Putting the P in IPE

In Helen Milner's article "International Political Economy: Beyond Hegemonic Stability",  from Foreign Policy in 1998 she gives a general summary of the landscape of IPE and different approached. Milner clearly favors multi-faceted approaches to the topic that analyze domestic and international levels as well as non materialist factors like ideas, popular opinion and sentiment, an other indicators.

Her focus is more political than the other authors we have looked at. She suggests that the distance between the economic theory of free trade and the reality of how it has played out so far in the world can be attributed to politics. In a way this explanation is the same as Wolf and Stiglitz. Both suggest that the particular way that globalization has been done is why it has not lived up to expectations. For Wolf (and sometimes Stiglitz) it is the way that politics has interferes with truly free trade in the form of subsides, tariffs, protectionist maneuvers, and unequal trade policies among other things, that is the root of the underperformance- the cause of the inconstancies between theory and reality.

The value in Milner is, I think, not really in the summaries of different schools, but the focus on the political side. It is one thing to recognize the way that politics can interfere with economic theory. The political side of IPE and what I think Milner adds to the conversation is varying perspectives as to the why? Economics is complex and multifaceted, but so is politics. They are mutually affecting and Milner gives a diving board into the complex pool that is the POLITICS in International POLITICAL Economy.

The econ so far has been tangled and complex. I think the politics is going to be even messier- but I'm excited to get into that mess. So here to the P in IPE....