ABSTRACT
The research question guiding this chapter is whether the current debate regarding the nature of international relations in general, and international political economy in particular, is related to different views of various academic communities, roughly along an American/ non-American cleavage. Such a divide is thought to exist, corre sponding approximately with a divide between (predominantly American) rationalists and (predominantly European) constructivists. It will be argued that any claim about American intellectual he gemony obscures the main issue at stake: are international politics and international economics related, but clearly distinct, spheres, or do they constitute one integrated research subject? The answer to this ontological question sets limits on the theoretical approaches available. This chapter argues in favor of the second perspective and suggests that the work of Strange is one of the few examples, albeit an imperfect one, of such a perspective presently available in the discipline. The chapter is structured as follows. The next section considers the place of knowledge in the power structures of world politics. In the third section, we investigate the claim that the aca demic community studying international relations is divided by an
American/non-American cleavage. Next, the chapter shows how such a debate obfuscated the ontological and epistemological questions underlying our object of study. In the fifth section it is argued that our object of study requires a perspective which truly integrates (inter)national politics and (inter)national economics. As of now, only a few such integrated perspectives are at hand. This chapter claims that Strange offers one such integrated perspective. From the analy sis presented below it follows, first of all, that rationalist (rational choice) and constructivist approaches need not be mutually exclu sive avenues to knowledge about international affairs, and second, that IR scholars need to debate whether their research subject is constituted by the political aspects of international economic rela tions or by the international political economy.
