ABSTRACT
Mainstream American international political economy (IPE) has gradually lost relevance as a framework for understanding developments in the global political economy. It offers little help for understanding the impact of the China Shock, the development and consequences of the Global Financial Crisis, or the anti-system politics that began to emerge in 2016. These are the three developments that largely defined global political economy during the first quarter of the twenty-first century. It is even less helpful for explaining the climate crisis and the energy transition, the issues that will increasingly shape the global political economy for the next quarter century and beyond. Restoring relevance to American IPE will require the development of theoretical frameworks that are intrinsically systemic and dynamic. I suggest that the Uneven and Combined Development, and the Political Economy of Complex Interdependence, perspectives, supplemented by greater attention to system parameters, provide a strong foundation upon which to build such frameworks.
