ABSTRACT
If interpretivist security studies focused on denaturalizing the constitutive nature of Cold War realism and strategic studies in international relations, interpretivist studies of international political economy (IPE) fulfi ll a similar role for liberalism, its precursors, and its heirs. Just as conventional security studies accord with realism’s goal of maintaining international political order, conventional IPE accords with liberalism’s goal of achieving prosperity through rational, self-interested, and individualistic behavior. “Traditional” IPE analyzes the interrelationship between wealth and power, or global economic processes and domestic ones, or connects global economic institutions and processes to bilateral, transnational, regional, or other cross-border issues, or examines historical and policy trends that connect the global economy to international security.
