International Political Economy: Understanding Global Disorder

The collapse of the Berlin Wall triggered the geopolitical transition to a post-Cold War world. Far from ushering in a new world order of progress and peace, humanity finds itself confronted by new conflicts, new sources of insecurity and a highly unpredictable future. In this book, some of the most eminent theorists of international political economy grapple with the difficult questions involved in developing appropriate theoretical tools in order to understand the rapidly changing, inter-connected structures of international relations and the global economy, and the multiple new sources of instability, integration and inequality. One of the central themes to emerge is the disjuncture between the way in which the world is organized politically (with the sovereign state still the principal actor) and its economic organization (characterized by more and integration via the market and international institutions for cross-border cooperation). The essays in this book provide an essential introduction to some of the innovative thinking that is rapidly transforming the frontiers of international political economy as a discipline.