Research In International Political Economy Research Articles

The Geoeconomic Turn in International Trade, Investment, and Technology

This thematic issue brings together a set of articles that empirically map the state of the ongoing geoeconomic turn in the global political economy from an international political economy (IPE) perspective. Changes in the modus operandi of the global political economy urge the development of new conceptual and theoretical tools to grasp the new geoeconomic reality of world affairs. At the same time, the contemporary study of geoeconomics remains theory-centred and focused on its security dimension, thereby underplaying the empirical nuances and variegated aspects of these developments. We therefore make the case for an empirically grounded study of concrete cases and instances of the geoeconomic turn, which can then deliver insights for further theory-building. Likewise, many aspects of the geoeconomic turn cannot be explained by security logics only, but have political economy roots that need to be brought to the foreground. Our thematic issue excavates these dynamics across four key challenges for the global economy: the role of states and firms in a geoeconomic world; global technological competition; the green transition; and implications of the geoeconomic turn for the non-Western world. Collectively, the contributions demonstrate that the geoeconomic turn is only starting to concretely (and partially) materialize and that these transformations, in many cases, tend to replicate existing power structures that prioritize capital(ist) interests related to profit-maximisation over societal interests, ecological sustainability, or social equity. We close by delineating prospects for further IPE research into the ongoing geoeconomic turn in the global political economy.

외교사령(外交辭令) 정량분석의 국제정치경제학적 연구가치 - 중국 대(對)한국 외교사령의 중심으로

외교사령(外交辭令)은 국가 간 교류를 위한 중요한 수단이라는 점에서 국제정치경제학적 연구가치를 지닌다. 이 글은 외교사령의 정량적 분석으로 국제정치경제학의 현상과 문제점을 발견하고 해결책을 모색하고자 한다. 이 글은 중국의 대(對)한국 외교사령의 사례분석을 통하여 발견한 한중 양국의 정치 및 경제교류 과정에서 나타나는 흥미로운 정치경제학적 현상을 찾아내어 분석을 진행하였다. 우선 중국의 대(對)한국 외교 이행 과정을 분석한 결과 중국 정부는 국익의 따른 이성적 판단 원칙에 근거하여 시기별로 다른 대(對)한국 외교정책 취향을 갖고 있었다. 구체적으로 첫째는 국가 경제발전에 대한 이익 추구와 국가안보에 대한 이익추구가 상호간에 상반관계에 있다는 것이다. 둘째로는 중국의 국가안보 이익에 대한 선호도와 일부 수출입 품목 사이에 상관관계가 있음을 볼수 있다. 즉, 한중 경제 무역교류 과정에서 국가 외교정책 선호도는 대체 가능성이 높은 무역 품목과 상관관계가 있으며, 대체 가능성이 낮은 품목 간에는 상관관계가 없는 것이다. 마지막으로 외교사령 데이터를 이용하여 구축된 회귀모형을 통해 중국의 대(對)한국 외교사령은 한중관계의 좋고 나쁨의 수 준을 예측할 수 있음을 발견하였다. 중국이 본국의 국가안보 이익을 추구할 시기에는 한중관계가 좋지 않으며, 그 반대의 경우 한중관계는 호전되었다. 중국 정부의 경제이익 선호는 한중관계에 직접적인 영향을 끼치지 않았다. 결론적으로 이 글은 실례분석을 통해 외교사령의 정량분석이 국제정치경제학의 현상과 문제점을 발견하고 해결책을 모색하는데 있어 활용성이 있을 뿐만 아니라 재현성이라는 특징도 가지고 있으며, 국제정치경제학을 연구할 때 널리 보급할 수 있는 현실적인 의미가 있다고 주장하는 바이다.

Malaysia in Changing Geopolitical Economy: Navigating Great Power Competition between China and the United States

The past two years have witnessed escalating geopolitical tensions occurring not only in the political but also economic domains especially technology and global supply chains, infrastructure connectivity, trade and finance. With tensions between the US and China escalating on many fronts, Southeast Asia has become a focal point of strategic rivalry again as Biden’s Indo-Pacific Strategy 2022 attempts to rebuild the US-led order in Asia to blunt China’s growing influence in the region. A series of economic initiatives following his Indo-Pacific strategy focuses on reconfiguring the semiconductor global supply chain. In this context, the paper aims to examine how Malaysia cope with the complex patterns of cooperation, competition and conflict arising from the current shifts in the global geopolitics and geoeconomics. The paper benefits from the insights from the international political economy research which explores how the Malaysian government strives to reconcile domestic and international imperatives in navigating the changing global geopolitical economy, which can be perceived as both a threat as well as an opportunity by the state and non-state actors in the country. The question of whether hedging is tenable is undoubtedly contingent upon the extent of big power rivalry. Given the greater uncertainty over the pernicious effects of rising regional polarization and retreat from economic globalization, Malaysia will continue to maintain strategic ambiguity as long as US-China rivalry has not (yet) escalated into outright military conflict. Nevertheless, the paper concludes that the space to hedge may be squeezed since small power like Malaysia may face harsher realities as it navigates the changing geopolitical economy landscape. Hence, the ASEAN solidarity and cohesion is crucial to ensure a more unified regional response to the escalating Sino-American strategic competition.

Race and Identity in the Study of International Political Economy

Introduction to Race and Identity in the Study of International Political Economy Global Research in International Political Economy (GRIPE) Webinar and commentaries Organized 30 September 2020

A New Decision Calculus: Race in International Political Economy Studies

On September 30, 2020, several of us dialed in to attend a webinar panel discussion on “Race, Identity and Culture in the (Post-)Globalization Era.” The participants shared their thoughts on how and why race factors into international political and economic processes. In the spirit of addressing the topic from a political economy perspective, it seems worthwhile to outline the decision calculus that determines why considering race in international political economy (IPE) research is a good idea. If the benefit b of accounting for race times the probability p of success outweighs the costs c weighted by the probability (1 - p) of failure, race should be a key component of IPE research moving forward.

Firms in Trade and Trade Politics

We survey the literature on firms as primary actors in trade politics. In contrast with prevailing approaches, firm-centered models predict that trade internally divides industries and that larger firms are the strongest advocates for globalization. This new preference map alters extant predictions about the dynamics of interest group contestation over trade and suggests revised accounts for how political organization and institutions contribute to an open international order. We also explore the potential for new insights into the operation of the global trade regime, the politics of foreign investment, immigration and capital movements, and exchange rates. Poli-tical activities undertaken by firms are important areas for further research in international political economy: Their economic engagements directly affect the movement of goods, services, capital, and people across the globe.

Poststructural Research in International Political Economy: Problematizing and Politicizing Agency, Structure and Objectivity

Poststructural Research in International Political Economy: Problematizing and Politicizing Agency, Structure and Objectivity

THE NOTION OF POWER OR WHAT IS LEFT OUT IN ROBERT GILPIN’S ‘TRICHOTOMOUS CATEGORISATION’: THEORETICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL POSITIONS IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY AND THE GROUND FOR THEORETICAL MERGER

The article aims at contributing to philosophical understanding of issues in international political economy (IPE). The philosophical formations of different approaches to conducting research in IPE demonstrate that all its divisions are conditional, with permeable rather than impenetrable boundaries. To simplify introduction, some IPE textbooks follow Robert Gilpin’s “trichotomous categorisation”, or theoretical division of the field into realism, liberalism and Marxism/structuralism, which fails to clearly define cultural and historical roots, ignores alternative philosophical approaches to IPE, and denies the possibility of theoretical mergers. With the main focus on the notion of power, this article aims at exploring the possible ways to overcome this trichotomous theoretical division, making the attempt to find ground for theoretical merger. The paper concludes that the theoretical boundaries can be transcended by merging different concepts (a “horizontal” merger), or by approaching the same phenomena in different epistemological ways (a “vertical” merger).

МЕЖДУНАРОДНАЯ ПОЛИТЭКОНОМИЯ: ПРЕДМЕТ И МЕТОД

The paper is focused on an inter-disciplinary field of academic research of international relations – international political economy (IPE). The author starts with a study of theoretical and methodological background and evolution of IPE with the aim to generalize the subject matter of the discipline and its method. These aspects of IPE are considered against the background of the subject matters and the methodologies of the traditional approaches to the study of international relations: the theory of international relations (TIR) and the international economics (IE). Eventually, the statement of IPE research fundamentals is articulated. Further on, the paper continues with a study of the conceptual and formal levels of the discipline. In the absence of a unified research design among the political economy scholars a general conceptual framework of IPE is formulated. The multi-level, multi-factor and multi-actor nature of international relations within this framework is analyzed in comparative way to the political and economic paradigms of international relations and further is verified by conceptualization of such a major phenomenon as the globalization. It is shown that from IPE premises the globalization is considered as a complex case that covers both material (goods, migration, etc.) and non-material (information, finances, etc.) processes involving all kinds of social formations in various fields of human activity. As a result, the IPE framework reveals more realistic causes and consequences of globalization to be compared with the theory of international relations or the international economics. Finally, the research realized in the paper concludes by stating the existence of a theoretical core in IPE and identifying its key elements. These elements are matched against the axiomatics of the traditional approaches to the study of international relations.

Firm Heterogeneity and Trade-Policy StancesEvidence from a Survey of Japanese Producers

AbstractRecent research in international political economy has begun to explore the implications of producer heterogeneity for trade politics. Variations in productivity and size lead to systematic variations in market behaviors, especially with respect to firms’ abilities to engage foreign markets. This heterogeneity similarly leads to systematic variations in policy stances: Highly productive firms are more likely to favor trade liberalization than their less productive counterparts. I test the role of firm heterogeneity on trade-policy stances using original and representative survey data of Japanese manufacturers. I find that highly productive firms are more likely to favor liberalization than others, while a large portion of producers is indifferent to trade-policy reform. Other producers do not know how they would be impacted by liberalization; these tend to be smaller than their counterparts. The relationship between productivity and pro-trade attitudes is robust, even when controlling for a wide range of internationalization modes.

Firm Heterogeneity and Trade-Policy Stances: Evidence from a Survey of Japanese Producers

Recent research in international political economy has begun to explore the implications of producer heterogeneity for trade politics. Variations in productivity and size lead to systematic variations in both market and political behaviors. These similarly lead to systematic variations in policy stances: highly productive firms are more likely to favor trade liberalization than their less productive counterparts. I test the role of firm heterogeneity on trade-policy stances using original survey data of Japanese manufacturers. I find that highly productive firms are more likely to favor liberalization than others, while a large portion of producers is indifferent to trade-policy reform. The relationship between productivity and pro-trade attitudes is robust, even when controlling for a wide range of internationalization methods.

Catalyzing Aid? The IMF and Donor Behavior in Aid Allocation

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has often asserted that its programs encourage aid by signaling policy credibility, commonly referred to as aid catalysis. Our study investigates this claim for sector-specific aid and for bilateral and multilateral donors using data on 136 recipient countries for the 1986–2009 period. We employ a two-part quantitative model to match the donor decision-making process, consisting of a first-stage recipient selection equation and a second-stage allocation equation on selected recipients. We find strong support that IMF programs catalyze aid on aggregate, but the evidence varies across different types of aid. Aid catalysis is stronger and more robust in sectors linked to the IMF’s core competency areas, namely debt-related relief and general budget support, but weaker and less robust for infrastructure, production, multisector, and humanitarian aid, and non-existent for health and education. Across donors, IMF programs are associated with increases in aid by countries with larger voting shares in the IMF, such as the United States and Japan, but less so by countries with few votes or for multilateral agencies. This finding is consistent with research in international political economy arguing that the IMF’s powerful stakeholders drive the organization’s decisions and policies. Taken together, our findings emphasize the IMF’s multi-dimensional impact on the global development agenda—an erstwhile overlooked factor in studies of aid allocation—while refuting the purported positive effects of IMF programs on aid for social policy.

Introduction: Survey and Experimental Research in International Political Economy

Studies in international political economy (IPE) that use survey-response data sets and survey (or field) experiments have grown dramatically in recent years. New developments in survey and experimental methodology have arguably influenced IPE scholars not only to think more deeply about the microfoundations of the preferences, attitudes, and political behavior of key IPE actors but also to use survey or experimental methods to test causal claims and predictions. Yet the reasons for the rapid growth in survey and experimental methods in IPE are more multifaceted. We therefore seek to answer the following three pertinent questions in the introduction. First, what are the main substantive puzzles and issue-areas that IPE scholars analyze via survey and experimental methods in their research? Second, what are the main methodological advantages and drawbacks from using survey and experimental methods in IPE? Third, what are the key substantive theoretical and empirical insights that scholars have learned from recent research in IPE that employs either survey or experimental methods (or both)? In addition to answering these questions here, we also provide a summary of each article included in the special issue. The introduction concludes with a road map for future studies on survey and experimental research in IPE.

Surveys, Experiments, and the Landscape of International Political Economy

The contributions to this issue show that surveys and experiments offer exciting new tools for doing empirical research in international political economy (IPE). This essay cautions that the utility of these tools is not self-evident: Neither appeals to microfoundations nor to methodological individualism in constructing explanations for social phenomena themselves recommend an embrace of surveys or experiments. The field of IPE should worry that the focus on surveys and experiments will constrain not just methodological choice but also theoretical breadth, limiting the field’s ability to conceive of what theories are admissible in learning about the global political economy.

Private governance and sustainable finance

The use of private environmental governance (PEG) represents a unique strategy designed to help generate political authority for sustainable financial practices. Several collaborations between financial firms and environmental non-governmental organizations, including the Carbon Disclosure Project, Investor Network on Climate Risk and Climate Disclosure Standards Board, have embraced PEG to improve the financial disclosure of climate change risks within financial markets. How does this strategy use sustainable financial practices in ways that generate authority? This paper argues that PEG helps deploy technical knowledge in ways that cultivate support among politically influential constituencies for the adoption of sustainable financial practices. To make this conclusion, the paper will borrow from Global Environmental Politics and International Political Economy research on the use of private governance as a mechanism that steers and coordinates behavior. This focus on private governance helps address an important gap within sustainable finance research on the link between technical practices that reduce environmental externalities and political authority.

Turning point: International money and finance in Chinese IPE

ABSTRACTUnlike the depth of international political economy (IPE) research on finance and money in North America and Britain/Europe, or the amount of work that has been done inside China on the IPE of international trade, the IPE of global finance and money is still at a nascent stage inside China. The paper examines the evolution of Chinese IPE research on global finance and money and suggests that research in these issue areas appears to be reaching a turning point. The main empirical finding is that this shift in knowledge production has been induced principally by China's emergence as a financial force and the national developmental concerns this entails, as well as by the onset of the 2008–09 global financial crisis and the rise of the emerging economies’ grouping. The growing Chinese scholarship on the IPE of finance and money is adding analytical depth and broadening Chinese IPE, particularly on the impact of financial globalization on developing and emerging economies. While such research will likely contribute to Chinese policymaking in the future, the scholarly test for Chinese IPE is whether and how it will contribute to filling the global knowledge gaps on the determinants of financial and monetary policy, and whether it will give rise to new understandings on global finance and money, especially the causes of international financial crises. Heretofore, much of the literature has been heavily policy-oriented and normative.

Extended Endogenous and Exogenous Protection in the Eu-Us Banana Disputes

EXTENDED ENDOGENOUS AND EXOGENOUS PROTECTION IN THE EU–US BANANA DISPUTES Christina Fattore West Virginia University Michael E. Allison The University of Scranton Throughout the 1990s, the US and the European Union (EU) were embroiled in a trade conflict over a product which neither produced natively. In short, due to the creation of the European common market by the Single European Act (SEA), the EU countries extended preferential treatment to their former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP). This facet of the SEA proved to overstep the agreements made previously in the GATT and in the newly formed WTO, which seemed to irk many non-ACP banana-producing states as well as those that had a great interest in this trade, especially US multinationals that operate in the banana-producing countries of Latin America. Several Latin American states and the US government challenged the EU-ACP trade policy in the GATT and the WTO for nearly two decades before an agreement to resolve the dispute was reached in December 2009 (WTO 2009). Among other reasons, this dispute is important because it was one of the longest running trade disputes in recent history, directly or indirectly involved more than half-the world’s countries, and was the first case in which economic sanctions were applied by a developing state on a developed state(s) (Barfield 2010). Prior research in international political economy has tended to explain this lengthy dispute to be the result of a non-reconciliation between the overlapping trade regimes of the WTO and the EU (Alter and Meunier 2006). During the 1990s, while the member states of the EU were forming a common market that would harmonize their trade policies, they miscalculated how this internal harmonization would be interpreted by other members of the newly formed WTO (Borrell 1997). However, legal and political pressures to change the terms of trade between the EU member states and their former colonies also came from the banana-producing states of Latin America, the EU-based companies that marketed those bananas , United States-based multinational corporation Chiquita, and the United States government. For these parties, European preferential treatment of ACP bananas was discriminatory, violated several binding trade agreements, and was bad for business. The study of endogenous protection focuses on interest groups pressuring governments to adopt policies that will defend domestic products in C 2013 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 111 The Latin Americanist, June 2013 a continually liberalizing trade system. However, in light of globalization, we have to consider whether changes in international political economy require us to think beyond endogenous protection in order to understand the formation of trade policy today. For example, what makes a product truly ‘domestic’? Many foodstuffs are produced by one country and distributed by a foreign company. Other goods are assembled with a virtual hodgepodge of foreign made components and then sold in countries around the world. When a good’s production is truly globalized, who is responsible for its trade protection? Endogenous protection appears quite limited under these increasingly common scenarios. In light of this transformation of global production, how do we characterize those situations where one government pressures another to help protect it from the trade policies of a third? For example, there is strong evidence that states with smaller economies are disadvantaged in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other regional trade organizations as these states have fewer economic and political resources to pursue their interests satisfactorily (Bown 2005; Simmons and Guzman 2005; Busch, Reinhardt, and Shaffer 2009). When these smaller countries lobby larger states in the international system to intervene on their behalf, endogenous protection (which focuses on interest groups lobbying their domestic governments for protection in the international trading regime) does little to help us to understand these trade situations. We argue that we need to move beyond our current understanding of endogenous protection to better explain the adoption of several trade policies in the international system today. Multinational corporations are not only searching for protectionist policies that may promote their good in their domestic market, but, in light of the strengthening of the dispute settlement mechanism in the WTO, they also...

Where is the study of work in critical IPE?

The British school of International Political Economy (IPE) has been highly innovative in encouraging inter-disciplinary work, revealing – while allowing for – an eclecticism of research and investigation that stands in clear contrast to its American counterpart. Critical theorists in the British school of IPE in particular have been highly prolific in recent years and have introduced research on a wide range of contemporary issues in the global political economy. However, this school tends to overlook two very important areas of analysis: work and employment. More thus needs to be done. This article argues that researchers from seemingly autonomous fields can teach critical IPE a lesson: inter-disciplinarity is not a fantasy. The analysis suggested here is of how governmental policy idealises a particular subjectivity wherein workers are not employed, but are employable. Not only would a focus on this problem enhance existing research in critical IPE: it is also essential if we are to address the needs of humanity in the increasingly unstable and flexibilised world of work. The British school of critical IPE is the forum within which this conversation could and should be continued.

Tourism, Consumption and Inequality in Central America

Much research in international political economy (IPE) has been criticised for focussing on large and powerful actors in post-industrial countries, to the neglect of sites, processes and actors in the global South. This article offers a corrective to this bias in two ways: by locating the analysis in two rural Central American communities; and by exploring the social relations of consumption in these communities. In doing this, I challenge assumptions about rural places being excluded from global processes and explore the complexities and contradictions of how such communities are inserted into global circuits of production and consumption. Drawing on extensive qualitative research, the article explores the ways in which capitalist development through tourism has reconstituted the political economy of consumption in terms of habits, attitudes and behaviour in these two communities. Using the community and the household as sites of analysis, I explore the complex ways in which inequalities have been reconfigured through changing relations of consumption. Certain kinds of social hierarchies, in particular traditional gendered power relations within the household, have been challenged. However, other inequalities – such as class, ethnicity and nationality – have been reinforced by these processes.

(Re)politicizing global financial governance: what's ‘new’ about the ‘New International Financial Architecture’?

Abstract This article is a contribution to the (re)politicization of global financial governance currently underway in the interdisciplinary field of international political economy (IPE). Particular reference is made to the economistic and technicist discourse prevalent in the so‐called ‘New International Financial Architecture’ (NIFA) process. It is argued that a (re)politicized reading of global financial governance is enabled by a conceptualization of governance networks that combines the institutional focus of existing IPE research with a concern with the discursive dynamics of authority relations and that situates governance networks in the power relations, contestation, contradictions and reproduction of global finance. Claims to ‘newness’ regarding the NIFA process, made by both the ‘architects’ themselves and left unchallenged by the majority of IPE scholars, are also disputed. The NIFA process is shown to have continued the contested development of an exclusionary transnational neo‐liberal network of governance that first began to emerge in the mid‐1970s.