Darkness and Light in a Global Political Economy

Abstract

If we make reasonable guesses about where blind spots might exist in IPE, we might be able to shine a little light in their direction. A disciplinary blind spot is suggested whenever our innate scholarly skepticism gives way to assertions of certainty. A conceptual blind spot seems indicated whenever we take the idea of political 'structure' to be more than a metaphor for the status quo and its impermanent routines. An empirical blind spot is to be suspected when the ideology of intergovernmentalism encourages us to exaggerate the limiting effect of organisational innovations in the mid-1940s, to avert our gaze from complex and ambiguous developments eight decades later, and to discount the probability of fundamental transformation in global governing practices over time. KEYWORDS Attend any meeting where IPE colleagues gather, and it is common to hear many bemoaning the narrowness of some of our major journals. Highly specialised articles proliferate, whether rationalist, behavioural, or constructivist. We find it difficult to recall the big questions that once brought us together. We have built an expansive literature, but it seems increasingly to be organised around gated communities.

From fragmentation to integration: on the role of explicit hypotheses and economic theory in Global Political Economy1

“…On the contrary, these issues need to be explored open-mindedly (even apparently methodologically nationalist theories, such as MMT, can inform attempts at cosmopolitan governance, see Kotilainen, 2021b). Adequate governance responses are often complex and multilayered (see also for example Pauly (2021) who like us stresses the urgency to keep thinking globally).…”

“…However, it is revealing that game theory is supposed to require hardly any social-scientific training, not necessarily even in economics (for an early example of this attitude, see Copeland, 1945). The combination of social-scientific illiteracy and epistemic hubris, boosted by the heavy use of formal methods, has been the main driver of economics imperialism (for a useful discussion on philosophical hopes feeding economics imperialism, see Mäki, 2009; on IPE's very different but nonetheless ambiguous attitude towards epistemic (un)certainty, see Pauly, 2021).…”