New political economy

New political economy students treat economic ideologies as the phenomenon to be explained. Thus, Charles S. Maier suggests that a political economy approach: interrogates economic doctrines to disclose their sociological and political premises....in sum, [it] regards economic ideas and behavior not as frameworks for analysis, but as beliefs and actions that must themselves be explained.^[1] This approach informs Andrew Gamble's The Free Economy and the Strong State (Palgrave Macmillan, 1988), and Colin Hay's The Political Economy of New Labour (Manchester University Press, 1999). It also informs much work published in New Political Economy (journal) an international journal founded by Sheffield University scholars in 1996.^[2]

Matthew Watson‎ with Richard Higgott in explicit response to Benjamin Cohen's approach seek to move International Political Economy away from the later's division of the subject into American and British camps and push their own vision - a vision of a 'New Political Economy'.^[3] This, they argue:

1. transgresses conventional social science boundaries;
2. explicitly rejects the loaded connotation of the ‘rigour’ that Cohen espouses because it sees this (in our terms) as unhelpful methodological competition
3. resists the abstractionism of postmodernism in favour of the progressive principle that life might be made better

This new ‘new political economy’ attempts to combine the approach of the classical political economists (from Smith to Marx) with more recent "analytical advances". Authors adopting this approach include, Gamble (1996)^[4], Watson^{[5] [6]} himself and a series of authors in the edited work by Higgott and Payne (2000)^[7]. The approach "rejects the old dichotomies – between agency and structure, between ideas and material interests, and between states and markets". The approach seeks to be explicit about the normative assumptions that lie behind their analysis and to be a "hosting metaphor" that will help political debate about societal preferences. Different levels of abstraction are needed to "deeply ground" work in as much detail about history, culture and society general as would be useful: a real world political economy offering explanations about the influence on choices of social meanings of both actions and objects.

This approach Watson and Higgot argue is increasing in its practitioners. They note its prevalence not only among both "Third World economic nationalists and academic critics of the neo-liberal policy agenda who find little comfort in the turn instead to anti-foundationalist theories associated with postmodernism" but also among many "mainstream" economists who have become disillusioned with neoclassical theory. On this they list Dani Rodrik (1998)^[8] Paul Krugman (1999)^[9] and Joseph Stiglitz (2002)^[10].

See also

• Political economy
• Constitutional economics

References

1. ^ Charles S. Mayer "In search of Stability: Explorations in Historical Political Economy", Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987, pp.3–6.
2. ^ cf: David Baker, "The political economy of fascism: Myth or reality, or myth and reality?" New Political Economy, Volume 11, Issue 2 June 2006, pp.227–250.
3. ^ Richard Higgott and Matthew Watson (2008) All at sea in a barbed wire canoe: Professor Cohen’s transatlantic voyage in IPE, Review of International Political Economy, 15 (1), 2008, 1-17.
4. ^ Gamble, Andrew (1996) "The New Political Economy", Political Studies, 43 (3): 516-530.
5. ^ Watson, Matthew (2005) Foundations of International Political Economy, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
6. ^ Watson, Matthew (2007) The Political Economy of International Capital Mobility, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
7. ^ Higgott, Richard and Payne, Anthony (2000) (eds.) The New Political Economy of Globalisation, Two Volumes, Aldershot: Edward Elgar.
8. ^ Rodrik, Dani (1998) Has Globalization Gone Too Far?, Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics
9. ^ Krugman, Paul (1999) The Return of Depression Economics, London: Allen Lane.
10. ^ Stiglitz, Joseph (2002) Globalization and its Discontents, London: Penguin.

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