International Political Economy in Context: Individual Choices, Global Effects / Edition 1

by Andrew C. Sobel

Overview

Although many international political economy texts offer good descriptions of what events have occurred in global economic and political relations, they fail to develop explicit theoretical frameworks explaining why. Andrew C. Sobel's International Political Economy in Context: Individual Choices, Global Effects takes a micro approach to IPE, grounding policy choices in the deliberations and competitive environs of domestic politics and decision-making processes.

Sobel builds students' skills for a sophisticated understanding of how and why events unfold in the international political economy. Armed with the primary assumptions and structural/macro conditions of economic and political geography in the global arena, as well as an understanding of micro-level conditions and mechanisms and their shortfalls that influence political and economic outcomes, students are able to make sense of past and present changes in the global political economy.

International Political Economy in Context offers a compelling, accessible, and fully integrated rational choice perspective on international political economy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608717118
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	08/28/2012
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	624
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 7.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Andrew C. Sobel holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He is associate professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Political Science Department at Washington University in St. Louis. He is also resident fellow in the Center in Political Economy at Washington University and serves on the board of the Center for New Institutional Social Sciences. He specializes in the politics of international finance with a focus on domestic explanations of international behavior. His books include Domestic Choices, International Markets (1994) and State Institutions, Private Incentives, Global Capital (1999). Sobel's current research is comparing globalization in the late 1800s and late 1900s and its relationship to the modern social welfare state, and investigating the linkages between democracy and growth.

Table of Contents

Figures, Tables, and Maps
Preface
I. BUILDING BLOCKS TO EXAMINE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY AND CONFLICT
1. Introduction: Political Economy, Rationality, and Social Science 1
2. Structure, Nation-States, Power, and Order in an International Context
3. Economic Liberalism and Market Exchange in the Global Arena
II. MICRO TOOLS
4. The Micro Approach to Political and Economic Markets in Theory and Practice
5. The Dilemma of Collective Action: Who Organizes, Who Does Not, and Why
6. The Role of Hegemonic Leadership and Its Micro Foundations
7. Interest Groups and International Economic Foundations of Political Cleavage
8. The Role of Institutions in Political and Economic Market Failures
III. CONTEXT
9. Around the World in Eighty Days: A Stage of Modern Globalization
10. The World between the Wars: A Breakdown in Globalization
11. The Bretton Woods System: The Rebuilding of Globalization
12. The World Post–Bretton Woods: Globalization Advances
13.Détente and the End of the Cold War: Globalization during Transition
14. Into the Future: Political and Economic Market Failures and Threats to Globalization
Index
Photo Credits
About the Author

Editorial Reviews

Most other books leave the impression that political economy began in the 1980s, or are a morass of acronyms that most students will soon forget. International Political Economy in Context: Individual Choices, Global Effects is the one book that really renders effective treatments of the Big Ideas that shaped the political economy of the world over the past two centuries. Without that context one cannot possibly hope to understand what is happening today.

Mike Jasinski

Instead of covering IPE from broad realist, liberal, critical, or whatever perspectives, Sobel takes one, very much up-to-date and non-paradigmatic rational choice perspective and uses it throughout the book. This really is the way it should be done!

Tobias Hofmann

International Political Economy in Context’s strengths are its detailed, clear exposition. I read with delight the rather sophisticated analysis of difficult concepts like the balance of payments and the Bretton Woods meetings.

James Morrison