ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how political economists have tried to answer the questions of economic growth and distribution. "Political economy" can often be a menacing subject area for many students. It convinces students that political economy is not only an important field of inquiry, central to most questions in comparative politics, but it is an accessible topic as well. 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 today. Two factors account for the reemergence of political economy in the latter part of the twentieth century First, by mid-century, economists began realizing that ignoring political factors left them with only partial explanations of economic behavior. The second motivation to resurrect political economy resulted from the Cold War.
