ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the sources of IPE are examined, a brief history of the eld is oered, and the main theories that have shaped contemporary mainstream IPE are outlined and explained. Because these were rooted in the academic study of International Relations (IR), we look very briey at the IR theories that shaped the origins of IPE, but the reader is asked to remember that this is an IPE text and that to get a fuller picture of IR as a subject of study they need to look at an IR text. Some readers will be studying IR as well as IPE, or as an overall framework for the analysis of IPE, but others will not; and we hope readers will allow us to engage with both groups of users of this text. This chapter goes on to examine the leading conventional theories in IPE, meaning those that reect both dominant ways of teaching the subject and those that have most claim on the research literature in the eld. The chapter does not examine more critical ideas of IPE, although some of these have become widely used and so could also be described as ‘mainstream’, because they are the subject of Chapter 2. This distinction between ‘mainstream’ and ‘critical’ literatures will seem unnatural to some readers because there is some overlap between the two, and because it seems to arbitrarily force a distinction on those entering a complex eld of study. But it makes sense in so far as: (i) it is how the subject is often taught; and (ii) it is helpful as you begin a study – and this is an introductory text – to break the eld down into manageable elements, even if you subsequently bring these elements together in a dierent way when you have started to get a more sophisticated understanding.
