Technology, Ecology and Transformations in the Global Political Economy

Abstract

Entering the 1990s, the global political economy is radically different from what it was only two decades ago. Two of the major differences are reflected in the terminology itself. In the innocent sixties an explicit analytic division existed between international economics and politics and to speak of an international political economy was to make a radical statement. And, although the term global was certainly in use, there was little realisation of the extent to which a truly global system was soon to emerge. The acceleration of events in the 1970s erased much of this innocence and the shocks and upheavals that have since worked their way through the international system give testimony to a series of major transformations. Beginning with the first energy crisis cycle, a series of events has shaken many of the comfortable assumptions about international politics and economics that were commonly shared in the optimistic years preceding the ‘oil decade’. Although continuities certainly can be found linking the system of the 1960s with its contemporary relative, an era of turmoil and discontinuity in international relations seems to be more characteristic of the decades leading to the next century.1