Contesting the canon: international political economy at UK and US universities

Abstract

The growth of international political economy (IPE) as a sub-field of international relations (IR) has been nothing short of amazing. As late as twenty years ago few institutions featured IPE among their offerings. Specialists in IPE were peripheral to the field. Jacob Viner's (1948) article on the very first pages of World Politics to the contrary, published work in IPE was rare. Much has changed. During the later 1970s IPE was recognized and adopted as a vital part of the study of IR. Published works multiplied, until IPE virtually took over major outlets like International Organization. For a time it appeared that a plurality of articles in the field began with the words 'The political economy of'. Jobs were opening. New PhDs listed IPE prominently among their credentials when they could. The IPE section Qf the International Studies Association grew quickly, becoming the ISA's largest section at the end of the 1980s. Two decades later it makes sense to take stock. How many institutions now offer IPE? How much IPE is in their curricula? Does the availability of IPE depend on the size of an institution? Is there a canon? How closely do we keep to it? What are the implications of all this for the field's development? This article is an attempt to provide some answers to these questions by reviewing the results of surveys of university departments in Great Britain and the United States. The article builds upon an initial British survey conducted by Robert O'Brien in 1993 (O'Brien, 1995). Robert Denemark was invited to undertake a similar survey of US universities which he did over the winter of 1995-6. Due to the different nature of the uni'versities in the two countries and the gap in time between surveys, there were some very minor differences in the way questions were asked. Both surveys are reproduced in the Appendix.