ABSTRACT
Sometimes vast distances in culture and location separate the rich from the poor, as in the contrast between the “modernizing” urban rich and the “traditional” rural poor in many lesser developing nations. One way to explain poverty is to blame it on the poor. World political economy examines the relationship between poverty and justice within, between, and across societies. The subject of world political economy is fraught with moral significance once one accepts the proposition that the plight of vast millions who painfully wither in the face of squalor beyond the bounds of human dignity do so as a consequence of injustices wrought by forces beyond their control. The study of world political economy thus combines the analytical question of how poverty can persist in a world of plenty with the moral or normative question of when and why this is unjust.
