Global Political Economy

This paper traces the development and structure of the global political economy. After first explaining why politics and economics and inextricably connected, the paper goes on detail how these processes have become global and what impact this is likely to have on states and markets. Introduction It has become something of a cliché to observe that we live in a time of increasing globalisation. Yet to understand what is novel and also what is unchanged about the contemporary era, we need to look at the key features of the global political economy in their specific historical context. Before doing this, however, it is important to emphasise that even talking about a ‘political economy’ – and a ‘global’ one at that – makes a number of fairly contentious initial assumptions. Consequently, the first part of this essay explains why many observers think it is essential to link politics and economics as two deeply interconnected parts of a complex, and increasingly transnational, whole. Following this, I briefly outline some of the key historical developments that have driven the expansion of the evermore pervasive capitalist system that essentially constitutes the global political economy. And yet, despite the fact that hardly any part of the planet remains unaffected by, or unintegrated with, the global political economy, one of the great paradoxes of the contemporary period is that not only are some parts of the world incorporated into the global capitalist system in very different ways, but there are important and persistent variations in the types of capitalism that predominate in different regions. In other words, the global political economy is characterised by a number of ubiquitous features, but also by some surprising and enduring differences in outcomes and modes