ABSTRACT
The roots of International Political Economy (IPE) lay in economic aspects of relations among nation-states in the international system – foreign economic policy, trade, the spread of production systems and firms across borders, and the international monetary system, as well as a range of international economic institutions and regimes and the interaction between domestic and international policy issues –but not with domestic politics within states. IPE has always had the potential to cut across the levels-of-analysis distinction. If democracy is seen as primarily about pluralism and individual or group autonomy, then of course the complexities of globalization are such that it may foster increased diversity and possibilities for autonomy. Liberal democracy is thus profoundly ‘locked-in’ to the development of the nation-state -and the states system. Economic globalization is driven by new flexible, ‘post-Fordist’ production techniques, superseding the workplace organizational innovations pioneered by the Ford Motor Company in the 1920s.
