The future of international political economy: Introduction to the 20th anniversary issue of RIPE

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1 Lake (2009 Lake, David (2009) ‘Open economy politics: a critical review’. Review of International Organizations 4: 219–244.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 225) summarizes OEP as follows: ‘OEP begins with individuals, sectors, or factors of production as the units of analysis and derives their interests over economic policy from each unit’s position within the international economy… Analysis within OEP proceeds from the most micro- to the most macro-level in a linear and orderly fashion, reflecting an implicit uni-directional conception of politics as flowing up from individuals to interstate bargaining.’2 This scholarship often has an underlying assumption that social processes tend towards order in some form and hence stability, meaning that the reproduction of the status quo is more likely than is significant change. This concerns relative stability in prices, political systems, economic organization, social mores, etc. Turmoil is the exception, not the rule.3 For example, both liberal democracy and clientelistic authoritarian regimes might be self-reproducing. Of course, recent events in the Maghreb have dented this view in the same way the implosion of the USSR dented international relations orthodoxy two decades ago. We tend to stick with observable trends, however, and political stability is visible while it lasts, whereas the rot of a political order from within may not be.4 Eichengreen seconds this dichotomy when he writes that ‘the alternative to theory is history’ (Eichengreen, 2009 Eichengreen, Barry (2009) ‘A Tale of Two Crises’, in Anton Hemerijck, Ben Knapen, and Ellen van Doorne (eds) Aftershocks: Economic Crisis and Institutional Choice. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 55–66. [Google Scholar]: 58). But history is not without its own dangers. It is a biased guide to the future, providing a very selective reading of the present. For example, as head of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke seems to have relied heavily on his own interpretation of the Great Depression when formulating his policy response to the credit crisis. The jury is still out on both whether this medicine has cured the patient and whether the two episodes were really comparable in the ways he presumed.