Although many international political economy texts offer good descriptions of what events have occurred in global economic and political relations, they make little attempt to develop explicit theoretical frameworks explaining why. Andrew SobelAEs International Political Economy in Context: Individual Choices, Global Effects takes a micro approach to international political economy that considers the fact that individualsunot nationsumake choices. Grounding policy choices in the competitive environs of domestic politics and decision-making processes, Sobel illustrates how policymakers choose among alternatives, settling on those that are most in sync with their self-interest. The book is structured to build studentsAE skills for a sophisticated understanding of how and why events unfold in the international political economy. Students become versed in the primary assumptions and structural/macro conditions of economic and political geography in the global arena. An examination of micro-level conditions and mechanisms introduces the factors that influence political and economic outcomes. Students are then able to use those primary assumptions and micro-level arrangements to make sense of past and present changes in the global political economy. Those familiar with SobelAEs first volume, Political Economy and Global Affairs, will easily find their way through this new book. Anyone looking for a compelling, accessible, and fully integrated rational choice perspective on international political economy will find it here.
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.
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.Detente 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
"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 "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 "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
