International Political Economy

Abstract

International political economy (IPE) is widely recognized as a major subfield of international relations. IPE considers how politics shapes—and is in turn shaped by—cross-border economic flows and relationships. IPE emerged as a serious area of inquiry in the 1970s with the pioneering work of Susan Strange, and it expanded dramatically during that decade with important contributions by scholars such as Robert Cox, Robert Gilpin, Peter Katzenstein, Charles Kindleberger, Robert Keohane, Stephen Krasner, Joseph Nye, and John Ruggie. The initial emergence of IPE reflected an effort to bridge economics and international relations. It stemmed from dissatisfaction with realist approaches, which trivialized economic relations as the domain of “low politics.” Since then, IPE has grown in importance along with deepening economic interdependence and undeniable demonstrations of substantive importance, such as trade conflicts and the major financial crises.