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International
Political Economy
in the 21st Century
Understanding of the theories that underpin international political economy (IPE),

and their practical applications, is crucial to the study of international relations, poli-
tics, development and economics.
This is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the field, with an engag-
ing and coherent foundation to the subject. It considers traditional and alternative
approaches to IPE, and in doing so elucidates key concepts, assumptions and the
intellectual and historical context in which they arose and developed. At all times,
it makes clear their relevance to issues from trade, finance and government, to envi-
ronment, technology, health, labour, security, migration, development and culture.
The book encourages independent reflection and critical thinking through a range of
in-text guiding features. In addition, each chapter presents theoretical analysis along-
side contemporary issues, helping the reader to relate to the real world of IPE and to
better understand how theory helps inform interpretation of it.
New to this edition:
■■ comprehensively updated to include key coverage of the post-2015 framework
of the Sustainable Development Goals, the financial crisis and international gov-
ernment responses – successful or otherwise – to recent challenges;
■■ fully updated data, reflective questions, recommended readings, concept and
example boxes, and illustrations;
■■ new chapters on health, migration and labour;
■■ additional coverage of trade theories and key contemporary issues, such as
national versus human security, economic versus human development and illegal
networks in global trade.
Roy Smith is Principal Lecturer and Programme Leader for the MA in International
Development at Nottingham Trent University, UK.
Imad El-Anis is Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader for the MA in International
Relations at Nottingham Trent University, UK.
Christopher Farrands is Principal Lecturer in Global Studies at Nottingham Trent
University, UK.
International
Political Economy
in the 21st Century
Contemporary Issues and Analyses
Second Edition
Roy Smith, Imad El-Anis and Christopher Farrands
Second edition published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 Taylor and Francis Group
The right of Roy Smith, Imad El-Anis and Christopher Farrands to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by
them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or
by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,

and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Pearson Education Limited 2011; Routledge 2013
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Names: Smith, Roy H. author. | El-Anis, Imad, author. | Farrands, Chris, author.
Title: International political economy in the 21st century : contemporary issues and analyses / Roy Smith, Imad El-Anis and
Christopher Farrands.
Description: Second edition. | Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016037518| ISBN 9781138808409 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138808416 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315750637
(ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: International relations--History--21st century. | Globalization. | International economic relations.
Classification: LCC JZ1318 .S625 2017 | DDC 337--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016037518
ISBN: 978-1-138-80840-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-80841-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-75063-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire
Contents
List of illustrations xi
Preface xiii
Acknowledgements xvi
List of abbreviations xvii
Introduction1
So what is IPE? 2
The global jigsaw 4
Structure of the book 5
1 The origins and core ideas of international

political economy 9
Introduction9
The sources of IPE 11
IPE as a critique of IR 13
Realist IR and IPE 14
Liberal IPE 16
Marxist IPE 19
Criticising the mainstream IR approaches 23
The practical concerns shaping the evolution of IPE 24
Refinements of the traditional theories 25
Neo-realism28
Neo-liberalism31
A neo-neo synthesis? 33
Neo-Marxist theories 34
Summary34
Reflective questions 34
Suggestions for further reading 36
vi | Contents
2 Critical approaches to IPE 39

Introduction39
Critical theory 41
Constructivism45
Feminism50
Postmodernism/poststructuralism54
Gramscian approaches to IPE 58
Green thought 63
The new institutional economics: networks of power, networks of exchange 66
Regulation theory and IPE 68
Summary71
3 Business and marketing theories and global

business behaviours 79
Introduction79
Four key basic ideas 80
The global business environment and the different legal environments of business 86
Theories of multinational business behaviour and impacts 87
Regulation and multinational business strategies 94
Private authority and IPE 94
Knowledge as a global commodity 95
International business history and case study analysis 96
Summary97
4 Globalisation and IPE 101

Introduction101
The globalisation debate 104
Origins of globalisation 106
Expansion of the European system 106
Globalisation of trade and finance 108
Corporate globalisation 111
Global culture? 113
Media115
Global environmental degradation 117
Multi-globalisation119
Contents | vii
Summary120
5 National, international, regional and global governance 123

Introduction123
The nature of governance 124
International cooperation 127
Actors128
Issues134
Summary138
6 Trade 143
Introduction143
Liberalism143
Realism/mercantilism144
Structuralism145
The contemporary trade system 146
Rising levels of trade 148
Free trade agreements 152
MNCs and trade 155
Criticisms of trade 157
Trade theory and modelling 159
Summary161
7 Global finance 165

Introduction165
Two stories of financial globalisation 166
The core ingredients of global finance 169
The growth of a globalised financial system: a little more history 170
What was the ‘international debt crisis’ and where did it come from? 173
The financial crisis of the 2000s 174
Global financial institutions 175
viii | Contents
The global financial system after the financial crisis 179

Summary181
8 Development 185
Introduction185
Liberal modernisation 186
The development problem 190
Millennium Development Goals to Sustainable Development Goals 191
Major groups 197
Development projects 201
Critical frameworks for rethinking development 202
Summary203
9 Environment 205
Introduction205
Actors: governments 207
Actors: multinational corporations 210
Actors: non-governmental organisations 211
Issues: resource depletion 212
Issues: deforestation 213
Issues: biodiversity 213
Issues: reef systems 215
Issues: fisheries 215
Issues: energy security 217
Processes218
Summary223
10 Technology in the global political economy 225

Introduction225
What is technology? 226
Technologies as a principal tool of global economic competition 229
Contents | ix
Kondratieff cycles and major innovations 230

Oligopoly competition in high-tech sectors: how multinational firms
use technology to compete 233
Technology, work and patterns of global labour 234
Limitations on the role of technology 236
Intellectual property and technology 238
Technology, competition, and mergers and acquisitions 240
Technology and the individual person as subject in IPE 240
Who has technology leadership? 242
Summary246
11 Culture 249
Introduction249
Liberal triumphalism 250
Clash of civilisations 251
Anti-globalisation/structuralist and green thought 252
Global culture 253
Resistance to cultural hegemony 254
Non-coercive globalisation 257
Summary260
12 Security 265
Introduction265
The development of ‘new’ security issues 266
Emerging issues 270
Summary278
13 Migration and labour 281

Introduction281
Understanding migration 282
Economic migration 284
x | Contents
Technology and migration 286

Labour in the twenty-first century 287
Migration and multiculturalism 288
Human security, human rights and migration 289
Governmental and non-governmental policy responses to migration 290
Summary293
14 Health 297
Introduction297
The health transition 298
People’s Health Movement (PHM) 299
Determinants of health 302
Health in the developing world 306
Health in the developed world 307
Technology and health 309
Summary310
15 Concluding thoughts and remarks 315
Glossary 317
Index 331
Illustrations
Figures
6.1 Regional trade flows 151
14.1 Factors impacting on the health chances of individuals 303
Tables
1.1 Basic information on the world economy 2016 10
1.2 Summary: mainstream theories of international relations and economics
influential in IPE 26
1.3 Changing relative size of largest economies 31
1.4 Chapter summary 35
3.1 Leading firms and oligopolies: competitive structures in selected sectors 82
3.2 Leading twenty world companies all sectors listed by end December 2014
stock market valuation 89
3.3 Leading fifteen world manufacturing companies by revenue rank order 90
4.1 Conceptualising globalisation: three tendencies 105
4.2 Top twenty-five MNCs by rank based on composite scores for sales, profits,
assets and market value 113
5.1 Global governance vs global government 124
5.2 Actors in the global system 128
5.3 Stakeholders in the governance of the global Internet 135
6.1 Trade across regions 149
6.2 Selected ranking of imports and exports in merchandise trade 2012 150
7.1 Public debt as a percentage of GDP 2015 180
8.1 Millennium Development Goals 2015 progress chart 195
9.1 Survey of attitudes towards environmental issues in the EU 2014 206
9.2 Information currently collected regularly on the socioeconomic
benefits from forests 214
xii | Illustrations
9.3 Numbers of threatened species by major groups of organisms 2010–2014 216

9.4 Socio-economic processes and climate change-induced risk and vulnerabiltiy 219
12.1 2015 estimated global nuclear warhead inventories 267
14.1 Annual turnover of largest pharmaceutical companies 2012–2013 301
Preface
This textbook is intended as an aid to study for those looking at IPE as a discrete discipline, or as a
part of a broader politics, international relations or global studies degree programme. It can be read
as an introductory text, or as a supplement to prior reading in related fields. For example, most
universities offer IPE as a second-year optional module, which will build on first-year foundations
that introduce concepts of power, wealth distribution and the respective roles of governments,
non-governmental organisations and market forces.
IPE is a field of study that has increasing significance in relation to ‘everyday’ life. Processes
of globalisation are both widening and deepening and are impacted upon by a range of events
and related processes which are beyond the control of most individuals and even their national
governments.
The manner in which this book is structured is designed to enable students to gain an initial
understanding of the historical and philosophical foundations of various approaches to the study
of IPE. This is then followed by a closer look at what might be described as the mainstream
approaches. However, one of the appealing aspects of this discipline is the diversity of approaches
that it encompasses, and we then go on to look at a number of alternative approaches. It is not
suggested that this is a fully exhaustive list of such approaches but it does include a representative
range.
Between the theory section and the issues section there is a linking chapter that discusses pro-
cesses of globalisation and how these are represented and analysed by various schools of thought.
There is quite a broad spectrum of attitudes towards the scale and importance of globalisation.
For some authors these processes are at the heart of IPE and cannot be underestimated in terms
of their impacts in shaping the contemporary world. They apply at the political, cultural and
socio-economic levels, and also have huge environmental impacts. Others have a more sceptical
approach and refer back to international trading patterns that have developed over several centu-
ries. Although the scale and speed of transport and communication systems may have advanced
significantly over time, the fundamental trade and other international relationships have not
changed that dramatically. It remains a largely state-centric and competitive world. Finally, there
are those who inhabit the middle ground between these two extreme positions. They recognise
the importance of new technologies and that issues of scale and speed do have an impact on rela-
tionships, but they also note the ongoing relevance of the state as a political unit and the lack of
meaningful global governance.
The final section looks at a number of issue areas identified as relevant to the study of IPE. By
definition there is a certain element of selectivity taking place here in determining which issues
are deemed ‘worthy’ of a chapter. Health is clearly a major issue and has its own chapter as well
as being raised in other parts of the book, such as in the chapter on development. Similarly, the
role of the media plays a crucial part in how processes of globalisation are understood. Indeed,
media organisations are active players and key drivers in many aspects of these processes. This
xiv | Preface
point is referred to in the chapter on technology and elsewhere in the book. Hopefully the reader
should see that the issue areas intersect with each other and are only a sample of the myriad
examples that could have been included. If you notice a particular ‘gap’ it would be worthwhile
reflecting on why it is that you feel that a particular issue area has not received due attention.
That may also indicate what type of theoretical approach you may feel most at ease with. We all
have preferences in terms of how we view the world. One of the purposes of this book is to draw
attention to both the range of issues that IPE is concerned with studying and the fact that there
are many differing ways in which to study them.
Advice to readers in Europe and North America

This book has been designed by the authors and the publishers to be used in teaching international
political economy wherever you are in the world. We offer a range of examples and illustrations
from around the world. Students, instructors and lecturers may want to think about the language
we use, and we are well aware that American English is sometimes very different from English
used in the UK or Ireland, or in much of Europe. This is not really a problem in terms of spelling,
although we apologise if spelling and grammar here irritates some readers used to other conven-
tions. It is more of a problem in political language. There are plenty of examples, but ‘liberal’ is
probably the trickiest, since in the US it can be used rhetorically to mean anyone to the left of
the speaker who the speaker doesn’t like. In Europe, ‘liberal’ can include a loose inclination to the
left rather than the right, but it also includes quite fundamentalist right wing politics: in countries
such as Denmark, liberal political parties are well to the right of the mainstream conservatives.
This is not just a confusion of language; it reflects important differences of political practice and
social history. In the US, libertarianism is a more mainstream position on the right than it is in
(Western) Europe; in continental Europe, anarchism is a well-founded and important political
tradition with important economic policy implications, even though it is generally the object of
fear and suspicion in North America and the UK. ‘Conservative’ means different things in differ-
ent contexts too.
Our solution to these difficulties is to explain what we mean by key words as they arise, and the
first two chapters spend some time explaining language that we have used, which we hope helps.
There is also a glossary of terms that will help you, but this is more concerned with the technical
language of IPE. The most problematic issue in this context may be the differences between what
have been called ‘communism’, Leninism, Marxism and variations of Marxisms, which are some-
times referred to as ‘Marxian’, essentially a watered down Marxism. We have used Leninism and
Marxism; we have avoided ‘communism’ because we don’t think it has anything to contribute
to an initial study of IPE, and we have avoided Marxian because it is a milk-and-water word that
says nothing useful. We have also warned readers to beware of their own preconceptions about
political language, and we have aimed to be open about our own. We hope to have been consist-
ent, and we have reflected our experience teaching in both North America and the UK as well as
continental Europe in our practice.
But there is a separate problem for the authors: IPE is taught differently in different institutions.
This is well known, and has been characterised as a difference between ‘European’ and ‘American’
teaching and learning. It is actually more complicated than that, and in any case some US col-
leagues share a ‘European’ understanding of IPE and some European academics, especially those
in Business School contexts, teach the subject very similarly to many US schools. So we have lis-
tened closely to US consumers who complained that the first edition was ‘too British’, and taken
the advice also of anonymous US colleagues who acted as referees to the second edition proposal.
Preface | xv
This inevitably leads to compromises. It also explains the greater length of the text. But we have
done our best to accommodate the interests of users, students and lecturers, who work in different
contexts, and we encourage users to adapt the text as they wish to meet their own curriculum
needs. That will include the ongoing debate about whether and how far IPE can be ‘scientific’,
which runs right through the text.
Roy Smith,
Imad El-Anis and
Christopher Farrands
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the editorial team at Routledge who have been involved during
the preparation of this manuscript, in particular Andrew Taylor, Charlotte Endersby and Sophie
Iddamalgoda.
Roy Smith
Imad El-Anis
Christopher Farrands
Abbreviations
ACP African, Caribbean and Pacific

ADHD attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
AOSIS Alliance of Small Island States
APEC Asia-Pacific Economic Council
ARV anti-retroviral
ASEAN Association of South East Asian Nations
BIS Bank for International Settlements
BMI body mass index
CDOs collateralised debt obligations
CoP Conference of the Parties
CRAs Credit rating agencies
CSR Corporate social responsibility
ERTMS The European Rail Traffic Management System
EU European Union
FDI Foreign direct investment
FTA Free trade agreement
GAFTA Greater Arab free trade area
GATS General Agreement on Trade in Services
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GCC Gulf Cooperation Council
GDP gross domestic product
GNI gross national income
GNP gross national product
GPE global political economy
G7 group of seven
G8 group of eight
G20 group of twenty
HGP The Human Genome Project
HST Hegemonic stability theory
IBRD International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
ICBMs intercontinental ballistic missiles
ICC International Criminal Court
IGF Internet Governance Forum
IGOs Intergovernmental organisations
IMC Independent Media Centre
IMF International Monetary Fund
INGOs International non-governmental organisations
xviii | Abbreviations
INSTRAW International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women
IOM International Organization for Migration
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
IPE International political economy
IPRs intellectual property rights
IR international relations
ISIS Islamic State
ITU International Telecommunications Union
IUCN International Union for Conservation of Nature
KBI knowledge-based industry
LDCs least/lesser developed countries
LLR lender of last resort
LoN League of Nations
M & As mergers and acquisitions
MAD mutually assured destruction
MBA Masters in Business Administration
MDGs Millennium Development Goals
MFN most favoured nation
MNCs multinational corporations
NAFTA North American Free Trade Area
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NCDs non-communicable diseases
NGOs non-governmental organisations
NPT Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
NTBs non-tariff barriers
OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
OPEC Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
PHM People’s Health Movement
PPP purchasing power parity
R&D research and development
RMA revolution in military affairs
SAPs structural adjustment programmes
SCP structure–conduct–performance
SDGs Sustainable Development Goals
START Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty
TRIMs trade-related investment measures
TRIPs trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights
TTIP Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
UAE United Arab Emirates
UN United Nations
UNESCO UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UNFCCC UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund
UNIFEM UN Development Fund for Women
WB World Bank
WBCSD World Business Council for Sustainable Development
WEF World Economic Forum
WHO World Health Organization
WIPO World Intellectual Property Organization
Abbreviations | xix
WMDs weapons of mass destruction

WSF World Social Forum
WSIS World Summit on the Information Society
WST world system theory
WTO World Trade Organization
Introduction
One of the key characteristics of life in the twenty-first century is the importance of political and
economic relationships both within and between states. Governments and citizens are increasingly
affected by structures and processes beyond their immediate locality and control. These changes
in the nature of world politics can initially appear overwhelmingly incomprehensible. Such phe-
nomena are at the heart of contemporary debates within the discipline of International Political
Economy (IPE).
The first part of the book is designed to introduce you to the evolution of IPE as a distinct
discipline. We also provide a summary of the theoretical tools that have emerged to help make
sense of the increasingly complex contemporary world. The second part of the book considers a
range of issues and trends pertinent to the study of IPE. Reference will be made to challenges to
state sovereignty, the increased interconnectedness between national economies and the growing
number of issues that are most appropriately understood within the context of either sub-national
or international/global frameworks of analysis.
What we also intend to do throughout this book in each of the areas we look at, including
finance, the environment, globalisation and trade as well as other central issues, is to keep remind-
ing the reader of the relationship between theory and practice in IPE. IPE emerged in universities
in the late 1960s and early 1970s because of the growing weakness of the world economy, because
of the decline in the power of the US dollar, because of the failure of established institutions to
cope with trade conflicts and monetary disputes, and because of the emerging power of global
corporations and financial trading which individual governments found they could no longer
control. How were these changes (and many others) to be explained? The established theory in
international relations failed to answer the questions, and often did not even think it important
to address them. Economists had some answers, but they were highly contested and the apparent
consensus among both policy makers and academics of the 1950s and 1960s eroded rapidly. IPE
was the answer to practical as well as theoretical problems, and has continued to try (not always
successfully!) to cover both agendas.
Finally, we have tried to ask who are the key actors in IPE? How have they changed? What
are the main coalitions of interests and ideas in IPE, and how do they work? How have changes
in the main actors and processes (most obviously the ‘rise of China’ but there are plenty of others)
reshaped the world political economy, and what challenges does this pose for theory and for aca-
demic critique?
IPE draws on a multidisciplinary basis. This is exciting, but also takes patience to grasp. Established
ideas in IPE draw on politics, sociology, business studies, philosophy, economics and psychology.
IPE all the same forms a distinctive field of study with its own questions and its own methods. But
these are ‘distinctive’, not sealed off from the other social and human sciences. So IPE borrows
from and influences other ways of thinking about social life all the time. In particular, the main
questions that IPE has asked form what we will call the ‘traditional’ agenda. Especially in the last
thirty years or so, many scholars have criticised these ways of asking about and finding understand-
ing about IPE, and we look at those important critiques that have pushed the subject further.
We can sum up this discussion by identifying the main themes that run right through this book,
and form the main questions we shall ask, once we have got some purchase on the key theoretical
questions, which we do in Chapters 1, 2 and 3. These main themes are:
2 | Introduction
1 The actors and processes question: what are the main actors, processes, structures and patterns of
behaviour in IPE? How do the different theoretical approaches answer these questions differ-
ently (when they do)?
2 The theory and practice question: how can we understand the ways in which theory and practice
have interacted in the development of academic IPE?
3 The power question: how does power work in the global political economy, how has that
changed, and what specific different forms does power adopt?
4 The history/present question: how does the past impact on the present when we try to study
specific issue areas such as finance, the environment and trade?
5 The change and the future question: how is the global political economy changing, how far
are these fundamental or relatively superficial changes, and what are the consequences of these
changes for geopolitics, for the future development of the world economy, for the production
of inequality, for the emergence of new actors, processes and behaviour in the future?
You will be guided through the key concepts and issues in a structured manner using reflective
exercises. The book is designed with boxes highlighting key authors, concepts and issues and at
the end of each chapter further reading is indicated.
So what is IPE?
The relationship between the political and economic spheres can be traced back to the earliest times
of human interaction. Social anthropologists would recognise the questions of ‘who gets what,
when, where and how?’ as having relevance to all societies at all times. Political d ecision-making
is influenced by what is economically viable. This may seem an obvious point. A more subtle
observation is the recognition that the economic values assigned to all manner of goods, services
and general resources are politically determined.
What is notable about the contemporary world is the growing complexity of the relationships
and processes that relate to these questions. In particular it is increasingly problematic to answer
such questions purely in terms of local interactions. Over time we have witnessed the spread and
dominance of cash-based economies, as opposed to subsistence-based. Linked to an international
system of exchange of goods and services, this means that a greater degree of contextual under-
standing and analysis is required to fully grasp what is happening. In part this can be seen as the
impetus for the emergence of IPE as a distinct discipline. Neither political studies nor simply
economics-focused approaches offer a complete picture.
The discipline of International Relations (IR) originated post-First World War with a focus on
issues of war and peace, commonly known as ‘high politics’. During the 1960s and 1970s there
were those who thought that international relations were being not just under-theorised but
fundamentally misunderstood. For example, the increasing significance of multinational corpo-
rations (MNCs) and natural commodities (especially oil), previously thought of as ‘low politics’,
moved towards centre stage both within the practice and analysis of IR. This shift in focus led to
an emerging school of thought that would become known as IPE. Susan Strange’s work is widely
recognised as being at the forefront of this new approach. She was controversial in her argument
that rather than IPE emerging as a sub-discipline within the subject of IR the reverse was the
case. Strange’s view was that the discipline of IR, particularly those approaches that continued
to highlight the centrality of the nation state, was misguided if it failed to take into account both
macro and micro issues, processes and trends that resulted from the intertwining of the political
Introduction | 3
and economic spheres. Moreover, Strange and a growing number of other writers argued that it
was impossible to usefully separate these two areas.
One of the key elements of IPE is the relationship between the political and the economic.
This informs all theoretical approaches, although some more than others, such as structuralism. It
is also one of the defining characteristics of how a government operates in terms of the level of
intervention it attempts to implement in relation to the operations of the so-called free market.
As such, the relationship between state governments and the market economy is central to the
study of IPE.
Recent decades have seen what has been termed the ‘triumph of liberalism’. Historically this
refers to the end of the Cold War period and the collapse of the Soviet Union. More broadly it is
an assessment of the expansion of neo-liberal economics and a relative withdrawal of government
intervention policies. China is probably the best example of the move away from a command
economy, while still maintaining a communist political regime. Beyond this example though
there is a more general sense of all governments finding it increasingly difficult to maintain polit-
ical control over economic issues. This is not such a recent phenomenon as interdependence
between economies is something that has evolved over an extended period. What is of increasing
significance though is that the free flow of capital and, in some cases, unequal exchange and terms
of trade can seriously threaten a state’s fiscal policies and financial stability.
The relationship between governments and the free market was severely tested by the mortgage
lending and subsequent banking crisis of 2009. Despite the dominant ethos of neo-liberalism the
governments of the United States and Western Europe found themselves in a position of having
to intervene on a massive scale to ‘bail out’ failing banks and other companies. The implications
of not doing so could have led to an even more severe crisis and economic downturn to the point
of recession and mass unemployment. This example demonstrates that despite the rhetoric of
neo-liberal policies there remains a close connection between the operations of the market and a
degree of government oversight, at both the national and international level.
Analyses of political economy reflect an attempt to make sense of a matrix of actors, issues
and processes. As mentioned above, this complexity is evolving over time and greater emphasis
on interconnections on a global scale adds to the need to check and reassess one’s view of the
world. The apparent rise of a global civil society, the ongoing power plays between nation states
and the increased significance of free-market liberal economic policies, both in terms of the role
of MNCs and the aim of sustainable development, are all factors that feed into the multi-faceted
contemporary world. The following chapters will look at how various theoretical approaches have
attempted to order the world and make sense of it. This will also involve our own review of what
we believe to be the most relevant and significant trends in the world with regard to processes of
globalisation. This will recognise that there will be disagreements among analysts not only over
what is happening, but also what various identifiable trends might mean, or if they should be
welcomed or actively resisted. It is acknowledged that such disagreements are inherent within any
exploration of social trends. Differing analysts will have varied worldviews or moral frameworks.
Political ideology permeates all aspects of academic study and it would be wrong to suggest that
pure objectivity can be found in any of the approaches under review here, including our own.
Similarly, you will also form your own opinions on the issues under consideration here.
In addition, this book provides a sense of how the discipline of IPE has developed over time
and how relevant some of the antecedents of the discipline remain today. For example, do
the writings of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci or John Maynard
Keynes offer useful insights into the politics and economics of the twenty-first century? Or are
they simply historical figures that went some way towards developing our understanding of
the evolution and diversity of political and economic thought, yet provide little in the way of
insightfulness with regard to contemporary affairs? Has the world changed so much in relation
4 | Introduction
to technological innovation and social transformations that newer, more relevant approaches are
required? If so, what might these approaches comprise, which actors are seen as key and how are
their interactions best represented and understood? Piecing together the ‘jigsaw’ is a common
analogy for gaining an insight into how complex mechanisms operate. As an introduction to how
this book is structured it is useful to spend some time looking at how such an analogy might be
applied in relation to IPE.
The global jigsaw

All theoretical approaches can be seen as trying to create a ‘picture’ from an array of initial beliefs,
apparently supported by empirical evidence. However, the basic principle of creating a worldview
from a range of evidence-based pieces to form a coherent and understandable whole is a broadly
common theme in both the social and physical sciences. How then might this be applied to our
understanding of a rapidly changing and complex international political economy?
First of all, do we have a picture on our box of jigsaw pieces to act as a guide that we can
follow? For normative theorists, who talk of how the world should be rather than how it is, there
can be a sense of a picture of a world to which they aspire. Unfortunately they may not be able to
find the pieces with the correct patterns or shapes to fit together to create such a world-picture.
The more optimistic of such theorists may still cling to the belief that all the pieces are there but
some are face down and not recognised or there are reasons why the piecing together is not pro-
gressing as well or as quickly as they would hope. Perhaps some of the pieces are being withheld
or there is some form of breakdown in the communication between the various players respon-
sible for fitting the pieces together. The added complication of a changing world means that the
picture on the box itself may need to alter as different shapes and patterns of pieces evolve as the
puzzle is still being put together. If there is a single theme that reflects the character of globalisation
it is that of change. A second theme would be adaptation and the levels of speed and success with
which actors and environments can accommodate various changes.
The jigsaw analogy has within it several common assumptions that any theorist or scholar needs
to reflect upon. How can we be sure that we have a correct set of the necessary pieces required
to arrive at a complete picture? In terms of competing analyses this may be thought of in terms
of two different puzzles being mixed together. Both may make coherent pictures but a certain
level of skill and discernment is necessary to separate them out, or see how they relate to each
other. Marx and Smith were creating pictures with similar actors and similar issues and processes.
However, the style and emphasis of both pictures were significantly different, as we will see. Note
here that despite having different views both writers were able to piece together coherent pictures
using similar pieces. To take this analogy a step further this can be thought of as a puzzle where
the pieces have images on both sides. Depending on which side one views a different picture
emerges. Imagine a discipline where the pieces are not flat with only two distinct planes. Rather
they are cubes, or many-more-sided geometric shapes, with each plane representing a competing
worldview. This gives some sense of the enormity of the task involved in determining how the
kaleidoscope of pieces that make up the contemporary world are best ordered and understood.
Despite the scale of the undertaking to order, analyse and explain the world in relation to
varying IPE theories we need to begin somewhere. If we continue our jigsaw analogy for a little
longer, let us assume that we are dealing with a traditional rectangular shape. Therefore, we can
deduce that this will have four corner pieces from which we can arrive at a framework within
which our remaining pieces should fit together to provide a coherent picture. No doubt from
the potential problems alluded to above it is clear that what is being described is an ‘ideal’ jigsaw
Introduction | 5
and that what we have here is a rather loose analogy that should be seen as a guiding strategy to
map our way through the review of the historical development of IPE as a distinct discipline.
Now imagine that this rectangle has what we will call a political axis running up the left-hand
side and an economic axis running along the bottom. From this would it be possible to begin
to map where and how certain writers or issues relate to each other? For example, one would
imagine that the free-market school of thought would be well to the right on the economic axis
but relatively low on the political axis. In contrast those advocating command economies would
score higher on the political axis than on the economic axis. As a simple graph this could tell us
something in very general terms about where the emphasis is placed by various writers in relation
to the politics/economics spectrum.
Yet before such plotting can take place one needs to consider what factors are in play to pull
the subject under consideration towards the political or economic poles. Strange and other writers
that will be discussed below would baulk at the idea that these poles can be so easily disaggre-
gated. A defining characteristic of many IPE writers of more recent times has been their desire
to highlight the connections between economics and politics. Rather than a mechanistic plotting
of a single point on a graph they would create a more complex picture. Here the jigsaw analogy
becomes insufficient, as what is being described now is more akin to a moving picture. Shades
of colour could become important, representing the emphasis on particular issues. A familiar
example could be the depth of green associated with various environmental groups or red for
socialist-type policies. The movement in the picture would be a reflection of the dynamics of the
processes that see a continual shift in the dominance of certain ideas and capabilities over time. So,
although the jigsaw analogy remains a useful starting point, we need to move beyond this to help
us order and understand a world most aptly characterised by change.
At the risk of taking our use of analogies too far we suggest that rather than a jigsaw, what we are
now looking at is a picture more closely related to that of a television screen. In order to receive a
clear picture one needs to be ‘tuned in’ to the relevant signals. Of course, there are myriad signals
to pick up and viewers have a range of channels that they may receive. This channel selection or
preference can be seen as relying on one’s dominant beliefs and prejudices. The signals may be
the same, but various viewers may see and understand things differently. Numerous signals and
receivers are in operation around the world. This is not a simple one-way broadcasting process.
In this book you will see that there have been a wide range of views formed and promoted. In
looking at how such views are formed we will also be asking questions regarding what elements
of various schools of thought retain contemporary relevance.
Structure of the book

The book is structured in line with the above analogies in that the first part introduces various
theoretical positions and the ‘pieces’ that they identify and put together. After identifying these
foundations the second part of the book looks at an array of actors, and the third part considers
relevant issues and trends that reflect the main aspects of the contemporary world.
Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the theoretical foundations that underpin the study of
IPE: realism, liberalism and Marxism. The emphasis here is on the key distinctions between
these approaches and their historical evolution. Key historical figures are highlighted by the use
of author boxes and although the major focus of the chapter is the development of theoretical
approaches, you will be prompted to consider the relevance of each approach to the real world.
Having established the theoretical foundations of the discipline, this chapter then assesses the
impact of IPE scholars since the early 1970s when many turned their attention to what had been
6 | Introduction
perceived as ‘low politics’. It focuses on the growth of different strands of thought within the
neo-realist, neo-liberal and structural approaches.
Chapter 2 introduces the most significant alternative theoretical approaches that have devel-
oped in response to the ‘orthodoxy’ described in Chapter 1. You will be introduced here to
Critical Theory, constructivism, feminist, Gramscianism, green, regulation theory and postmod-
ern/postructural approaches.
Building on the theoretically focused discussions in the preceding chapters, Chapter 3 explores
business theories and global business behaviours. It explains how the complexity of multinational
enterprise behaviour and strategies contribute to the complexity of IPE.
Having introduced a broad range of theoretical perspectives, Chapter 4 begins to develop an
understanding of how these relate to ‘real world’ experiences. The degree and significance of
processes of globalisation (itself a contested concept within IPE) is the subject of varying interpre-
tations. Here we ask you to consider the salient points of the globalisation debate. This chapter
links the perspectives discussed earlier in the book to the more specialised issue-based chapters.
The second part of the book focuses on actors and issues within IPE. We begin with Chapter 5,
which considers governance at the national, international, regional and global levels. After an
overview of the origins and development of the Bretton Woods Institutions the attention shifts to
more contemporary debates. The number of international organisations at the end of the 1990s
was over 2,500, as compared with around 30 that existed at the start of the twentieth century.
Their role has become more complicated as the transnational flows that these institutions are
attempting to regulate become larger and harder to control. The role and significance of the major
‘private’ political economy actor will also be described. Here, issues as to how and in what ways
MNCs are seen as both the drivers and victims of global changes are highlighted. In what ways
and forms are they reflectors of a political–economic ethos, and by which routes and methods do
they lobby for a political environment that reflects the current dominance of neo-liberalism? How
and to what extent do they interface with both states and civil society? Finally, the role of civil
society in increasing the representative nature of global governance institutions is focused upon
in more detail.
Chapter 6 considers world trade and the development of the international trade system after 1945.
Particular attention is paid to the management of this system. Pertinent issues in world trade are dis-
cussed, including the position of developing countries and the ‘free trade versus fair trade’ debate.
Chapter 7 analyses the development of a global financial system and the impact this has had on
actors within the world economy. The demise of the post-war system of fixed exchange rates, the
wave of market-oriented reform in domestic financial markets and the rapid integration of many
once-national capital markets across political and regulatory boundaries provide the focus of the
discussion. The chapter concludes with a focus on the impact of financial crises and the stability
of the contemporary financial system.
Chapter 8 considers the position of development issues and strategies in the world economy.
The contested nature of the term is highlighted and the historical understandings are outlined in
the first section. The shift towards a neo-liberal orthodoxy in development is discussed and the
impact of salient issues such as foreign aid and the debt crisis is highlighted.
Chapter 9 addresses the diversity of opinion and debate in relation to environmental ramifi-
cations of current and proposed future practices of production. At one end of the debate ‘deep
ecologists’ question the wisdom of exclusively human-centred development policies; while other
commentators (‘environmentalists’ in varying shades of ‘green’) prefer to emphasise conservation-
ism and the utilisation of natural resources. Climate change, potential rises in sea levels, acid rain,
deforestation and loss of other habitats resulting in decreasing biodiversity are among the issues
that will be discussed. The range of responses from the various parties, both private and public,
will be illustrated and explained.
Introduction | 7
Chapter 10 considers the paradoxical role technological developments have in many aspects of
IPE. On the one hand, they may be seen as the means by which the neo-liberal project has been
advanced and come to dominate much of the world. On the other, they offer potential solutions
to many pressing global problems, both in logistical and coordinating capacities. Debates over
access to technology and the significance of English as the leading medium of international dis-
course will be considered. Comparative advantages within the international trading system and
the entrenchment of divisions of wealth are a direct result of the ownership of relevant resources
and application of technical expertise.
Chapter 11 looks at cultural issues as another significant factor in relation to globalisation. It
has even been suggested that the seeds of a global monoculture have already been sown. This
chapter considers this proposition in the light of the issue areas discussed above and related the-
oretical debates. The potential impact of the spread of a dominant system of production, and the
possibility that a common set of intrinsic values necessarily follows, will be critically presented.
The emphasis here will be on the promotion of certain types of ‘knowledge’, values, norms and
‘rights’. Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilisations’ thesis has attracted renewed attention with regard to
competing value systems. The ongoing debate surrounding cultural relativism and/or universality
will be reviewed. In particular this chapter discusses the possible relationship between a near-
universal trading system and a concomitant system of assumptions and values.
Chapter 12 is designed to relate to all of the above issues and trends in the context of a dynamic,
contentious and evolving set of security agendas. Whereas many IR textbooks will focus on state-
and military-centric security, the distinctive nature of IPE approaches, as opposed to IR, tend to
adopt a broader interpretation and analysis of security issues.
Chapter 13 explores two increasingly controversial issues: migration and labour. The chapter
explains the relationships between migration on the one hand, and economic, political and phys-
ical security on the other. It also discusses the key driving forces behind contemporary migration
trends and the global division of labour.
Chapter 14 is the final substantive chapter of the book and considers health. The chapter
explains the demographic shifts leading to a so-called ‘health transition’ and examines the emer-
gence of lifestyle-related non-communicable diseases. It also critically reflects on the policies of
major non-state actors such as the World Health Organization.
The conclusion reviews salient aspects of processes of globalisation and the relative values and
explanatory powers of the competing analytical perspectives. These aspects include: which ones
are actors focused upon, what are the constraints within which they operate, and how do they
relate to each other? This book does not claim to offer a full explanation for all contemporary
phenomena. However, it does provide you with an introduction to the various IPE schools of
thought and their relevance to a number of selected issues. In doing so, insights into how the
world is evolving in response to aspects of globalisation will be demonstrated. It will become clear
that in reading this book students of IPE will gain not only enhanced knowledge of the discipline,
but also of the world around them and their place within it.
Origins and core ideas of IPE
1 The origins and core ideas of

international political economy
Chapter learning outcomes
The main aims of this chapter are to enable the reader to:
■■ Give a brief account of the origins of international political economy (IPE)
and its changing identity as an academic field of endeavour.
■■ Explain why the roots of IPE in International Relations are significant for
its current agenda and strengths, but also its weaknesses, of the field as it
has evolved.
■■ Make sense of how IPE evolved as a critique of IR.
■■ Suggest how IPE was then reintegrated with political economy, economics
and economic history, as well as business studies, and with what effects.
■■ Explore the core contemporary theories of mainstream IPE, the most
influential ideas from neo-liberalism and neo-realism, as well as from clas-
sical liberal and neo-liberal economics from classical Marxism and theories
of trade and economic growth.
In doing these tasks, you will find it helpful to remember that later chapters
will also develop the core theories as we go along.
Introduction
In this chapter, the sources of IPE are examined, a brief history of the field is offered, 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 briefly 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 reflect both dominant ways of teaching the subject and those that have most claim on the
research literature in the field. 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 field 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 field down into manageable elements, even if you
subsequently bring these elements together in a different way when you have started to get a more
sophisticated understanding.
Before we get into the theory, it would be good just to indicate the basic scope of the world
economy, how large it is and which are the key actors. If you use this text sometime after the
10 | Chapter 1 ■ Origins and core ideas of IPE
Table 1.1 Basic information on the world economy 2016 (all figures in $US at purchasing power parity)
All money values in $US tr. Notes

at purchasing power parity
No. of UN member states 198 Depending on definitions, there are a

number of states not in the UN and
the European Union is a key actor in
the world economy but not a state
Size of the world 79.8 tr.
economy (world GDP)
Size of global finance 180tr. (approx.) This is harder to assess and more
transactions controversial than world GDP
Largest actors by GNP China 19.5 tr.
European Union 19.1 tr.
United States 17.9 tr.
India 8.0 tr.
Japan 4.7 tr.
Largest actors – finance United States
European Union
Germany
Japan
UK
China
Largest external debtors United States 17.2 tr.
European Union 13 tr.
UK 9.2 tr.
Germany 5.6 tr.
France 5.5 tr.
Japan 5.2 tr.
Largest global South Developed in Chapter 8
economies (by GNP)
Largest multinational Developed in Chapter 3
companies (MNCs) (by
turnover)
Source: IMF World Economic Outlook, 2016; CIA World Factbook 2016; MNC data from Forbes online.
following information was published, it will be easy to check and update these figures for yourself,
and to see how much has changed. As you probably realise, a trillion (tr.) is a number with twelve
noughts after it – a thousand billion.
You probably have a good sense of how diverse the world economy is, and also of how many
non-state actors – banks, multinational companies, lobbies, environmental groups, international
institutions and so on – have power and leverage within the world economy alongside states. So
throughout this text, we are talking about a world that has not just many actors, but many types
of actors. You probably also have a sense that power is distributed among these actors very une-
venly. Apple, Google, the leading world banks, the leading oil corporations, hyper-rich individ-
uals, owners of media corporations, owners of patents and copyright all have power beyond the
wildest dreams of the smaller states in the world system. They may also often vie with the largest
state actors for influence. But remember too that power takes many forms – it is not just, or even
primarily, the capacity to force others to do what you want. It may be more persuasive rather than
Chapter 1 ■ Origins and core ideas of IPE | 11
forceful or violent; it may be a psychological relationship, a battle of wills rather than resources;
power relates to legal capacity or legal authority, although they are not direct equivalents; and
power also lies deeply in key structures of relationships, including structures of domination and
structures of interdependence. This last kind of power, usually known as ‘structural power’, is a
key to the understanding of IPE. All this is to say that IPE is interesting and exciting because it
tries to make sense of a diverse and complex world.
The sources of IPE

As just noted, International Political Economy has its main origins as an academic field in a series of
difficulties in international relations in the 1960s. Perhaps it ought to have had its roots in political
economy, or in economics. But that was not what happened. As a result, IPE owes many of its
methods, key questions and theoretical approaches – and some of its limitations – to IR. What
happened next was that scholars in the field, such as Razeen Sally and Justin Rosenberg at the
London School of Economics, Robert Gilpin and Craig Murphy in the United States, A. Claire
Cutler in Canada and many others, tried to correct some of the distortions produced through
IPE’s origins in IR. They drew on resources in politics, political sociology, global history, as
well as from classical political economy and international economics. Philosophical debates about
methods and approaches in social understanding have also shaped IPE throughout its history.
Business history and business studies too have shaped the evolving field of IPE (see Chapter 3),
and IPE specialists who ignore the role of firms and the experiences of managers run the risk of
losing touch with some of the most important realities shaping global relations. This ‘correction’
against the initial dominance of an IR agenda has been an ongoing process. Some colleagues
might say it is still incomplete; or that it has not gone far enough. But these concerns undoubtedly
shaped and continue to shape the agendas and theoretical foci of IPE.
So although ‘political economy’ had been a key area of enquiry and policy debate since at least
the early eighteenth century in many countries, IPE began in the form we now understand it at
the end of the 1960s, when a group of scholars, mainly in the US and UK, but also in France
and in the global South, found the US-dominated mainstream approaches in current academic
international relations inadequate. ‘Inadequate’ precisely because it seemed to so underestimate
the importance of trade, finance and exchange as well as work and labour and development
alongside the more traditional diplomatic and military agendas of IR. Whether we like it or
not, IPE has its origins in a critique of IR. Equally, though, it also has its origins in a series of
practical concerns shared by many policy makers as well as academics, not only in the developed
Western countries, but perhaps even more in the global South. In this section, we look first at
the theoretical issues between IR and IPE. We then explain how much of the substance of IR
remained in much IPE. Only then do we explain the policy debates that helped to give a com-
pelling impetus to IPE as it emerged in the English-speaking world and elsewhere. But this is at
least as important as the other sources. Susan Strange, one of the founders of IPE, always argued
that IPE should be an ‘eclectic’ field, drawing its examples as well as its theoretical approaches
from as wide a range of sources and examples as possible. This diversity of approach as well as
of subject matter is worth remembering. Strange’s contribution is outlined in more detail later.
Along with Strange, key figures in the emergence of IPE at the time included Joan Edelman
Spero (author of the first widely used text in the field), Robert Gilpin (the most influential
writer from a liberal perspective in the United States), Raymond Vernon (author of one of the
most influential studies of the rise of the global multinational firm) and Robert Cox (Canadian
scholar who reshaped IPE through a systematic adaptation of the ideas of the scholar and activist
Antonio Gramsci to IR and IPE after leaving a long career as an international civil servant which
influenced his theoretical ideas).
Influential economists equally significantly shaped IPE as it emerged. Discussions of trade,
finance and investment, as well as the growth of advanced technology industries and the main
patterns of globalisation have naturally been dominated by international economic political and
social relations. But many more recent economists have had a number of reasons for a relative
neglect of political economy. Like mainstream IR scholars, many economists have struggled to
sustain the argument that economics is a separate independent subject, a ‘true discipline’ not
dependent on others. Economists – or some of them at least – have retreated into a world of
mathematical modelling and mathematic proof, which has made the field more difficult to relate
to people’s everyday experience of life; they have done this not out of perversity, but in pursuit
of a particularly rigorous kind of quasi-scientific knowledge. Reliable knowledge claims, they
argued, could only be built on methods similar to those used by ‘natural sciences’ such as physics.
These scholars held that to question the bases of economics as a ‘positivist’ field was to betray it.
Political economy, they suggested, was less rigorous because it tried to be inclusive of economic,
social, political and cultural realities. They believed that the more economists could cut out any
significant ‘exogenous factors’ and concentrate on giving complete explanations of economic
phenomena in terms of economic factors that could be quantified, the stronger their knowledge
claims would be. Political economists have always made the opposite claim; that sound explana-
tions had to rest on taking all the relevant issues and factors into account and that explanations
and understandings of IPE had to be more broadly based – politics, sociology, anthropology, sta-
tistics, ethics and economics must find a common space if the subject is to fulfil its promise. This
argument is separate from the question of whether IPE can be more ‘scientific’ or whether it
might draw more on a range of methods and ideas. This is not an argument to take on right at the
start of the subject, but you will find that it runs through many of the debates that we elaborate
throughout this book. It is also a debate to be wary of in so far as you may, depending perhaps
on what you have already studied, have an instant reaction to support one side or another. But
you would be well-advised to keep a more open mind: this is a philosophical argument to which
there is no single ‘right answer’.
Scholars from economics, which was after all originally called ‘political economy’, have there-
fore shaped IPE equally significantly. Historically-minded colleagues continue to draw on their
work in a critical evaluation of where IPE is to this day. So the work of Mandeville (late seven-
teenth century; the creator of what came to be called the theory of the ‘hidden hand’ in econom-
ics, where individuals’ pursuit of their own interests could have the overall effect of promoting a
general good), Adam Ferguson (mid-eighteenth century; creator of the concept of civil society),
Ricardo (early nineteenth century; trade theory and the mechanics of market behaviour), Malthus
(early nineteenth century; economics as the ‘gloomy science’ especially with respect to population
and the exhaustion over time of available resources) were among the most important economic
theorists. They looked back to earlier thinkers who would not have described themselves as
‘political economists’, but whose ideas shaped the field. These included (a short selection of a
potentially long list) Aristotle, who coined the Greek word from which we take the word ‘eco-
nomics’ and who saw economic management as a form of practical knowledge akin to furniture
making or shipbuilding, complex, skilled, but capable of being passed on and subject to rational
analysis and judgment. It also includes the medieval Islamic scholars Ibn Battuta and Ibn Khaldun,
usually described as geographers, but political scientists and historians too. The two Arab scholars
travelled widely and established an agenda of comparative recording as accurately as they could of
what they observed in economy, agriculture, state finance and debt management as well as trade
and the exchange of ideas as well as services. One could add many classical observers to this list, as
well as leading political philosophers such as Locke and Hobbes, but the most influential scholar,
who has some claim to be the effective founder of modern economics, is the Edinburgh polymath
Adam Smith, whose The Wealth of Nations (1776) not only dominated the agendas of economic
thinking, but also identified trade and international exchange as key elements in all economic
relations. Smith developed the idea of the division of labour, the way the structures of production
shape the efficiency (or inefficiency) of economic activity and the ways in which changes in tech-
nology and labour processes feed into the profitability of both agriculture and industry. Smith may
indeed have been the first to try to treat agriculture and industrial production as susceptible to the
same kinds of analysis and explanation in detail; he certainly made a considerable contribution to
the methodologies of economics, including quantitative work, as well as to its more general ideas.
There is no better illustration of Smith’s enormous influence than the first volume of Marx’s
Capital (1861), which is intended to be a critique of then conventional economic thinking, taking
Smith to task in particular. But it is impossible to read Marx without also recognising that he pays
enormous tribute to Smith as the most profound thinker and the most careful analyst of global
economic behaviour before him. It has often been said that all subsequent political economy is a
dialogue with the ghosts of Smith and Marx, which does not, of course, imply by ‘dialogue’ a high
level of agreement. Later economists have kept a dialogue between economic analysis and inter-
national political economy open, and the most influential of these are discussed throughout this
study. As IPE has evolved, its scholars have found resources in the writing of these older scholars,
and sometimes turned to ideas once rejected as incoherent or unusable to explain more recent
events or crises. Smith’s contribution will be more fully examined shortly.
IPE as a critique of IR
If IPE emerged as a critique of IR, as has just been suggested, it is important to briefly outline
the state of play in International Relations theory at the time that it emerged. Before the mid-
twentieth century, IR was rarely taught as a distinctive subject in its own right with its own
agenda, intellectual boundaries and theories; more usually, it was understood as a branch of pol-
itics (or political science), drawing on the theories of politics, including the classical Greek and
Renaissance writers as well as more contemporary theorists. But the case was regularly made that
politics and IR formed a distinctive discipline with their own methods and methodologies, owing
little or nothing to psychology, sociology or cultural studies and only a little to economics. The
workings of international business were little considered. At a leading institution in the field,
the first anywhere to have a recognised Professor of IR, ‘international politics’ was taught at the
University of Aberystwyth into the 1970s dominated by military concerns, security studies and
strategy, although there was also some emphasis on institutions. At Cambridge (UK) until quite
recently, IR was taught as part of a history sub-faculty, and the syllabus was largely controlled by
historians. It is fair to add that no study of IR or IPE makes very much sense without a serious
consideration of relevant history and the history of ideas; but to allow historians to dominate the
field was simply perverse (and Cambridge has acquired a distinguished IR team including some
IPE specialists since the shackles of the historians were thrown off). In many countries, IR con-
sisted largely of the teaching of history and institutions, or of institutions and law: most French
and Italian universities continue to follow this pattern, although much has changed in Germany
and Scandinavia, and a few French and Italian universities buck this trend and offer programmes
and undertake research that reflect a much broader approach including IPE. Thus the problem
was that the conventional agenda of IR was limited and failed to recognise the actual changes
taking place in the world system from the 1950s onwards (or, arguably, from much earlier, espe-
cially in finance). The structure of university bureaucracy and the lines drawn between fields and
departments and their power bases was one element in this institutional bias against what became
the core elements of IPE. But it was not the only factor. Creating a genuine synthesis of politics,
economics, history, social studies and law always proved difficult. But it has been crucial to the
emergence of IPE today. It is also only fair to add that IR has changed very significantly since the
1970s in most but not all universities, becoming a diverse, vibrant and multi-disciplined field of
study in close dialogue with other social science areas of study. And in the meantime, distinctive
agendas of IPE have been set by universities in India, Brazil and South Africa, as well as in the
University of the West Indies, in Canada and Mexico, agendas which have stepped outside or
beyond those conventionally set in the usually dominant academy in the US and Europe.
Realist IR and IPE

The label ‘realism’ in International Relations theory usually refers to a school of writers and
practitioners who think that politics is a struggle for power unrestrained by other human institu-
tions, by morality or by law – ‘This is just how it really is!’ But many realists qualify that position
and realism is a good deal more carefully thought through than its critics – or some of its cruder
adherents – suggest. The origins of realism are often seen in the historian Thucydides’ famous
classical Greek account of a war between Athens and Sparta and their allies at the end of the fifth
century bce, The Peloponnesian War. Thucydides tries to understand a desperate war fought across
the Greek world (the whole eastern Mediterranean, not just what is Greece today), the debates,
resources, alliances and betrayals in order to understand how his own city, Athens, suffered such a
critical defeat. He has a restrained pessimism about human motives and a willingness to recognise
the frailty of institutions and agreements. But at the same time, Thucydides was trying to write
history, not theory, and although he has furnished material for many later writers, one might
want to be wary of drawing generalisations from his very specific account. Realism in IR has
many other sources, including the writing of Renaissance scholars and diplomats such as Niccolo
Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes and the emergence of a conservative counter to political liberal-
ism after the Renaissance. But Thucydides was in effect the grandfather of realism even if ‘reading
him as a realist’ is something of a distortion. This gifted IR its agenda of the study of diplomacy,
war, the balance of power and the struggle for supremacy among great powers where ‘the strong
do what they can and the weak suffer what they must’.
While classical realist IR theory tended to ignore, or at least downgrade, questions of polit-
ical economy, there were exceptions. The downgrading was not purely a mistake in passing.
Nineteenth-century scholars across what would later be called a ‘realist-liberal spectrum’ saw
politics as primarily rooted in constitutions and sovereignty. A raft of issues followed on from
the determination of the nature of the constitution and the fundamental law-making functions
in relations between states as in relationships within them. It follows from this argument that all
economic questions are secondary, however important they may appear to be, since the forms and
underlying ideas of politics must always have primacy over the ‘mere’ appearances of the every-
day. Despite this approach (which derives from Plato’s philosophy reinforced by Immanuel Kant’s
writing), some scholars did consider questions of political economy. Of the ‘realist’ writers who
saw political economy as more significant, none is more important than E. H. Carr. An enigmatic
figure who taught IR at Aberystwyth and later at Cambridge, Carr made his mark as author of
reports in 1939 and 1946 for the London think tank Chatham House. which later became central
texts of realism. Carr was at once one of the sternest critics of the then (1930s) commonly held
liberal idealism. His view that liberal failures and ignorance of real power relations had produced
what he called The Twenty Years’ Crisis after 1919 led directly to the coming of the Second World
War. But Carr was also a convinced, rather secret, fairly orthodox Marxist. He recognised the
power of economic interests and imperial motivations and argued that liberal idealism acted as a
cloak for imperial ambitions for all the great powers in the 1930s. Most realists since Carr have
accepted his broad analysis of the failure of the balance of power and of the League of Nations
between the world wars, whether or not they accepted his account of imperialism. Carr was
almost alone before the 1970s in the field in making no distinction between IR and IPE.
The economic theory most associated with mainstream realist arguments had been loosely
expressed by political leaders from the Roman Empire onwards. But it was more formally artic-
ulated in the seventeenth century: mercantilism. Mercantilism argues that the main aims of inter-
national economic activity are to build a stock of assets: trade is valuable because it brings in gold;
empire building enables the search for stocks of gold and silver through trade, but also through
direct conquest. Power is identified with stocks of assets such as gold. A ‘balance of trade’ is not
enough; countries and their rulers should aim at gains. And although it was not a phrase used until
the 1950s, the advice of mercantilist writers was that trade and economic activity was, like war
and conquest, a ‘zero-sum game’, where one side could only gain where the others lost. Trade
agreements might enhance the opportunity to build a stock of assets; war was the opportunity
to seize them. Mercantile theory is thus consistent with the view of international relations as an
endless power competition. It is a form of economic nationalism. Each international actor had
to pursue their own interests because no other actor would protect them, because their survival
depended on it, and because there were plenty of examples of once-powerful states, which had
declined and failed in this life-or-death competition. Economic interests were central to these
struggles partly because most armies at the time were mercenary forces who had to be paid regu-
larly, and also because larger states with larger populations, such as the leading power of the day,
France, could draw on their populations to dominate or defeat rivals. Agriculture was seen as
the cornerstone of economic activity. Although there were industrial centres across both Europe
and the New World, they were small, and the industrial revolution was not to occur for another
century. The liberal ideas of greater efficiency of the use of resources through competition and
mutual exchange was not yet born. Companies formed in this period such as the great Dutch East
India Company and its later and eventually even more powerful British namesake aimed to accrue
gold and silver assets and redistribute them to stockholders and the state. States such as France and
Spain were deeply engaged in economic activity and would have thought the notion of the state
not involving itself in markets where they had the capability of doing so ridiculous if it had been
proposed. Political ideas that centred on the importance of trade protection survived long into the
nineteenth century. They were given a further impetus by the publication of Friedrich List’s The
National System of Political Economy (1841).
List is the leading thinker of a more modern mercantilism, which would not only pursue stocks
of gold and recognised that states relied on credit and on sophisticated corporate power, as well
as on holdings of cash, gold and silver. But the main aims of state policy remained the pursuit of
national influence and national interest. List was a Prussian scholar writing as Germany was uni-
fying, but his ideas had a global influence throughout the century after his book was published.
In the 1930s nearly every government including the United States, Turkey, Japan, France and
Italy were thinking on lines shaped by List’s ideas. Indeed, to a large extent List was codifying and
formalising ideas which were widely shared, and that would have seemed to be just common sense
to Americans such as Alexander Hamilton, as to nationalists and national rulers across Europe.
China in the eighteenth and nineteenth century followed roughly similar policies of economic
nationalism and autarky until it was undermined by imperial intervention. The only exception to
the dominant strain of economic nationalism was Britain, and that only after the 1840s; even in
the UK, List’s ideas had a considerable resonance despite the much greater impact of more liberal
ideas there.
It used to be said among IPE theorists that mercantilism was purely a doctrine of the past, that
liberal ideas of free trade and open markets had so triumphed in the twentieth century that only
nationalist fantasists such as Hitler and Mussolini would ever have considered ‘going back’ to these
policies. Economic debates were to be conducted between liberals and Marxists, and most of all
between advocates of different versions of liberalism. But this is a mistaken account of the past and
an illusory idea of the present. Ideas of trade protection and economic nationalism have always
flourished in recessions among those who benefitted less from unlimited free trade (often farmers,
but also other groups of industrial workers). In the US Presidential elections of 2016, four main
candidates vied to articulate economic nationalism, with only one (the Democrat Hillary Clinton)
accepting a basic framework of free trade, even though she criticised free trade agreements reached
by the previous Obama Administration. Her democrat rival, Sanders, attacked free trade and the
globalisation of both finance and industrial production, and called for the repatriation to the US of
manufacturing jobs lost to China and elsewhere almost as loudly as his Republican rivals. The two
leading Republican candidates, Trump and Cruz, attacked free trade and globalisation in speeches
designed to appeal to blue collar workers who had benefitted less well from them, even though
the ‘establishment’ of the Republican party had for a century seen themselves as the ‘party of busi-
ness’. Anti-free trade ideas have been pressed with equal ferocity on the left and the right in many
developed countries alongside a rising tide of nationalist suspicion of the global institutions that
have managed the world economy since 1945. It is worth adding that many of the most successful
emerging economies of the twentieth century, including all the east Asian ‘tigers’ (such as Taiwan
and South Korea), but also China and Indonesia, emerged as leading economies in their region
under military governments with tight internal control, protected manufacturing industries and
controlled external trade policies led by government-favoured, ‘national champion’ corporations.
The majority of policy leaders would favour broadly free trade policies, but there have always
been plenty of exceptions. It is also fair to add that economic nationalist ideas and practices have
become linked to suspicion of globalisation in all its forms in the last twenty years; that argument
is one this text returns to in Chapter 4, as well as in the chapter on trade later.
Leading ‘classical realist’ writers include Arnold Wolfers and Hans J. Morganthau, who both
recognised the importance of political economy only as a source of the resource base of states
alongside population, geography, geology and so forth. Morganthau’s text was widely used in
IR for thirty years, and (whatever its other theoretical merits) helped to constrain the growth
of IPE until it was superseded. The Australian scholar Hedley Bull provided the most sophisti-
cated version of classical realism in his The Anarchical Society (1977), which argued that while the
realist image of a world society of conflict, violence and struggle for the balance of power was
mainly sound, the interactions of states themselves produced a level of cooperation and mutual
exchange that many realists had not acknowledged or predicted. Bull is the author of an account
that suggests that a relatively high level of cooperation is possible in the global political economy,
conditional on there first being a form of political settlement between great powers without
which major wars will persist. He preferred the label ‘grotian’ for this approach to ‘realist’ (from
the leading legal scholar Hugo Grotius), and in some ways he does straddle realism and liberalism,
albeit with a firm leaning in the realist direction.
Liberal IPE
All liberals hold to some basic ideas about human nature, which shape their views of international
relations and equally of economic activity and of IPE. These include the view that individuals
and their rights are of central importance to a civilised society. Liberals also hold, perhaps to
varying degrees, that ideas are important causes of events and of social change, and that law and
institutions can be harnessed to make a free society work effectively. Liberals are (again, some
more than others) optimistic about the future of human society and the possibilities of rational
change and rational understanding of that society. In International Relations, this means that most
liberals believe in the possibility of a rational ordering of international relations. Indeed, it was
liberal idealism before and after the First World War, which gave rise to the academic study of
International Relations as we now understand it. Liberal idealists believed that international law
and international institutions can make a real difference to the effective management of relations
so as to avoid or control conflicts. They accept that some of the attempts to manage the world
through law and institutions, such as the 1919–1939 League of Nations, failed. But they will point
to the many successful institutions of the post-1945 world and the institutionally managed agendas
of development, the control of trade wars and the development of effective global financial insti-
tutions to justify they claims. In IR and IPE, these arguments shaped the understanding of the
‘rise of interdependence’ in the 1970s as the most important feature of contemporary international
relations, a view that translated easily into enthusiasm for globalisation in the 1990s and 2000s.
Liberal scholars – and liberal politicians – also hold to the view most fully established by Smith
that free trade is beneficial to all participants: even if the benefits of trade are not spread equally,
all benefit sufficiently to have a rational self interest in taking part. This makes an important point:
liberalism is not really founded on a blind ‘idealism’ at all. It argues, and most liberals have always
argued, that a rational approach to self-interest would lead to cooperation rather than to struggles
for power. Norman Angell cogently argued shortly before the First World War in The Great
Illusion (1911) that such a war ought to be impossible because the world economy was already so
interdependent that any major conflict would wreck the system of trade finance and investment
and impoverish the world. He was in a sense absolutely right, for that war did have devastating
effects on the world economy in addition to its human costs. But he was wrong in so far as the
nationalism and identity politics of the day, together with the weight of alliance commitments and
an ideology that saw war as a dramatic heroic arena rather than one of devastation, all caused calls
for rational restraint to be ignored in 1914. Today, liberal authors insist, the world is even more
interdependent and even more held together by mutually beneficial networks and connections,
and so war (major conflicts at least) that threatens this fabric of shared well-being is a challenge
to be avoided at almost any cost. Smith, Ricardo, Mill and their liberal successors intended that
liberal trade theory would end the hold of mercantilist or economic nationalist ideas in IPE, but
also in policy practice. It is fair to say that they succeeded in reshaping political economy as a field
of intellectual endeavour, but that their ideas were not so fully successful in economic policy,
especially outside the US and UK, until the mid-twentieth century.
Why then is free trade and its accompanying ideas of open competition and open markets so
central to liberal economic thought? From Smith, Ricardo, J.S. Mill and others onward, it was
claimed that free trade is the most efficient way of managing international economic relations and
that the freer trade is the more participants will benefit. It was also claimed by all liberal political
economists that this ‘most efficient’ system would produce both ethically justified and politically
sound arrangements. The assumption was also that the state would play a limited role in economic
activity, although how ‘limited’ has always been subject to debate. In this framework, each person
and each company would produce benefits for the whole economy if they simply pursued their
own interests as they saw them without government interference: ‘whoever governs best who
governs least’ (the source of the quotation is disputed between Thomas Jefferson and several
others). The reason for this can be summarised as resting on the theory of comparative advantage. If
two countries both produce two commodities (say corn and manufactured iron), it makes sense
for the one with a greater advantage in corn to grow and trade that, and to import iron from
the other. Smith and Ricardo showed that this system of exchange produced net gains to both
p articipants. Even if one country has an advantage in both products, it will have a relatively greater
advantage in producing one, and it will gain more if it specialises in that product and imports
from the other country. If one country tries to produce and export both, the other country will
in any case have no export earnings to buy what the other produces. This very simple example
can be extended from a two-country, two-product example to multilateral trade in a wide range
of products. It is the underlying theory that has shaped the growth of free trade agreements and
the reduction of tariffs, which, it is generally argued, produced the rapid international economic
growth after 1945. One part of this view is that world trade grew significantly faster than world
production in this period, and it can be argued that trade growth carried global production and
so contributed to global welfare (meaning growth in income, investment and job creation). But
notice that liberals claimed that this was the most efficient form of economic management, and
not necessarily the fairest. They also took no account of the steady accumulation of power as
well as wealth that some would acquire, which might then enable them to dominate society and
economy over time.
Liberal economics also stressed the importance of competition. Adam Smith recognised from
early in his great work that businessmen would form cartels and combine against the interests of
their purchasers, as well as against a general public interest, if they had the chance. Smith would
certainly have been in favour of anti-cartel (anti-trust) laws, and he would be suspicious of the
lobbying power of major businesses close to government today. We know this because he says
so directly of the growth of corporate and cartel power in the capitalist economy of his own day.
But he was a staunch defender of capitalism all the same. The market theory that economists use
derives from Smith with refinements from others (Mill, Marshall, Walras) along the way. The
ideal model of a competitive market is one where there are many buyers and many sellers inter-
acting together. To work, competition in this model is not based on numbers alone. Buyers and
sellers must have information about the relative quality of products on offer, and they must have
knowledge of the prices paid and the quantity of goods sold. In this way, supply and demand
can meet on equal terms. And from this, we have a theory of how ‘perfect competition’ can
produce optimal benefits for both buyers and sellers, and so more widely (through the operation
of the ‘hidden hand’) to society as a whole. To work in this fashion, participants in a market must
have a modicum of mutual trust. They should also have a legal framework where contracts are
enforced and property is protected (for many reasons, but not least so that buyers and sellers are
protected from deceit). Markets therefore require a degree of sociability, of social cohesion, as
well as a degree of protection, which can only come from powerful authority (the state or some
equivalent). Deal making also requires the existence of a stable medium of exchange, meaning
that the value of money should be stable, known and reliable. Again, this last has nearly always
been the province of government action. Broadly, then, perfect competition is an ‘ideal type’
of exchange that depends both on social and on political arrangements as well as on economic
exchange. In the real world, there are very few approximations of a perfect market, but it is at
least a useful analytic tool to start to think about what makes liberal economic theory powerful.
Much economic theory has been devoted to exploring the exceptions and variations of this
starting point.
It is not a repudiation of liberal economic theory to say that perfect competition exists very
rarely – maybe in an early morning wholesale big city fruit market, or in some examples of online
trading, for example. But in international trade, perfect markets are unheard of, and nearly all trade
is done by powerful sellers (powerful because of their technology as well as their information)
and powerful buyers (probably knowing that they can buy almost anything from a wide range of
sources around the world). In most actually traded products in the world market, there are a few
buyers or a few sellers or a few of both. For example, in the global energy market, a small cadre of
oil and gas companies are both buying and selling at the same time. And in some cases there is a
great disparity of information as well as financial resources between buyers and sellers. From these
we might say (as many Marxists have) that international trade in goods and services is all about
monopolies and cartels. But we might also observe (as many Marxists do not) that even in these
markets, there is much more competition between the few players than one might expect, and
that although there is quite often behaviour that looks like cartel management or what lawyers
call ‘the abuse of a dominant position’ in international trade, firms rise and fall, failure is possible,
and investors are canny and very quick to move their money to the next generation of possible
‘winners’. All these ideas are developed later in the chapters on business (Chapter 3) and trade
(Chapter 6).
Liberal political economy has always provided a forum for debates about the state. Many nine-
teenth-century British liberals favoured a growing amount of state intervention, if not in the
economy then in infrastructure (e.g. railways, posts, communications) as well as in legal support
for the economy. They also came to favour a greater role for the state in education, including
technical education. And in the later part of the century, they led an extension of the state’s role
into education, social welfare, research and development. They also began the encouragement of
cooperation between firms where it served state interests (for example in military technologies).
J.S. Mill disagreed with his father James, who held a more limited view of the state’s role. Marshall
extended the idea of the state’s role to protect infant industries and the national research base,
ideas taken as much from List as from earlier liberal writers. Marshall’s ideas led to the growth of
government protection for research intensive industries in many countries, as well as for specific
regions or cities that promoted their growth (sometimes called the ‘third Italy’ or ‘industrial dis-
tricts’ argument). John Maynard Keynes held relatively orthodox views of the monetary role of
the state when he wrote about money in the 1920s. But by 1933, he was arguing that the state
could and should have a more fundamental role in managing the overall level of demand in the
economy (‘aggregate demand’) so as to produce a balance of total supply and demand for goods
and service at a level that was capable of producing full employment (however that was to be
defined). Keynes’ arguments shaped the future of economic management in the more advanced
economies, although they were not fully adopted anywhere until after 1945, and they were never
fully adopted in a number of countries (including Japan and the US). These arguments continue
to divide economists and political economy as they continue to form one of the main political
cleavages in many countries.
The four key planks of liberal economic thought are therefore: the importance of individuals;
the importance of the separation between the state and the civil society of individuals, families and
companies; the benefits of trade through the working of relative competitive advantage; and the
importance of competition, which should be as close to a ‘perfect competition’ model as possible,
but that will inevitably fall short and may fall a long way short of the ideal. Framed in the context
of laws, private property, money credit and debt, and a system of incentives based on profits won
through entrepreneurship, these form the bedrock of what is now called contemporary capitalism.
And whether or not specific countries conform in practice to this model very closely (many do
not), these ideas form the dominant ideology of the global economy today.
Marxist IPE
Marxism has never been a mainstream force in either IR or IPE, but it has always been present,
and it has always had significant influence. However, there has no more been a single Marxist
approach than there has been a single liberal view in IPE. Marx’s own view of international rela-
tions was limited, even though he commented on international issues, including among others
the US Civil War, the unification of Italy and the rise of European empires in Africa and Asia.
To fill the ‘gap’ left by Marx’s theories, a number of writers contributed different approaches. Of
these, the most influential was Hobson’s theory of imperialism, on which Lenin drew extensively
in his Imperialism: the Highest State of Capitalism (1916). Lenin argued that just as industrial capital-
ism had separated from the earlier forms of mercantile capitalism in the industrial revolution, so
now a new form of capitalism was emerging, finance capitalism, which demanded the extension
of capitalist modes of production from the more developed economies to others through impe-
rialism. The mechanism here was partly about the falling rates of profit in the most developed
economies as they reached maturity, but it was also a result of the conflict between the interests
and needs of industrial and finance capital and the coming of the domination of finance. So while
a different Marxist theorist, Kautsky, had argued that the growth of a world capitalist economy
would produce a form of integration between global monopolies against which working class
interests would have to struggle at a global level, Lenin suggested that integration would be
undermined by the competition of national interests and financial empires. The result would be
global conflict between large bloc imperial interests and the states that represented them. But this
global conflict would provide the context in which effective revolutionary action would become
possible. Imperialism was the ‘highest’ stage of capitalism because, Lenin claimed, it would be its
last. Lenin’s argument seemed to many readers to be open to much criticism, including its close
derivation from the writing of the liberal John Hobson, and its relatively crude account of both
international economics and international politics (Lenin was a very hasty theorist). But Lenin’s
view became a rigidly established orthodoxy in the USSR and then after 1945 in the Russian
dominated communist world. As a result it became ossified and poorly related to real experience;
it was for scholars outside the soviet world to develop Marxism as a powerful way of understand-
ing IPE. Three strands of this tradition are discussed here (while developments of them figure in
the next chapter), dependency theory, world systems theory and historical sociology. These three
approaches intertwine and share something of a common intellectual history. Each derives directly
from a non-Leninist (or Western Marxist) tradition as well as from Marx and Lenin. Each evolved
in response to the evolution of realism and liberalism in the 1960s and 1970s as well as responding
to currents within Marxism. Each is still influential in studies of IPE.
Dependency theory points to the parallel between a Marxian account of a two-class society (a
capitalist class and a working class or proletariat) within the developed industrial world and a ‘two-
class’ global society between states and economies. But at a global level the two ‘classes’ were on
the one hand developed capitalist economies, which held structural advantages and the capacity to
dictate the rules of the global system, as well as to dominate through their financial, military and
corporate activity, and on the other hand dependent societies, poorer and weaker whatever their
size, which were highly penetrated by ‘advanced’ country interests, which mostly had a legacy of
colonial influence and which had ruling elites that were, whether through corruption or more
open processes, more prepared to represent rich countries’ interests than to protect their own
people. This model was sometimes advanced rather crudely, and just as few sociologists would
accept a crude two-class account of national societies, so it is recognised that there are both gen-
uinely developing countries and non-developing countries in the global South. There are more
independent economies alongside more dependent ones and while some societies and economies
have shown very little development in the last fifty years, others have achieved very impressive
growth and the creation of a much wider distribution of income and wealth. In some of these
cases, foreign aid has measurably contributed to growth, while in others foreign aid has if anything
been a significant hindrance and has also fostered corruption. In some cases conflict and civil war
has undermined development, while in others civil conflict has been absent and in yet others civil
conflict has provided the ruling elite with an excuse to maintain its own power provision at the
expense of both opposition parties and ordinary citizens. The global South is both more diverse
and more difficult to theorise than the basic ideas of dependency theory outlined in the 1960s
suggested. But it has been put in much more sophisticated terms.
Raul Prebisch (1901–1986) played an important part in the development of dependency theory
as an economic understanding of development. Prebisch, an Argentinian economist who worked
in various United Nations’ institutions, formed a theory published in the 1950s and was widely
admired, which suggested that the ‘normal’ conditions of trade and finance that liberal economists
believe shape competitive advantage do not really apply to weaker countries in the world system.
These ideas were of intellectual interest; but they took time to become more widely accepted. It
was widely believed in international organisations, in the global South, and in developed societies,
that as countries decolonised after 1945 and found their feet as independent states, they would
succeed in rapid development on a path towards the status of the most advanced countries. When
this did not happen, which was clear by the mid 1960s, the UN established a Commission through
the World Bank to report on prospects for future development, chaired by the former Canadian
Prime Minister Lester Pearson. The resulting Pearson Report (1969), although primarily liberal
in approach, took account of many of Prebisch’s arguments, aiming to explain why development
had become much more difficult than previously anticipated, and proposing measures to speed
growth in the global South. In turn, this initiated a series of debates that continue to shape the
international development literature, including whether liberal development policies can work,
whether countries develop despite rather than because of foreign aid, whether global aid organisa-
tions can effectively represent the global South or only represent a hegemony of dominant voices,
and what development really is. All these questions are developed further in later chapters.
The label ‘structuralism’ is often used when discussing dependency theory because it points
to the structural disadvantage of countries in the global South, a disadvantage which it is said
no particular policies would be powerful enough to overcome. Structural power here means
power derived from one’s position in a given structure. Structural power is deeply embedded in
institutions, relationships and political practice. It may not be immediately obvious, but it can be
identified and measured and evaluated through detailed quantitative analysis if one wishes. For
structuralist scholars in IPE, the most compelling evidence of the existence of global structures
of power is the difficulty of ‘development’ in the face of embedded inequalities in the world
system. Indeed, they would say that the disadvantage of marginalised countries may be deep-
ened through interaction with the global system as a whole. A different way to put this is that
countries do not have the same advantages, that inequalities reproduce themselves over time and
that there is no ‘level playing field’ in international competition. The most widely used devel-
opment of dependency theory is Immanuel Wallerstein’s world system theory, briefly explained
here. Wallerstein’s colleague, Giovanni Arrighi, has developed a historical account of the recent
evolution on the world system in his The Long Twentieth Century (1994), influential for its schol-
arship for non-Marxist writers as well as Marxists. The policy corollary of these arguments is that
countries in the global South might be far better off pursuing their own autonomous or ‘autarkic’
policies rather than integrating ever closer to the world economy. This has, however, not proved
a widely possible option despite some countries such as Venezuela attempting it – the exception,
the great success story of independent autarky, might be seen as China, but the Chinese economy
is a very distinctive case: most specialists would agree that China developed much more rapidly
only after it began to integrate with the world economy after 1979. Structuralism might appear
to be a very compelling critical analysis; it might also appear to be a much less persuasive set of
policy recommendations.
What exactly is the ‘structure’ in this kind of structuralism? It is understood as a structure of
dominance and dependence where one group of countries form a ‘core’ of powerful actors,
holding the financial and trade strings, but also forming the base for dominant corporations
and dominant institutions and networks. The majority of countries, and the majority of world
p opulation, occupy a ‘periphery’, a fringe that depends on imports of high-value goods and
services from the core, which imports capital and owes debts, which sells mainly primary prod-
ucts (minerals, energy, agricultural products, low value manufactures) on world markets. These
peripheral countries are dominated by an elite, who are highly ‘penetrated’ by core values and
core education so that they act as a subaltern class representing core interests rather than those of
their own people. Peripheral countries are ruled through violence whether or not they appear to
be democracies and they are ruled through corruption. But neither violence nor corruption is as
powerful in shaping their lack of control over their own destiny as their lack of ability to shape
the rules of international economic and political and cultural relations. This ‘core-periphery
model’ of two kinds of international actor (which mimicked the Marxist ‘two-class’ model of
capitalist society) was fairly quickly modified by the addition of a third group of actors, the semi-
periphery states and societies that had some measure of influence, which enjoyed higher GDP
and more widely spread wealth than the poorer countries, but that were still essentially peripheral
in their ability to shape global markets and political outcomes, and that were often dependent on
major core players for their geostrategic security as well as their investment and financial stabil-
ity. Mexico, Turkey, Romania and Argentina have all been seen as semi-peripheral countries.
This structural model remains powerful, especially in the global South, where many academ-
ics and many politicians and policy advisors hold either a precise or a roughly formed version of
the model (which dominates the teaching of IPE in India, for example). There have obviously
been difficulties in holding on to this approach as some developing countries have rapidly devel-
oped (where does one fit Singapore or Dubai into this analysis?) and as some, including India,
China, Indonesia and Brazil, have become major actors in geopolitics and immensely significant
economic powers. But authors such as Wallerstein continue to modify the detail while holding
to the main lines of this approach, which has remained one of the most important approaches
to IPE.
Historical sociology is the third and final strand of Marxist writing to be considered here.
Historical sociology explores the growth of the state and the relations between state and society
drawing on conceptual tools that combine the insights of liberal sociology and history – most
especially the writing of the German sociologist Max Weber – with Marxist thinking about the
relationship between politics and economics in the historical evolution of society. The work of
Talcott Parsons on social structure, of anthropologists such as Margaret Mead and Marc Augė, of
non-Marxist structuralists including especially Emile Durkheim, and of a range of historians also
shapes the field. Perhaps the most influential historian in this context is the French scholar Fernand
Braudel. Braudel tried to escape from the narrow confines of detailed historical work arguing that
it was also possible to construct a long-term history of societies and economies using evidence
in rigorous but different ways to traditional history. Braudel’s notion of ‘history in a long-term
framework (‘longue durée’) shaped much of the work of contemporary scholars on the evolution
of relations between state and society. It produced important comparative work on the nature,
impacts and significance of revolutions. It also influenced recent work on globalisation by a variety
of scholars, some closer to Weber’s liberalism and some closer to a Marxian tradition (further dis-
cussed in Chapter 4). Contemporary historical sociology reminds one that there is an interesting
and significant overlap between (some) liberal and (some) Marxist thinking and research practice
in IPE, and that the dialogue between them is often fruitful.
In general the mainstream Marxist approaches are all relatively pessimistic about the possibility
of change and tend to see the structures of dominant power as well-established and resistant to
strategies or moves to undermine them. Lenin called the often romantic idea of early revolution
‘left-wing infantilism’. Chase Dunn more recently anticipated eventual change in the structures of
world power but suggested they might come no earlier than one or two thousand years. It is the
more radical variants of Marxism discussed in Chapter 2 that challenge these ideas.
Criticising the mainstream IR approaches

The critique of these IR-derived approaches revolved around six main conceptual issues. First of all,
the actors: as noted already, to focus solely on states as actors in IPE is blind not only to the impor-
tance of the capacities of many non-state actors, but also to the authority they have often come to
wield. That includes institutions such as credit rating agencies, international banking bodies such
as the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), trade associations, and non-government organisa-
tions and charities delivering aid and development programmes. One also needs to recognise the
importance that networks between key actors have, whether they be states or non-state actors or
combinations of the two. In particular, leading firms have complex networks of supply chains and
complex relations with partners through joint ventures and collaborations on research. The study
of these networks leads to very different and much more nuanced understanding of IPE than an
approach that only looks at states or market behaviours, or even at international institutions such
as the IMF and World Bank.
Second, structure: classic IR theory tended to neglect the importance of structural forces unless
they could be pointed to and measured directly. Traditional Marxism, which did give an account
of structure as a key factor in its view of IR, nevertheless tended to focus only on three structures
(global monopoly finance; class; and the hegemonic power of imperialism) at the expense of any
others. It was for later Marxist writers (the ‘structuralist or ‘world systems’ theorists) to find more
sophisticated ideas of structure, often prompted by non-Marxist critiques of Leninist ideas. But
liberalism and realism in IR alike neglected structure, and sometimes still do, whereas in IPE they
cannot and do not do so. But the label ‘structuralist’ is also ambiguous in so far as, while there are
plenty of Marxist minded structuralist scholars in IPE, there are also at least as many non-Marxist
structuralists (often influenced most importantly by a line of theory derived from the sociologist
Emile Durkheim), not a few of whom would describe themselves as liberal or realist, as will be
explained shortly.
Third, the agenda of the field: scholars in IPE have from the beginning sought to widen the
agenda of what counts as important. To give a few examples, they shifted attention from the
policy concerns of the largest actors, not just looking at the global South, but also at the situa-
tion of women in development or world labour markets, at the relationship between culture and
economic growth (or failure of growth), at poverty and debt, and at the importance of informal
networks. Thus, arguably, the agenda of IPE is much broader than that of IR even as IR has been
re-thought in the last twenty years.
Fourth, many classical IR scholars and teachers held a notion of economics as being essentially
about resources available to the state, a view that economists of all schools would reject as hope-
lessly simplistic. To give examples, Napoleon was able to mobilise resources in this and that way;
the British defeated him when they were able to mobilise more and more powerful resources,
especially through their use of financial markets to subsidise countries such as Russia, Prussia and
Austria against the French. But IPE is concerned with much more than state resources, as many
of the examples in this chapter attest. The emphasis on different forms of market behaviour and
different and more complex relations such as complex supply chains and the impact of technical
innovation on both politics and economics are important illustrations of the point.
Fifth, the conception of power embodied in these approaches is transformed. As Stephen Lukes
pointed out, classic IR, like traditional political theory, tended to see power as one of two or at
most three kinds. The first was the capacity of brute domination; the second was the capability
granted by resources of all kinds; the third was ‘psychological’ power, or what was often called
the capacity to exercise will against a more physically powerful opponent. By neglecting struc-
tures, traditionalists neglected most forms of structural power. Beyond these first ‘three faces’
(Lukes) of power, IPE must recognise that power lies in language, in the ways that words are
used, and in the underlying discourses and structures of speech and action. If it is possible to say a
range of things but impossible to say others because it is either inconceivable or because it ‘defies
common sense’ to say them, then one might want to examine what counts as sayable, what the
idea of ‘common sense’ conceals. This kind of discourse analysis (which owes a good deal to the
philosopher Michel Foucault) has become one of the main ways of penetrating visions of power,
and might be described as a ‘fourth face’ of power. We might find a ‘fifth face’ in patterns of rela-
tions of trust, which include networks (already discussed, and further developed in Chapter 3).
But these forms of ‘social capital’ rest on distinctions that create structures of influence and ideas,
which come to dominate others. These weak links that nonetheless have considerable strength
and staying power shape the ways in which global trade is done between firms that have a lot of
knowledge of each other, as it shapes negotiations on everything from banking to telecommuni-
cations regulation. The most important sources of these ideas lie in business networking theory
(developed in Chapter 3), but also in the careful detailed social analysis of Pierre Bourdieu and
Bruno Latour, a neat example of how a debate in anthropology and sociology has helped to refine
discussion in contemporary IPE.
Susan Strange drew on these critical points, but made a larger one that has continued to shape
IPE across the board. She argued that while academic International Relations was too narrowly
conceived, it was not enough to bring a study of markets into play. Market behaviour mattered,
she held, as did state power and state behaviour. But a ‘states and markets’ approach to IPE,
although an improvement, was still too narrow. IPE needed not only a broader view of who
the actors were, what the core structures were, and what values were at issue in any analysis, it
also needed to explore how these separate elements interacted and shaped each other, and how
the position of academic analysts shaped their own collective understandings. In doing this, IPE
might shade into other fields, including business and cultural studies as well as regional analysis.
Strange was a Financial Times journalist and consultant for the Economist Intelligence Unit before
she became Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics; she was
recognised in the US as by far the most influential European scholar in the field. She claimed
not to be very interested in theory, although she was very good at it; she rejected many of the
boundaries and limitations of individual theories outlined in this chapter, hoping to encourage
students towards a more open-minded and self-critical approach to theory, while always testing
how good theory might be through assessing its applicability to specific real-world cases. More
than most other scholars, she was also open to ideas and possibilities in a range of arguments from
Marx, Schumpeter and Keynes through varieties of liberalism to some of the (less radical) versions
of feminism and postmodern scholarship. However, she sometimes said that her favourite theorist
was Voltaire, a recommendation of engaged scepticism rather than of any specific approach to
IPE, and a view that the beginning student might find welcome.
The practical concerns shaping the evolution of IPE

The emergence of IPE happened at a particular moment in time, which shaped its emergence as
much as the history of IR or economic theory. At the end of the 1960s, American domination
in the world economy seemed to be beginning to decline; the institutional and financial arrange-
ments founded at the end of the Second World War seemed equally to be crumbling. The growth
of other economies (especially Germany and Japan, but later China and Brazil as well as some of
the major oil producer economies) weakened the ability of the US to dominate patterns of trade
and in turn weakened the US capacity to make the rules of the global economy. This was signalled
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Y pregunto yo á mi vez á ese lector:—¿Han sido nunca otra cosa los
ídolos del vulgo de levita?
Por de pronto, apuesto una credencial de «buen muchacho» á que
si yo tomo de la mano á un hombre, de los muchos que conozco,
que se pasan la vida luchando brazo á brazo con la adversa fortuna,
sin reparar siquiera que á su lado cruzan otros más felices con
menores esfuerzos; á uno de esos hombres verdaderamente
discretos, verdaderamente generosos, verdaderamente honrados;
apuesto, repito, la credencial consabida á que si le tomo de la mano
y le saco al público mercado, no encuentro quien le fíe dos pesetas
sobre su legítimo título de buen muchacho, título que se le ha
usurpado para ennoblecer á tanto y tanto zascandil como se
pavonea con él por esas calles de Dios.
Por tanto, lector amigo, y para concluir, voy á pedirte un favor:
mientras no se adopte en el mundo civilizado la costumbre de dar á
las cosas y á las personas el nombre que legítimamente les
pertenece, si por chiripa llegara yo á caerte en gracia (lo que no es
de esperar) y desearas darme por ello un calificativo honroso,
llámame... cualquier perrería; pero ¡por Dios te lo ruego! no me
llames nunca buen muchacho.
1867.
EL PRIMER SOMBRERO
Un conocido mío que estuvo en Santander quince años ha y volvió á

esta ciudad el último verano, me decía, después de recorrer sus
barrios y admirar los atrevidos muelles de Maliaño, desde el
monumental de Calderón:
—Decididamente es Santander una de las poblaciones que más han
adelantado en menos tiempo.
Y después de hablar así del paisaje, echóse á estudiar el paisanaje,
es decir, la masa popular, en la cual reside siempre, y en todas
partes, el sello típico del país, el verdadero color de localidad; pero
tanto y tanto resabio censurable encontró en él; tanta y tanta
inconveniencia admitida y respetada por el uso; tanto y tanto defecto
condenable ante el más rudimentario código de policía y buen
gobierno, que, olvidado de que semejantes contrastes son moneda
corriente aun en las capitales más importantes de España, exclamó
con desaliento:
—¡Qué lástima que las costumbres populares de Santander no
hayan sufrido una reforma tan radical como la ciudad misma!
Y el observador, al hablar así, estaba muy lejos de lo cierto; porque
precisamente es más notable el cambio operado aquí en las
costumbres públicas, que el que aquél admiraba tanto en la parte
material de la ciudad.
Considérese, por de pronto, que los vicios de que adolecen
actualmente las costumbres de este pueblo, no sólo han disminuido
en número, con respecto á ayer, sino en intensidad, como diría un
gacetillero hablando de las invasiones de una epidemia que se
acaba; y téngase luego muy en cuenta que en todas las escenas en
que hoy toma parte el llamado pueblo bajo, y en otras muchas más,
figuraba antes en primer término la juventud perteneciente á las
clases sociales más encopetadas.
Y no acoto con muertos, como vulgarmente se dice, pues aún no
peinan canas muchos de los personajes que llevaban la mejor parte
en empresas que más de dos veces degeneraron en trágicas.
Yo, que soy más joven que ellos, conocí las famosas pedreas de
baja-mar, en las cuales se tiraban á muerte dos bandas
capitaneadas por mancebos de elevada alcurnia. También presencié
algunas de las sangrientas batallas que se daban frecuentemente
entre los jóvenes de este pueblo y los mozos de Cueto y Monte. Las
inolvidables troncadas que se pegaban en bahía dos lanchas
tripuladas por gente de distintos bandos, y en cuyos duelos el infeliz
que caía al agua no hallaba compasión ni auxilio más que entre los
suyos, ocurrieron ayer, como quien dice.
No hay en Santander quien no recuerde á los insignes personajes
Tío Pipuela, Caparrota, don Lorenzo y otros ejusdem fúrfuris. Todos
estos tipos pasaron aquí por locos. Yo no diré que no lo fueran; pero
sí aseguro que sus excentricidades tuvieron por causa, más que una
predisposición natural, la implacable persecución que los infelices
sufrían de todo el pueblo, de día, de noche, en la calle y hasta en el
sucio y desabrigado rincón de sus albergues.
Los socios de la Unión soltera y de la Sociedad sin nombre, eran el
terror de los tipos y la pesadilla de los legos y sacristanes; hacían,
por sus travesuras, intransitables las calles en que estaban
establecidas sus sociedades, y tenían por teatro de sus predilectas
fechorías los bailes y paseos públicos, dejándolas sentir muy á
menudo en ocasiones como el rosario de la Orden Tercera, en San
Francisco, y las tinieblas de Semana Santa.
Encontrábase en la calle un grupo de elegantes, que iban de paseo
departiendo sobre los más graves asuntos que cabían en sus
rizadas cabezas, con el pobre Jerónimo, con su cara abotargada, su
mirar yerto y sus brazos caídos al desgaire.
—¡Infla, Jerónimo!—le decían aquéllos, deteniéndose de pronto y
rodeando al tipo.
Y éste hinchaba los carrillos, sobre los cuales iban los pisaverdes
descargando papuchadas, continuando después la interrumpida
marcha, sin que á Jerónimo, ni á los transeúntes, ni aun á ellos
mismos, les chocase el lance lo más mínimo; antes al contrario,
creyéndole todos la cosa más natural del mundo. Como lo era
detener á Esteban, que todavía vive, pedirle la hora, y responder el
detenido, con esa cara de frío que le caracteriza: «las tres», aunque
fueran las diez de la mañana. Como lo era también decir á Juan, el
aguador «alabado sea Dios», para tener el gusto de verle hincar la
rodilla y santiguarse, aunque llevara sobre la cabeza la herrada llena
de agua, y contestar: «Para siempre sea alabado su santísimo
nombre», con otra retahila de que ya no me acuerdo. Como lo era,
asimismo, convidar al tío Cayetano á beber en un café, y darle una
purga por sangría, ó tinta de escribir por vino de Rioja. Como lo era,
en fin, prender fuego al horno de la tía Cuca, cuando roncaba Mingo
dentro de él.
Todo esto y mucho más que no cito, se consideraba entonces como
natural, porque todo ello era en alto grado popular, penetrando la
fama de esos tipos y la de su martirio hasta los más severos
gabinetes de la culta sociedad.
No trato de discurrir aquí sobre si un pueblo que con tales
pequeñeces se preocupa, es preferible ó no al que, como el de hoy,
peca por el extremo contrario, de despreocupado y desdeñoso;
sobre si las crueldades cometidas entonces por la juventud llamada
á encargarse de los futuros destinos de su país, revelaban mejor ó
peor corazón que el que hoy debemos suponer bajo la precoz
formalidad que caracteriza á nuestros intonsos legisladores é
imberbes periodistas. Dejo esta tarea al buen juicio del lector, y me
limito á decirle que in illo témpore aún no se conocían en Santander
las diligencias por la carretera, y creo que ni los vapores por la
bahía.
Cuando la superficie de este dormido lago comenzó á agitarse á
impulso de los nuevos aires, la clase acomodada fué reparando
poco á poco en la estrechez del círculo en que hasta entonces había
vivido, y á bordo de un vapor por la boca del puerto, ó en el mullido
interior de las diligencias peninsulares, por la carretera de Becedo,
salió á descubrir más anchos horizontes. Desde aquel momento, las
costumbres populares de Santander sufrieron una transformación
casi radical, y sólo quedaron en escena la clase del pueblo, que
viene dando hasta hoy grandes pruebas de que sobre ella pasan en
vano años y civilizaciones, más algunos pocos recalcitrantes de la
otra clase, apegados con exceso á los viejos hábitos, que se
limitaban á escaramuzas aisladas y completamente independientes
de las feroces campañas del populacho.
Á esa época pertenecen los brevísimos episodios que voy á referir,
no por lo que en sí tengan de interesantes, que nada tienen, sino
por el contraste que forman, atendida su reciente fecha, con la
despreocupación y la tolerancia que caracterizan en la materia á
Santander de hoy, y también por si encuentro un lector de allende
estas montañas que, al conocerlos, exclame:
—¡Lo mismo sucedía en mi pueblo!
II
Muy pocos años después de la desaparición de Caparrota y de
Cobertera de la escena del mundo, y cuando el martirio de Mingo y
de Jerónimo corría de cuenta exclusiva de la gente menuda, é
ingresaban en la Casa de Caridad don Lorenzo y Tumbanavíos,
entraba en España la primera locomotora, y yo en plena pubertad...
y á cursar tercero de filosofía.
Robustote y fuerte por naturaleza, y hasta gordinflón (¡quantum
mutatus ab illo!), á pesar de mis catorce años representaba diez y
nueve, circunstancia que no dejaba de darme alguna
preponderancia entre mis condiscípulos, sobre todo, entre los que
eran más débiles que yo. Pues, señor, en aquel tiempo tuvo un
pariente mío la desdichada ocurrencia de regalarme un sombrero de
copa. ¡Me parece que le estoy viendo! Era de finísimo castor
aplomado, largo de pelo y apañadito de cilindro. Aunque no tan bajo,
en el conjunto de su arquitectura se daba bastante aire á los que
usan en este país los curas de aldea.
Habrán observado ustedes que las familias clásicas han tenido
siempre la obstinada manía de que sus muchachos se revistan,
cuanto antes, de la mayor formalidad posible, y truequen, por el de
los hombres circunspectos, el carácter y hasta los hábitos propios
de la edad del trompo y de la cometa. La mía (es decir, mi familia,
no mi cometa) fué en este punto una notabilidad, y puedo asegurar
que desde el instante en que llegó á mis manos el condenado
regalo, se trocaron para mí en amargura los antes dulcísimos
placeres de los días festivos. No bien en uno de éstos asomaba el
alba y empezaba yo á respirar con íntima satisfacción, recordando
que por aquel día no me aguardaban disertaciones metafísicas ni
traducciones de Horacio, cuando me hacía estremecer el arrastrado
sombrero, colocado sigilosamente durante la noche sobre el
equipaje dominguero que debía vestirme al levantarme.
—¡Hoy no te escapas sin ponerle!—me decían por todo consuelo.—
Y yo, no atreviéndome nunca á responder abiertamente que no,
pero resuelto á ejecutarlo, aguardaba un momento oportuno para
encasquetarme la gorra y echar por la escalera abajo como perro
goloso. Pero ¿creen ustedes que yo gozaba después entre mis
camaradas? ¡Ni por asomos! El recuerdo de lo que me esperaba al
volver al hogar por mi desobediencia, calificada ya de rebeldía; la
idea de que por la tarde necesitaba jugar la vuelta otra vez á la
gente de mi casa para salir á la calle sin la afrentosa colmena, y la
consideración de que estos sudores tendrían que repetirse en
adelante cada día de fiesta, aplanaban mi espíritu y envenenaban
mi sangre.
La razón que tenía mi familia para empeñarse tan tenazmente en
que me pusiera el sombrero, era que yo parecía ya un hombre, y
que, por lo tanto, me sentaba muy mal la gorra. Los motivos que yo
tenía para no ponérmele eran de muchísima consideración para mí;
pero, desgraciadamente, de ninguna para mi familia, porque no
creía en ellos, por más que yo se los expusiera hasta con lágrimas
en los ojos.
Y lo cierto es, acá para inter nos, que á veces se me iban los
susodichos por el maldito sombrero, y que hubiera dado hasta una
caja de pinturas, que yo apreciaba en mucho, por haber podido
sacarle á la calle impunemente. Tenía una fragata, á toda vela,
pintada en el forro interior de su cúpula, que me enamoraba, y
parecía estampada allí para enseñársela á unos cuantos de mis
condiscípulos que se daban humos de pintores, porque sabían
iluminar barcos con el amarillento jugo que sueltan en primavera los
capullos de los chopos de la Alameda Segunda.
En esto llegó el día del Corpus, y yo iba á estrenar en la procesión
un traje que tenía que ver. Se componía de pantalón de grandes
cuadros, con trabillas de botín, tuina de mezclilla verdosa con cuello
de terciopelo, chaleco de merino perla con botones jaspeados, y
corbata azul y roja con ancho lazo de mariposa.
Cuando, con este atavío, me miré al espejo, confieso que me
pareció muy mal la gorra que, por vía de prueba, me puse en la
cabeza: me encontraba con ella un si es no es descaracterizado, y
más que un elegante en toda regla, parecía un mozo de mostrador
cortejante dominguero de doncellas de labor. En cambio, con el
sombrero puesto, me hallaba en riguroso carácter de persona
decente, y hasta disculpaba en mis adentros la incesante pretensión
de mi familia.
Pero ¿cómo me arriesgaba yo á lanzarme al público con la velluda
cúspide sobre mi cabeza? La gorra no era elegante, en verdad;
pero, en cambio, me permitía asociarme á mis amigos, correr,
observar, divertirme y gozar sin tasa de los atractivos de la
procesión. Pero con el sombrero... ¡Oh! Los inconvenientes del
sombrero eran capaces de hacer sudar al muchacho de más
agallas.
Mi familia debió enterarse de mis vacilaciones, porque hallándome
en lo más comprometido de ellas, supo explotarlas tan bien, tanto
me aduló, tanto ponderó mi garbo y mi estatura, que, vencido al
cabo, arrojé la gorra debajo de la cama, como si quisiera huir de
todo peligro de tentación; me calé el sombrero, cerré los ojos, y me
lancé á la escalera, zumbándome los oídos y viendo las estrellitas
sobre celajes del rojo más subido, entre relámpagos verdes y
amarillos, y otras muchas cosas que sólo se ven en circunstancias
como aquéllas y cuando aprietan mucho unas botas nuevas.
Á media escalera se me pasó la fiebre; vi clara y despejada la
situación, y retrocedí. Pero al llegar á la puerta de mi casa, temí los
anatemas de mi familia; pasé un breve rato comparando los dos
peligros; elegí el peor, como sucede siempre á los hijos de Adán
cuando les importa mucho lo que meditan, y me planté en el portal.
En el que me entraron nuevos y más copiosos sudores, porque
nunca había contemplado tan de cerca lo arriesgado de mi empresa.
Pero estaba ya resuelto á no retroceder por nada ni por nadie.
Reconcentré en un solo esfuerzo todos mis vacilantes bríos; y como
bañista perezoso que teme el primer remojón, contuve el aliento,
hinché los carrillos, cerré los ojos y me eché á la calle, sin que
pueda describir el efecto que ésta me hizo, porque yo no veía más
que el ondulante pelambre del plomizo alero que asombraba mis
ojos extraviados.
No obstante, al doblar la primera esquina, lograron grabarse con
toda claridad en mis pupilas las estampas diabólicas de dos pilluelos
que departían amistosamente en un portal. Al verme uno de ellos,
respingó como si le hubiera electrizado súbita alegría; llamó hacia
mí la atención de su camarada, y exclamó con un acento que me
atravesó desde la copa del sombrero hasta las trabillas de mi
estirado pantalón:
—¡Agua! ¡Qué pirulera!
—¡Me la parten!—dije entonces para mi chaleco perla.
Y, acto continuo, dos tronchos de repollo pasaron zumbando junto á
mis orejas, y fueron á estrellarse en la pared de enfrente.
Comenzaban á realizarse mis temores.
Híceme el desentendido á esta primera insinuación; apreté el paso,
y pronto me encontré de patitas en la carrera de la procesión, que
estaba cuajadita de gente. Culebreando un rato entre ella me creía
ya inadvertido para todo el mundo, merced al barullo, cuando di de
hocicos con un grupo de calaverillas domingueros, con gorritas de
terciopelo, chaquetillas de paño negro, pantalón muy estirado de
perneras y muy ceñido á la cintura, nada de tirantes ni chaleco, y
mucha punta de corbata; traje que en aquellos tiempos privaba
mucho entre la gente joven y de buen tono. Al verlos, traté de
hacerme á la izquierda, convencido de lo que me esperaba si me
veían; y ya creía logrado mi propósito, cuando oí decir á uno de
ellos con un retintín que me heló la sangre:
—Siempre me han hecho á mí mucha gracia las bombas de castor.
—Eso va conmigo,—pensé yo, echando ambas manos á las alas del
sombrero para asegurarle bien, y lanzándome resuelto á naufragar
en aquel mar de gente. Media braza habría penetrado en sus
profundidades, cuando un golpe despiadado sobre la cúpula velluda,
me hundió el ignominioso bombo hasta la punta de la nariz. Saquéle
como pude, jadeando de angustia; esforcé aún más mi empuje; pisé
á muchas personas que, por desgracia, todas tenían callos;
bramaron de ira y de dolor, fijáronse en mí: y al ver el sombrero,
como si fuera la cosa más justa y natural, le saludaron con una
descarga cerrada de cales á la media vuelta, tan nutrida y
constante, que á mí mismo me daba lástima de él.
Al cabo de tantos atropellos, mi espanto se trocó en furor. Recordé
que yo también tenía puños, y no flojos; y á ciegas, como estaba por
la vergüenza y el despecho, comencé á esgrimir los brazos en todas
direcciones, y á machacar cráneos, halláranse ó no coronados por
apéndices tan ignominiosos como el que á tales malandanzas me
arrastraba en aquel día infausto. Pero mi heroica resolución sólo
contribuyó á que me persiguieran más y más los odios populares;
los cuales, al fin, me estropearon un ojo y me rasgaron el faldón de
la tuina. En tal situación logré llegar á la Ribera, que estaba, á Dios
gracias, despejada de calaveras y pilletes, que todos eran unos.
Allí me atreví á contemplar entre mis manos el sombrero. ¡Cómo me
le habían puesto! La copa se había derrumbado á la derecha; y
como si todo él hubiese participado de la irritación en que se hallaba
mi espíritu, tenía el pelo erizado, como los gatos en pelea, y hasta
se me antojó que su color plomizo se había trocado en verde bilioso,
como debía de ser entonces el de mi cara. Enderecé la copa como
mejor pude, no por cariño, bien lo sabe Dios, y me dispuse á
volverme á casa por calles solitarias.
Á poner iba en práctica mi plan, después de prender con un alfiler el
jirón de la tuina, cuando distinguí un grupo de camaradas de colegio
que venían hacia mí. Volé á su encuentro, ansioso de rodearme,
para un evento, de corazones nobles y caras amigas. Pero me
engañé miserablemente. Ellos no corrieron hacia mí con la franca
cordialidad que acostumbraban cuando yo llevaba gorra. Lejos de
ello, se detuvieron sorprendidos; después se miraron unos á otros,
en seguida se sonrieron, luego me rodearon apostrofando
irónicamente á mi sombrero, y hasta pretendió alguno de ellos
tomarle el pelo. Este desengaño me aplanó. Prometí solemnemente
romper el bautismo al que tocase la copa maldecida; y por consejo
de los mismos, que parecieron condolerse de mi situación cuando
se la referí detalladamente, me dirigí á mi casa. Pero al pasar bajo el
Puente de Vargas, y cuando apenas había salido del término de su
sombra, una descarga de tronchazos llovió sobre mi cabeza. Al
volver los ojos hacia arriba, no sin ciertas precauciones, sorprendí á
mis amigos en el acto de saludarme con otra descarga. Huyeron al
verse cogidos infraganti; y yo, jurando romperles las narices en
cuanto me pusiera la gorra, metí el sombrero bajo la tuina y
apresuré la marcha, prefiriendo asarme la mollera al sol, á sufrir un
martirio como el pasado.
De este modo llegué á casa, donde faltó muy poco para que me
solfeasen las espaldas por término de mis desventuras, pues nadie
quiso creer el relato que de ellas hice; y todos se empeñaban en
que las abolladuras del sombrero, y el jirón de la tuina, y la
hinchazón del ojo, eran consecuencias de alguna travesura indigna
de un mocetón como yo. ¡Pícara justicia humana!
Este nuevo golpe me dio fuerzas con que antes no contaba. Entré
en mi cuarto; y con el placer que puede sentir un africano al
desbandullar á un sabio inglés, rasgué con el cortaplumas en cuatro
pedazos la execrable copa.
—Esto—pensé,—me costará una felpa; pero me pone á cubierto de
nuevas afrentas. Sublata causa, tollitur efectus,—añadí, hasta con
entusiasmo, recordando algo del poco latín que sabía.
Y á pique estuve de llevar la felpa cuando se supo en casa lo que yo
había hecho con el peludo regalo; pero no volví en adelante á sufrir
amarguras como las de aquel infausto día; y puedo asegurar á
ustedes que tenía bien cumplidos los veinte, cuando me atreví á
presentarme en las calles de Santander con sombrero de copa alta.
III
Repito que no saco á plaza las aventuras de mi primer sombrero,
por lo que ellas puedan interesar á otra persona que no sea la que
iba debajo de él cuando ocurrieron. Cítolas por lo dicho más atrás; y
añado ahora, que lo que me pasó á mí en el mencionado día
solemne, estaba pasando en Santander á todas horas á cuantos
infelices tenían la imprevisión de echarse á la calle con sombrero de
copa, y sin algún otro signo característico de persona mayor, y
además decente.
Como hoy se proveen los chicos de novelas ó de cajas de fósforos,
entonces se proveían de tronchos de berza y de pelotillas de
plátano; y había sitios en esta ciudad, como el Puente de Vargas,
los portales del Peso Público, los del Principal, la embocadura de la
cuesta de Garmendia y la esquina de la Plaza Vieja y calle de San
Francisco, que constantemente estaban ocupados por
exterminadores implacables del sombrero alto. Los pobres aldeanos
de los Cuatro lugares que no gastaban, como hoy, finos y elegantes
hongos, sino enhiestos tambores de paño rapado, caían incautos en
estas emboscadas, que muchas veces dieron lugar á furiosas
represalias.
Para estos pobres hombres, para los señores de aldea y los
polluelos de la ciudad, no se conocía en ésta la compasión si
llevaban sombrero de copa. En tales circunstancias, no había amigo
para amigo, ni hermano para hermano. Se perseguía á sus
sombreros como á los perros de rabia, sin descanso, sin cuartel.
Esto es lo que se hizo conmigo el día del Corpus; esto lo que yo
había hecho tantas veces con el prójimo; esto lo que yo alegaba
ante mi familia para no ponerme el sombrero; esto lo que mi familia
no quería creer... y todo esto pasaba en la ciudad de Santander,
llamada ya el Liverpool de España, por su riqueza mercantil y
pretendida ilustración, en el año del Señor de 1848, y en algunos de
más acá.
Y no se ría de ello la generación que siguió á la mía, y que no sólo
se encasquetó el sombrero impunemente al cumplir los catorce
años, sino que le llevó al teatro, y á butaca, después de haberle
lucido en la Alameda, y fumigado con el aroma de un habano de á
dos reales, lujos que á nosotros nos estaban prohibidos hasta en
sueños; no se ría, digo, y acepte de buena fe lo que le refiero; que
más gorda se ha de armar cuando ella cuente dentro de quince
años, que en el de gracia de 1868, aún estaban en gran boga en
Santander las cencerradas y los gigantones.
1868.
LA GUANTERÍA[2]
(Á SU DUEÑO Y MI BUEN AMIGO DON JUAN
ALONSO)
Á fuer de retratista concienzudo, aunque ramplón y adocenado, no

debo privar á la fisonomía de Santander de un detalle tan
característico, tan popular, como la Guantería. Mis lectores de
aquende le han echado de menos en mis Escenas Montañesas, y
no me perdonarían si, en ocasión tan propicia como ésta, no
reparara aquella falla. Tómenlo en cuenta los lectores de allende (si
tan dichoso soy que cuento alguno de esta clase), al tacharme este
cuadro por demasiado local.
Y tú, mi excelente amigo, el hombre más honrado de cuantos he
conocido en este mundo de bellacos y farsantes; tú, cuya biografía,
si lícito me fuera publicarla, la declarara el Gobierno como libro de
texto en todas las escuelas de la nación; tú, á quien es dado
únicamente, por un privilegio inconcebible entre la quisquillosa raza
humana, simpatizar con todos los caracteres, y lo que es más
inaudito, hacer que todos simpaticen contigo; tú, ante quien
deponen sus charoles y atributos ostentosos las altas jerarquías
oficiales para hacerse accesibles á tu confianza, eximiéndote de
antesalas, tratamientos y reverencias; tú, que no tienes un enemigo
entre los millares de hijos de Adán que te estrechan la mano y te
piden un fósforo... y algo más, que no siempre te devuelven; tú, en
fin, «guantero» por antonomasia, perdona á mi tosca pluma el
atrevimiento de intrusarse en tu propiedad, sin previo permiso, para
sacar á la vergüenza pública más de un secreto, si tal puede
llamarse á lo que está á la vista de todo el que quiera tomarse,
como yo, el trabajo de estudiarlo un poco.
Pero no te alarmes, Juan amigo: acaso lo que tú más estimas en el
establecimiento, sea lo que menos falta me hace en esta ocasión.
En efecto: yo respetaré tus cajas de guantes, tus montones de
pieles, tus frascos de perfumería, tus cajones de tabacos, tus
paquetes de velas, tus resmas de bulas... toda la enciclopedia
industrial que se encierra en el estrecho recinto de la tienda: no
colocaré mi huella profana más allá del charolado mostrador. Todo
ello te pertenece; todo lo has ganado á fuerza de constancia, de
trabajo y de honradez. De guantes, de pieles, de perfumería, de
tabacos, de velas, de bulas... de mostrador afuera está lo que yo
necesito ahora; y lo que es eso, amigo mío, todo lo voy á echar á la
calle, mal que te pese, porque todo me pertenece, como el rubor de
una novia á la crítica de sus amigas; todo es del público dominio,
como la forma de mi gabán, por más que él me haya costado el
dinero.
Conque, supuesto que no he de retroceder ya en mi propósito,
dejemos toda digresión impertinente, y manos á la obra.
II
Bajo tres aspectos pudiera, en rigor, estudiarse la Guantería: el
monumental, el mercantil y el de círculo charlamentario.
Bajo el aspecto primero, no ofrece gran interés que digamos:
conténtese quien lo ignore, que no será, de fijo, de Santander, ni
habrá permanecido en esta capital más de veinticuatro horas, con
saber que está en la calle de la Blanca; que tiene el número 9 junto
á un modesto tablero en que se lee Guantería y Perfumería, en
sustitución de otro más lujoso que ostentó hasta no ha mucho con
las armas reales, debajo de las cuales se leían estas breves, pero
resonantes palabras: Juan Alonso, guantero de SS. MM. y AA.;
que al lado de esta sencilla muestra se cierne una mano, ya roja, ya
verde, ya amarilla, pregonando con su expresivo bamboleo la
principal mercancía del establecimiento; que de las charoladas
puertas, plegadas sobre las jambas, penden multitud de cuadros
anunciando La Honradez, La Rosario, La Sociedad higiénica, Aceite
de bellotas, Expendición de bulas... y tutti cuanti; que el local de la
tienda es reducidísimo, y que no hay arquitecto que sea capaz de
fijar el orden á que pertenece... ni de meter en igual espacio la
cantidad de objetos que encierran aquellos barnizados estantes.
Bajo el segundo aspecto.—He prometido no ocuparme en esta
materia; y cumpliendo mi palabra, después de recomendar al
público la excelencia de los géneros, paso á considerar el
establecimiento.
Bajo el tercer aspecto.—Ésta es su gran fachada, la única que nos
importa examinar.
Nada más común en una población de España, la patria clásica de
los garbanzos y de los corrillos; nada más común, repito, siquiera
cuente veinte vecinos, que un mentidero, ó sea un establecimiento
público que sirva de punto de reunión á todos los desocupados. En
las aldeas y villas de corto vecindario suelen serlo la taberna, la
estafeta ó la botica. En las capitales hay un mentidero por cada
barrio, si no por cada calle ó por cada grupo de personas que
convengan entre sí en algo, siquiera en la forma del chaleco, ó en la
edad... ó en no convenir en nada.
La Guantería de Santander está muy por encima de todos los
mentideros del mundo; y así como en su calidad de establecimiento
abruma á cuantos, de su mismo género, se atreven á iniciarse á su
lado, en su calidad de círculo chismográfico resume todas las
tertulias masculinas de la capital. Todos los hombres, todas las
edades, todas las categorías tienen su representación en ese
centro; para todos hay cabida en la elástica estrechez de su recinto,
y, lo que es más extraño, las opiniones más opuestas se miran en él
sin arañarse, aunque no sin regañar.
Como punto en que se reúnen todos los caracteres de la población,
la Guantería es un palenque magnífico en que cada uno prueba á su
gusto la fuerza de su lógica, el veneno de su sátira ó la sal de su
gracejo. El que allí logra hacerse oir en pleno concurso y captarse
las simpatías de los demás, ya puso una pica en Flandes: no habrá
puerta que se le cierre, y está abocado á grandes triunfos en bailes
y tertulias.
El primer paso que da un estudiante al terminar su carrera, antes
que en la práctica de su profesión, es en el recinto de la Guantería.
Allí va á estudiar el país, á crearse amistades, á darse á conocer.
Pero que se lance á la sociedad de este pueblo desde la cátedra de
una Universidad, sin entrar por la tienda núm. 9 de la calle de la
Blanca: estará desorientado en los salones, violento, fuera de quicio,
como un oficial de cuchara en un cuerpo facultativo.
En un baile se ve un joven solitario ó, lo que aún es peor, en tibia
conversación con un tipo extravagante: es que no asiste á la
Guantería como tertuliano de ella. Os llama la atención otro prójimo
amanerado, que en el paseo no saluda á nadie con desembarazo:
pues no dudéis en asegurar que no tiene entrada en la Guantería. El
que pasea en los Mercados del Muelle; el que os mira con cierta
curiosidad, como si estudiase el nudo de vuestra corbata ó la caída
del levi-sac; el que bosteza en la Plaza Vieja á las doce del día; los
que transitan por la calle de la Blanca, muy de prisa y por la acera
de los hermanos Vázquez...; en una palabra, todos los que llevan
consigo cierto aire exótico y de desconfianza por las calles, plazas y
paseos de esta capital, carecen del exequatur del círculo de la
Guantería. Esos hombres podrán ser buenos comerciantes al
menudeo, ejemplares hermanos de la Orden Tercera, inspirados
vocales de juntas de parroquia, maridos incansables, y, á lo sumo,
en tiempo de efervescencia popular, reformistas vulgares, peones
de candidatura; pero no otra cosa: la entrada á la buena sociedad
está por la Guantería; el desembarazo, el aplomo y hasta la
elocuencia, no se adquieren en otra parte... salvas, se entiende, las
excepciones de cajón, pues excusado creo decir que también allí los
hay, y de muy buen tamaño.
En suma: la Guantería es la cátedra de todos los gustos, el púlpito
de todos los doctores, la escuela de todos los sistemas... la tribuna
de muchos pedantes; la escena, en fin, donde se exhiben, en toda
libertad y sin mutuo riesgo, las rosas y las canas, la bilis y la linfa, el
fuego y la nieve, el gorro y los blasones, el frac y los manteos; pues,
como ya he dicho más arriba, en ese círculo charlamentario todas
las edades, todas las condiciones, todos los temperamentos, todas
las jerarquías tienen su representación legítima.
III
Sentadas estas ideas generales sobre tan famoso mentidero,
tratemos de estudiarle en detalle.
Al efecto, le consideraremos en los días laborables, como dice la
jerga técnica forense, y en los días festivos.
En el primer caso.—Se abre á las siete de la mañana, y media hora
después llegan los metódicos de mayor edad, de ancho tórax y
protuberante panza, caña de roten, corbata de dos vueltas y
almohadilla, y zapato de orejas; maridos del antiguo régimen, que se
acuestan á las nueve de la noche y madrugan tanto como el sol, dan
toda la vuelta al Alta ó llegan á Corbán sin desayunarse. Estos
señores rara vez se sientan en la Guantería: á lo sumo se apoyan
contra el mostrador ó la puerta. Su conversación es ordinariamente
atmosférica, municipal, agrícola, mercantil ó de política palpitante.
Suelen extralimitarse á lo profano, pero con mucho pulso:
matrimonios notables, y no por lo que hace á la novia, sino á la dote.
Su permanencia es sólo por el tiempo que les dura caliente el
sudorcillo que les produjo el paseo.
Á las ocho y media.—Pinches de graduación, tenedores de libros, lo
menos, dependientes con dos PP., de los que dicen «nuestra casa»,
«nuestro buque», por el buque y la casa de sus amos.—Estos
suplementos mercantiles ya gastan más franqueza que sus
predecesores los tertulianos de las siete y media: no solamente se
sientan en la banqueta y sobre el mostrador, sino que, á las veces,
abren el cajón del dinero y cambian una peseta suya por dos medias
del guantero, ó le inspeccionan el libro de ventas, ó le averiguan las
ganancias de todo el mes.—Sus discursos son breves, pero
variados, gracias á Dios: muchachas ricas, probabilidades del
premio gordo, tíos en América, bailes y romerías en perspectiva.—El
más mimado de su principal no estará á las nueve y cuarto fuera del
escritorio, por lo cual el desfile de todos ellos es casi al mismo
tiempo: al sonar en el reló del ayuntamiento la primera campanada
de las nueve. Son muy dados á la broma, y se pelan por la
metáfora. De aquí que ninguno de ellos salga de la Guantería sin
que le preceda algún rasgo de ingenio, verbigracia: «vamos á la
oficina», «te convido á una ración de facturas», «me reflauto á tus
órdenes», «me aguarda el banquete de la paciencia», y otras
muchas frases tan chispeantes de novedad como de travesura.
Poco después que el último de estos concurrentes se ha largado,
empiezan á llegar los desocupados, de temperamento enérgico; los
impacientes, que se aburren en la cama y no pueden soportar un
paseo filosófico. Éstos entran dando resoplidos y tirando el
sombrero encima del mostrador; pasan una revista á los frascos de
perfumería, y se tumban, por último, sobre lo primero que hallan á
propósito, dirigiendo al guantero precisamente esta lacónica
pregunta:—¿Qué hay?—Ávidos de impresiones fuertes con que
matar el fastidio que los abruma, son la oposición de la Guantería,
siquiera se predique en ella el Evangelio, y arman un escándalo,
aunque sea sobre el otro mundo, con el primer prójimo que asoma
por la puerta. Si por la tienda circula alguna lista de suscripción para
un baile ó para una limosna, ¡infeliz baile, desdichado menesteroso!
Por supuesto, que todas sus declamaciones no les impiden ser, al
cabo, tan contribuyentes como los que más de la lista; pero el
asunto es armar la gorda, y para conseguirlo no hay nada como
hacer á todo la oposición. ¡Conque te la hacen á ti, Juan, cuando
sostienes que tu establecimiento estaría más desahogado si ellos le
desalojaran!
En medio de sus violentos discursos, es cuando suele entrar la
fregona, oriunda de Ceceñas ó de Guriezo, descubiertos los brazos
hasta el codo, pidiendo una botelluca de pachulín para su señora; ó
ya la pretérita beldad, monumento ruinoso de indescifrable fecha,
que avanza hasta el mostrador con remilgos de colegiala ruborosa,
pidiendo unos guantes obscuritos, que tarda media hora en elegir,
mientras larga un párrafo sobre la vida y milagros de los que tomó
dos años antes, y conservándolos aún puestos, se queja del tinte y
de su mala calidad, porque están de color de ala de mosca y dejan
libre entrada á la luz por la punta de sus dediles; el comisionado de
Soncillo ó de Cañeda, que quiere bulas, y regatea el precio, y duda
que sean del año corriente porque no entiende los números
romanos, y no se gobierna en casos análogos por otra luz que la del
principio montañés «piensa mal y acertarás»; la recadista torpe que,
equivocando las aceras de la calle, pide dos cuartos de ungüento
amarillo, después de haber pedido en la botica de Corpas guantes
de hilo de Escocia; todos los compradores, en fin, más originales y
abigarrados y que parecen citarse á una misma hora para
desmentir, con la acogida que se les hace allí, la versión infundada y
absurda que circula por el pueblo, de que los ociosos de la
Guantería son «muy burlones».
Á medida que estos tipos entran y salen, nuevos tertulianos se
presentan en escena sin que la abandonen los que la invadieron á
las nueve. Vagos reglamentados que se visten con esmero y se
afeitan y se mudan la camisa diariamente; indianos restaurados á la
europea; forasteros pegajosos; estudiantes en vacaciones; militares
que están bien por sus casas, etc., etc., y ¡entonces sí que se halla
el establecimiento en uno de sus momentos más solemnes!

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International Political Economy in the

21st Century Roy Smith

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The Political Economy of Housing Financialization

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Understanding of the theories that underpin international political economy (IPE),

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2017 Taylor and Francis Group

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,

First edition published by Pearson Education Limited 2011; Routledge 2013

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

ISBN: 978-1-138-80840-9 (hbk)

1 The origins and core ideas of international

2 Critical approaches to IPE 39

3 Business and marketing theories and global

4 Globalisation and IPE 101

5 National, international, regional and global governance 123

7 Global finance 165

The global financial system after the financial crisis 179

10 Technology in the global political economy 225

Kondratieff cycles and major innovations 230

13 Migration and labour 281

Technology and migration 286

15 Concluding thoughts and remarks 315

9.3 Numbers of threatened species by major groups of organisms 2010–2014 216

Advice to readers in Europe and North America

ACP African, Caribbean and Pacific

WMDs weapons of mass destruction

The global jigsaw

Structure of the book

1 The origins and core ideas of

All money values in $US tr. Notes

No. of UN member states 198 Depending on definitions, there are a

The sources of IPE

Realist IR and IPE

Criticising the mainstream IR approaches

The practical concerns shaping the evolution of IPE

Un conocido mío que estuvo en Santander quince años ha y volvió á

Á fuer de retratista concienzudo, aunque ramplón y adocenado, no

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1 The origins and core ideas of international

2 Critical approaches to IPE 39

3 Business and marketing theories and global

4 Globalisation and IPE 101

5 National, international, regional and global governance 123

7 Global finance 165

The global financial system after the financial crisis 179

10 Technology in the global political economy 225

Kondratieff cycles and major innovations 230

13 Migration and labour 281

Technology and migration 286

15 Concluding thoughts and remarks 315

9.3 Numbers of threatened species by major groups of organisms 2010–2014 216