Introduction to International Political Economy 6th Edition

CHAPTER 1 WHAT IS INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY? Overview International political economy or IPE is? Chapter 1 answers this question in three ways: by examples of important events, situations, and people or leaders in the global political economy today; by comparison, contrasting IPE with more familiar disciplines such

CHAPTER 10 THE KNOWLEDGE AND TECHNOLOGY STRUCTURE Overview: In todays world, wealth and power often flow from access to and control of knowledge and technology. In this chapter we examine the creation and diffusion of knowledge and technology. Who controls these processes and how? We begin by defining

CHAPTER 11 THE DEVELOPMENT CONUNDRUM: CHOICES AMIDST CONSTRAINTS Overview: A pervasive problem of the international political economy is the tension between the industrialized countries of the North and the less developed countries (LDCs) of the South. A major source of that tension is the development dilemma. For much

CHAPTER 12 TOWARD A MORE PERFECT (EUROPEAN) UNION Overview: This chapter examines the political economy of integration in the European Union (EU). Increasingly, nations in close proximity to one another are driven to coordinate and sometimes harmonize their political economies for political and economic reasons. However, integrated

CHAPTER 13 MOVING INTO POSITION: THE RISING POWERS Overview: This chapter examines the problems of states, markets, and societies in transition from one ideologically based system of political economy to another. The goal of this chapter is to explore the nature of the transitions from communist/socialist or state-dominated

CHAPTER 14 THE MIDDLE EAST: THE QUEST FOR DEVELOPMENT AND DEMOCRACY Overview This chapter provides a broad overview of political and socio-economic trends in the Middle East, situating the region in the global economy and the global security structure. It contrasts assertions that the region is falling behind

Part IV: TRANSNATIONAL PROBLEMS AND DILEMMAS 15 The Illicit Global Economy: The Dark Side of Globalization 16 Migration and Tourism: People on the Move 17 Transnational Corporations: The Governance of Foreign Investment 18 Food and Hunger: Market Failure and Injustice 19 The IPE of Energy Resources: Stuck in

CHAPTER 17 TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS: THE GOVERNANCE OF FOREIGN INVESTMENTS Overview: Transnational corporations (TNCs) are important actors in IPE today. They compete in regional and global markets and provide foreign direct investment (FDI) that is much sought after by national governments keen to create jobs, gain access to technology,

CHAPTER 17 TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS: THE GOVERNANCE OF FOREIGN INVESTMENTS Overview: Transnational corporations (TNCs) are important actors in IPE today. They compete in regional and global markets and provide foreign direct investment (FDI) that is much sought after by national governments keen to create jobs, gain access to technology,

CHAPTER 18 FOOD AND HUNGER: MARKET FAILURE AND INJUSTICE Overview: Since World War II there have been occasions of massive hunger, primarily in developing nations, but for the most part the world food problem was viewed as a problem of excess supply and weak demand. However, in the

CHAPTER 19 THE IPE OF ENERGY RESOURCES: STUCK IN TRANSITION Overview: The year 1973 was a turning point for the international political economy. The international balance of wealth and power began to shift away from the U.S. to its European allies, Japan, and a number of militarily-weak, oil-producing

CHAPTER 2 LAISSEZ-FAIRE: THE ECONOMIC LIBERAL PERSPECTIVE Overview Liberalism, like many other terms we use in IPE, suffers from something of a personality disorder. The same set of letters means different things in different contexts. In the United States today, for example, a political liberal is generally one

CHAPTER 20 THE ENVIRONMENT: STEERING AWAY FROM CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL DISASTER Overview: Todays ecological and environmental problems are increasingly global in nature. Since the beginning of the new millennium, aside from the usual stories about the effects of climate change, the international media has covered melting glaciers,

CHAPTER 3 WEALTH AND POWER: THE MERCANTILIST PERSPECTIVE Overview: Mercantilism is the oldest and perhaps the most important IPE theoretical perspective from an historical standpoint. The central focus of mercantilism is the problem of security and the role of the state and the market in maintaining a nations

CHAPTER 4 ECONOMIC DETERMINISM AND EXPLOITATION: THE STRUCTURALIST PERSPECTIVE Overview: The global financial crisis highlights not only the failures of free market capitalism but also the political clout of the economic elite, who receive bailouts while ordinary taxpayers struggle. Many other issues contain a component of economic power,

CHAPTER 5 ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVES ON INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY Overview: International Political Economy (IPE) is about states and markets, but it is about more than just states and markets, as the analysis of the past four chapters should have made clear. Still, it is deceptively easy to oversimplify IPE.

CHAPTER 6 THE PRODUCTION AND TRADE STRUCTURE Overview: Since 2009, the Obama administration has imposed high tariffs on imports of Chinese tires and solar panels into the United States and challenged China at the World Trade Organization (WTO) over its unfair subsidies to domestic car manufacturers and its

CHAPTER 7 THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY AND FINANCE STRUCTURE Overview: The international monetary and financial structure is often embroiled with tensions that make it difficult to manage. Currency exchange rates and transnational financial flows affect the success of many businesses and industries. With globalization and deregulation of the global economy

CHAPTER 8 INTERNATIONAL DEBT AND FINANCIAL CRISES Overview: Front page news articles still deal with national debt and the financial crisis that began in the United States in 2007, recovery from which has been very slow. Unemployment remains the long term outlook for millions whose occupations have been outsourced

CHAPTER 9 THE GLOBAL SECURITY STRUCTURE Overview: In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, people greatly feared the atomic bomb. Realists argue that the bipolar distribution of military power between the United States and Soviet Union deterred each country from launching a pre-emptive strike on the other. Both powers