ABSTRACT
After mentioning early academic writings on political economy (PE), this chapter analyses the rise and decline of classical realist-mercantilist thought, through its problematization by Smith and Hume, and refurbishment by Alexander Hamilton and Friedrich List; the contribution of liberalism in Hume’s, Smith’s, Ricardo’s, and J. S. Mill’s formulations; the signal contributions of Marx, and the early Marxists spurning both realism and liberalism; and the theoretical evolution of IPE through later revisions of the three pre-theories, to embark on contemporary revisions of liberalism by Keohane’s interdependence theory, Keohane and Nye’s regime theory, John Ruggie’s concept of ‘embedded liberalism’, open economy politics in the 1990s, etc. The chapter then discusses the re-emergence of alloyed forms of mercantilism in the policy prescriptions of Brazilian dependentistas and Indian ISI strategists; mercantilism-inspired policies gaining influence in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America, as in Brexit-mode Britain, temporization over fulfilling its tariff-lifting, subsidy-dropping, and economy-opening obligations by Trump administration; the contemporary revisions of Marxism in North America, and its echoes and independent developments in Latin America; and ‘Hegemonic Stability Theory’, two basic premises of which are: (1) no international economic order is imaginable without a hegemonic power sustaining its orderliness and openness; and (2) the hegemon holds the system together by supplying public or collective goods. It also discusses the critiques of the theories, to point to an eclectic current away from the revised holy troika of pre-theories.
