ABSTRACT

This chapter explores how political economists have tried to answer the questions of economic growth and distribution. The punditry that surrounded the Seattle meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO) centered discussion on the rise of a "new" international political economy. Understanding why modern colleges maintain separate departments of government and economics reveals a great deal about where political economy has been as a field, and it explains why the topic is considered a "new direction" in comparative politics. The delegates and protesters at the Seattle WTO meetings both saw a new era of globalization. With the US government interested in preventing the spread of communism, comparative political scientists were encouraged to discover what made countries economically and politically stable. Throughout the 1960s and '70s, a handful of economists and political scientists working on the edges of their fields built the foundation for the "new political economy.".