ABSTRACT
This special issue of NPE aims to discuss the recent anthology of our discipline as described by Benjamin J. Cohen (2008). Like all attempts at characterising a fluid situation, it is easy to poke holes in Cohen’s argument. Let me say from the outset, therefore, that I accept two of his central tenets. First, I agree with the proposition that there are different traditions of IPE. Terms such as ‘British’ and ‘American’ are problematic for obvious reasons. Many members of the ‘British’ school are, of course, not really British, in terms of neither nationality nor residence. In fact, not only do many Europeans and Australians adopt the ‘British’ school’s approach, but a considerable number of prominent North American scholars may have greater affinities with the type of research that Cohen brands ‘British’ than with American-style IPE. At the same time, American IPE is far more influential in the UK, particularly among the UK’s version of the ivy league universities, than Cohen acknowledges. The division lines that Cohen refers to, therefore, have less to do with geography or an academic discipline, and more with well-rehearsed debates in the social sciences between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, rationalism and the ‘continental tradition’, and so on.1
