTRACT

The study of the International Political Economy (IPE), like the IPE itself, is plural and unbounded. Despite what partisans sometimes say, rather than there being ‘one way’ of studying the IPE that is the ‘right way’, we find across the world great variation in IPE scholarship in terms of focus, questions, and methods. How then can we make sense of this and understand the field as a whole rather than simply learn one part of it?

This Handbook is designed to address precisely this concern. It maps the shifting boundaries and diverse theoretical commitments of IPE around the world. It engages the geographical and theoretical diversity of the different versions of IPE found in North America, the UK, in Asia and Australia; and notes the absences of distinctive versions of IPE in Europe and Latin America. The volume groups together the essential attributes and positions of each school, inviting the reader to engage with and learn about IPE in all of its guises through this evolving ‘global conversation.’ Rather than adjudicate ‘the one true version’ of IPE, it argues that the intellectual diversity we see around the world is an essential, and positive, feature of the field.

With over twenty contributors from a wide range of countries Routledge Handbook of International Political Economy is an essential resource for all those with an interest in this complex and rapidly evolving field of study.

chapter |20 pages

Introduction

International political economy as a global conversation

part |71 pages

North American IPE

chapter |12 pages

Realist political economy

Traditional themes and contemporary challenges

chapter |14 pages

Contested contracts

Rationalist theories of institutions in American IPE

chapter |15 pages

Of margins, traditions, and engagements

A brief disciplinary history of IPE in Canada

part |67 pages

British IPE

chapter |14 pages

Empiricism and objectivity

Reflexive theory construction in a complex world

chapter |14 pages

Power-knowledge estranged

From Susan Strange to poststructuralism in British IPE

chapter |20 pages

Bridging the transatlantic divide?

Toward a structurational approach to international political economy

part |67 pages

IPE in Asia

chapter |17 pages

Reading Hobbes in Beijing

Great power politics and the challenge of the peaceful ascent

chapter |21 pages

States and markets, states versus markets

The developmental state debate as the distinctive East Asian contribution to international political economy

chapter |15 pages

The rise of East Asia

An emerging challenge to the study of international political economy

chapter |12 pages

Neither Asia nor America

IPE in Australia