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 PART 1
Introduction 5
How to study Global Political Economy 11
How to think about Global Political Economy 31

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 CHAPTER 1
Introduction

Nicola Phillips

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 6 Introduction

Welcome to the fascinating world of Global Political Economy. Some of you may already be
acquainted with our field (which from now on we’ll call GPE); others of you may be coming
to GPE, and perhaps even the social sciences, for the very first time. Either way, you have
made a great choice!
GPE is a marvellously rich, varied, and relevant subject for you to study. You will see its
connections immediately to your own everyday life and the world we all live in together. It
will stretch you intellectually in thinking about difficult questions, in understanding rich
and often complex bodies of theory, and in being able to work with different approaches
and methods to explore and analyse the subject matter that you will encounter in the field.
It is a wonderful place for people with open minds and curiosity, who want to be chal-
lenged and provoked into deeper thinking. It offers a set of debates which will stimulate you
and often unsettle the assumptions you make about the world, and which will encourage
you to understand how other people see the world. It doesn’t contain easy answers, and you
will need to push yourself to engage properly with it. But it is worth every bit of the effort.
We aim, with this textbook, to help you to dive into GPE and start to uncover for yourself
its breadth, diversity, and interest. We’ll delve in the chapters of Part I into some of the foun-
dations of GPE, with interesting discussions about the contours of the field, the big questions
about how to go about studying GPE, and an introduction to the theories that you need to
know. You can then stand on these foundations as you move into Part II of the book, which
covers a wide array of some of the most important and interesting topics in contemporary GPE.
But before that, let’s look briefly at the ‘what, where, and who’ of GPE, and then explore
how this textbook is organized and how you can use it in your studies.

1.1 What is GPE?

GPE is a contemporary field of study which first took shape in the 1960s and 1970s, most
often going under the label ‘International Political Economy’ (IPE). We will come back to
the difference between IPE and GPE in just a second. Clearly, though, regardless of the ad-
jective in front, it is a field which is rooted in the tradition of political economy. Those of you
who have some familiarity with GPE might have come across the contention that political
economy is about the interaction between politics and economics, or indeed that political
economy is the study of the politics of economic relations. But, as Leonard Seabrooke and
Kevin Young tell us (see Section 2.2), this definition doesn’t capture the core of GPE, in the
sense that you can’t separate something called ‘politics’ and something called ‘the economy’.
Instead, GPE, at its core, is the study of the forms of power—economic, political, material,
and social—which shape how the world operates.
So, what about the ‘global’ prefix? As noted, the field that has often come to be called
GPE started out in its contemporary form as ‘International Political Economy’. IPE, at least
in the dominant form it took in the United States, was closely associated with the discipline
of International Relations (IR), and many of the key scholars associated with the emerging
field of IPE would identify themselves as scholars of IR. It follows, then, that many of the
issues that most preoccupied them concerned relationships between national states—the
‘inter-national’.

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 Introduction
7

Over time, this dominant focus came to be challenged by those who argued that the field
of IPE was, and needed to be, much more encompassing if it were truly to get to grips with the
nature of power in the world. It needed to incorporate attention to a wide range of actors which
were not states, and a wide array of processes which transcended the interplay between national
states or governments. IPE evolved in this direction, becoming the broader and much richer
field that we see today. But many people remained dissatisfied with ‘international’ as the adjec-
tive describing the field, and opted instead for the name GPE in order to capture this expanded
scope of interest (see Section 1.2). We use GPE here as our preference, for these reasons.
Don’t get too hung up on this point, though. Some people prefer IPE, some GPE, and
some use them essentially interchangeably. Their preference often reflects the scholarly tra-
ditions in which they are working, but GPE and IPE are both often used and well recognized
as names for this field of study, and you will encounter both names in your further reading.
These comments point to what, I expect, will strike you most about GPE, which is its breadth
and scale. It is often remarked that it can feel hard to touch the sides of GPE, such is the richness
and variety of its subject matter, the wide variety of people who cluster under its banner, and
the diversity of theories, methods, and approaches. This is undoubtedly part of its charm and
why you will find it so fascinating. But it would be a mistake to think that GPE is incoherent, or
that it lacks a unifying core. The chapters in Part I of the book explore this point in more detail,
and you will see GPE’s central themes of power running through all of the chapters in Part II.

1.2 Where is GPE?

Despite their names, IPE and GPE have both—entirely fairly—been criticized for their lack
of a ‘global’ viewpoint. This is meant in two senses. First, for a long time, most of the atten-
tion in IPE and GPE has been focused on the Anglo-American world, alongside parts of
East Asia. This has meant that the topics of interest have been primarily about the processes
and issues that most affect those parts of the world—and which emerge from and are shaped
most by them—with the rest of the world being more of an afterthought.
Second, IPE and GPE have evolved as fields dominated by scholars from North America,
the United Kingdom (UK), and Australia, with rather little room afforded for scholars in
other parts of the world. This led to discomfort among many scholars with the specifically
‘Western’ character of IPE/GPE, and generated calls for much greater engagement with per-
spectives from people working in other parts of the world which would both enrich the field
and challenge many of its core assumptions, premises, and interests.
It remains true that the majority of people who call themselves scholars of GPE are work-
ing in universities in North America, the UK, and Australia. But this is changing rapidly, and
the calls for more engagement are being heeded. One of the aims of this textbook is to make
a real contribution to this project of GPE as a genuinely ‘global’ field of study. You will see
from the list of authors (see About the Contributors) that they have been drawn from many
different parts of the world and diverse national identities, whether in relation to where they
have lived, where they were educated, and/or where they now work as academics.
The reasons for this are perhaps obvious. Understandings of power are always going to
be different when developed from the vantage point of the most powerful countries in the

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 8 Introduction

world, and often by the most privileged people within them, than if they emerge from the
less powerful, or even powerless. In the chapters of this book, you’ll be invited to reflect
on the difference in thinking about global governance from the perspective of the global
‘governors’ compared with the globally ‘governed’, for instance, or about inequality from the
perspective of rich countries as opposed to poorer and more marginalized ones, or about
globalization through the lens of Asian development models rather than neoliberal models
in North America or Europe.
While the value of such ‘global’ perspectives may seem intuitively quite clear to you al-
ready, it is worth reflecting on these issues carefully as you read this volume. Ask yourselves:
what value is added in a traditionally Anglo-centric field by greater engagement between
scholars from different parts of the world, with varied experiences and perspectives, and a
greater array of intellectual traditions and normative frameworks to draw on? What would
we miss if we did not have this diversity and geographical breadth? How would our under-
standing of the world be affected, and impaired? How is it enriched?
We still have some way to go and much work to do before our field is and feels genuinely
‘global’ in its profile and substance. It is so important for the next generation of students of
GPE—which, I hope, will include some of you!—to continue positioning GPE within this
project, and reflect the intellectual value of much greater diversity.

1.3 Who is GPE?

The discussion just now gives us a starting point as well in thinking about the ‘who’ question:
whose voices are heard in GPE? Whose dominate? Whose are not accommodated? And with
what consequences?
We have looked already at the ‘who’ question through the lens of the geographical reach
of the GPE community. What about academic identities? As you will see from the profile of
the authors in this book (see About the Contributors), GPE is—and needs to be—a gen-
uinely interdisciplinary field, reflecting the best of the spirit of political economy. It offers
a home for people with backgrounds as political scientists, international relations scholars,
economists, sociologists, students of business and management, students of development,
anthropologists, geographers, and many more. The point is that these people are brought
together around the core themes in GPE which represent shared interests. And one of the
hallmarks of GPE, at its best, is the way that different disciplinary perspectives interact with
one another and offer different kinds of insight into the key issues and questions.
So GPE is not just one group of scholars who all share the same academic identity or
academic background, but is by definition an interdisciplinary field.
Now, let’s extend the ‘who’ question to the voices which traditionally have been less
dominant in GPE. It was a long time ago now that feminist political economists started to
argue that GPE was guilty of a complete neglect of gender, and this is a point which more
recently has been made forcefully in relation to race. Thanks to the huge range of scholars
and scholarship making the argument—again and again—about the importance of these
perspectives over the years, we now have a field of study genuinely capable of accommodat-
ing ways of seeing the world that go beyond the dominant masculinized, White, Eurocentric

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 Introduction
9

perspectives. We can understand power in its many dimensions, including at the intersec-
tions of gendered and racialized forms of power, and our understanding of every issue and
topic encompassed by GPE is enhanced: how otherwise could we possibly think properly,
for instance, about inequality, or labour and work, or globalization, or trade and finance?
Again, this might seem intuitively obvious to you, but we encourage you to keep this
question at the front of your mind as you read the chapters in this book, discuss and debate
the issues with your peers and teachers, and start to think deeply about the issues.
The point about diverse perspectives connects more broadly to a need for diversity in the
academy, and in our field. The value of diversity for our academic field cannot be disputed:
the different light that is shed on the core questions, the new questions which are posed,
the challenge to dominant ways of thinking that all come from diversity—all are critical to
us as individuals and as a community in unsettling our own assumptions and causing us to
seek deeper understanding of how others see the world in order to understand, decide, and
continually question how we ourselves see it.
This textbook is designed with the aspiration to make a real contribution to all of these
dimensions of diversity in GPE, and to capture the freshening of the field that greater diver-
sity is starting to bring about.
But there is an important final point to make. GPE is a field that brings together people
right across the spectrum of ‘academic age’, as it were—including students. We tend to as-
sume that the people most worth listening to are those who have been working in the field
for the longest and have reached the highest levels of academic achievement. And it is of
course true that they often bring wisdom, perspective, and great learning to their teaching
and research. But so much fresh thinking, challenge, and dynamism comes from people at
all stages of their academic careers, and any good teacher will tell you how much they learn
from their students.
So, you are also part of this field of GPE, and this textbook is designed to encourage you
to take your place in it, to participate in the debates, and to think deeply about your own
perspectives and the arguments you want to make.

1.4 How to use this book

Everything I have said above about the ‘what, where, who?’ question informs the way this
book has been put together and what it offers you as a resource to support your studies. First,
as mentioned in Section 1.2 and Section 1.3, you will notice the diversity in the line-up of
contributors: you will engage through your reading and the electronic resources with people
working in different parts of the world, at different stages of their academic careers, of differ-
ent genders and ethnicities, and from different disciplinary backgrounds.
Second, you will notice that in all of the chapters, the authors use many examples and
case studies drawn from around the world, representing a wide range of issues, so that you
are able to gain fuller insight into how the global political economy works and the impact of
the key processes and dynamics across different parts of the world.
And third, you will notice that the chapters in Part II of the book cover a wide terrain of
some of the most interesting topics in GPE at the present time, and offer you an early insight into

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 10 Introduction

how some of the theories and methods of analysis in GPE can help you to understand the ques-
tions that we—and you—are interested in as students and scholars of GPE. The ‘concept’ for this
textbook is that the best and most interesting way for students new to the field to approach it is
through the big questions, topics, and debates which animate GPE. It is by looking at big ques-
tions, and considering different ways of exploring them, that you will most easily understand
and be able to assess the value of the different theories and methods that people use in the field.
This brings us to an important point about this book, which is that it is intended to be an
introduction. No single volume can cover the full scope of GPE, and no single chapter can
give you everything there is to know about a particular topic or question. There is a reason
why people spend their entire academic lives studying particular issues! So, while we hope
that you will rely on this textbook systematically as you approach your studies, it can’t and
won’t be a ‘one-stop shop’ for everything you need or want to know.
It is intended instead to help open the door to you, to help you survey the landscape as
you walk through it, and then assist you with resources for roaming across this landscape.
Each chapter offers references and suggestions for further reading, and the electronic re-
sources offer further guidance and suggestions for you to extend your learning.
Perhaps most importantly, our aim is to invite you to become an active participant in the
discussions and debates which animate the field. This is precisely the idea of the Roundtable fea-
tures which accompany each chapter in Part II. Their purpose is to give you an insight into how
scholars in the field engage with one another, how they debate with one another over the big
questions, and how different perspectives can be brought to bear on the issues that interest us.
It is often the case that the word ‘debate’ is taken to mean very different—often ­polarized—
opinions and positions being brought into confrontation with one another. But that is not al-
ways what debate means in academic circles. You will see in the Roundtables some instances
where people disagree with one another, others where there is basic agreement but people
have different ways of approaching the question, others where people agree but for different
reasons, and so on. ‘I completely disagree with you and you are wrong!’ doesn’t always have
to be the basis for debate. Equally valid are ‘Yes, I agree with you, but there is a missing ele-
ment to that argument’ or ‘I think what you are saying is valuable, but it still doesn’t provide
a full answer to the question for the following reasons’ or ‘I think about this issue in a very
different way’. This is the approach to debate which is reflected in the Roundtables, reflecting
dialogue between scholars on issues and questions, and the interplay of different opinions,
different perspectives, and different vantage points.
Each Roundtable finishes with an ‘Over to you’ section, inviting you to consider where
you stand and what you think. You might start off by thinking about how persuasive you find
the perspectives you have read in the Roundtable—which perspective leaves the greatest
impression on you, and why. Who or what do you agree and disagree with, and why? Do you
feel that what you thought you thought is no longer what you think?(!) What do you need to
read more about, and talk to more people about, so that you understand better and are able
to improve your knowledge and thinking? As you advance in your studies, you will hone
your skills in thinking independently about your own position, and how you learn from
having that position tested in debate and dialogue in the classroom and outside it.
So, with that, the door is open—welcome to the world of GPE!

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