ABSTRACT
In her introduction to the 1984 edition of Paths to International Political Economy Susan Strange (1984: ix) praises the emerging field of International Political Economy (IPE) for being an open and unenclosed corner of social science. In the same text Roger Tooze (1994) charts the rise of IPE as a discipline and records its spreading appeal. This chapter argues that although IPE has continued to expand its vision and increased its popularity since that time, it retains a serious blind spot because it ignores the agency of non-elite groupings of people.1 This exclusion is regrettable for two reasons. First, by focusing on abstract entities such as states and firms the field loses sight of many of the crucial issues such as the impact of the global economy on life chances and survival. Second, ignoring the activity and fate of social groups can contribute to misleading analysis as key actors are overlooked.
