International political strongeconomystrong a tale of two heterodoxies.pdfVIP

British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Vol. 3, No. 3, October 2001, pp. 393–412 International political economy: a tale of two heterodoxies CRAIG N. MURPHY AND DOUGLAS R. NELSON Abstract International political economy (IPE) originated in the early 1970s. For almost 20 years it has been dominated by separate, largely non-communicating schools, one centred on scholarly institutions in Britain, the other associated with the US journal, International Organization (IO). In terms of the evolving norms of both economics and political science, both schools are surprisingly heterodox. Rather than developing strong systematic data collections and systematic theory, the IO school has been characterised by a shifting set of conceptual and metatheoretical debates. The British school, which has tended to take a deliberately critical position, has been characterised by an ever-widening set of concerns topical concerns fuelled by a desire to include more and more voices in the study of IPE. These outcomes are explicable only by tracing the specific historical developments of the two schools. Today’s field of international political economy (IPE) can be traced back to 1971 when Susan Strange, then at the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, founded the International Political Economy Group (IPEG). In its early days, this company of scholars, journalists and policy-makers focused on issues such as how to resuscitate the fixed exchange-rate system and on the thesis of another early IPEG convener, Fred Hirsch, that comfortable middle-class people in the industrialised world would come to doubt the utility of further economic growth (Hirsch 1976). These were not to be the subjects that would lead to the insti- tutionalisation of IPE by attracting funders, shifting the