What’s missing when we think about Global Political Economy?

Author:
Herman Mark Schwartz University of Virginia, USA

Search for other papers by Herman Mark Schwartz in
Current site
Google Scholar
Close
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5571-3644
Restricted access
Get eTOC alerts
Rights and permissions Cite this article

Global Political Economy (GPE) and especially International Political Economy (IPE) remain relatively silent about three critical and nested issues: the nature of empire as a form of global order, control over the enterprises that structure much quotidian life, and the distribution of profits. Each issue in different ways also highlights heterogeneity across units and actors in the GPE, providing clues to what should be Critical Political Economy’s object of investigation: the structure of power in the global economy. This commentary connects empire, corporate control and the sources of profits to show the connections in the GPE across macro, meso- and micro-levels and how these relate to the racial and gender hierarchies sustaining that structure of power, in the hope of opening up more systematic debate and treatment.

  • Adams, J. (2005) The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Alford, C. (2000) What would it matter if everything Foucault said about prison were wrong?, Discipline and Punish after twenty years’, Theory and Society, 29(1): 12546.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Alimahomed-Wilson, J. and Reese, E. (2020) The Cost of Free Shipping: Amazon in the Global Economy, London: Pluto Press.

  • Ban, C. (2016) Ruling Ideas: How Global Neoliberalism Goes Local, New York: Oxford University Press.

  • Bank of England (nd) A Millennium of macroeconomic data, www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/research-datasets.

  • Barkawi, T. (2017) Soldiers of Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Belich, J. (2009) Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Angloworld, New York: Oxford University Press.

  • Bessembinder, H. (2018) Do stocks outperform Treasury bills?, Journal of Financial Economics, 129(3): 44057. doi: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2018.06.004

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Bessembinder, H., Chen, Te.F., Choi, G. and Wei, K.C. (2020) Long-term shareholder returns: evidence from 64,000 global stocks, https://ssrn.com/abstract=3710251.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Bessen, J.E. (2016) Accounting for rising corporate profits: intangibles or regulatory rents?, Law and Economics Research Paper #16–18. Boston University School of Law.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Braudel, F. (1982) Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, Vol. II: The Wheels of Commerce, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Cain, P. and Hopkins, A. (2014) British Imperialism: 1688–2000, London: Routledge.

  • Calleo, D. (1982) The Imperious Economy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

  • Capozzola, C. (2014) The United States empire, in R. Gerwarth and E. Manela (eds) Empires at War: 1911–1923, New York: Oxford University Press, pp 23553.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Cerny, P. (1995) Globalization and the changing logic of collective action, International Organization, 49(4): 595625. doi: 10.1017/S0020818300028459

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Chan, J., Pun, N. and Selden, M. (2013) The politics of global production: Apple, Foxconn and China’s new working class, New Technology, Work and Employment, 28(2): 10015. doi: 10.1111/ntwe.12008

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Ciepley, D. (2013) Beyond public and private: toward a political theory of the corporation, American Political Science Review, 107(1): 13958. doi: 10.1017/S0003055412000536

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Collingham, L. (2012) Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food, London: Penguin.

  • Cooley, A. and Nexon, D. (2013) ‘The empire will compensate you’: the structural dynamics of the US overseas basing network, Perspectives on Politics, 11(4): 103450. doi: 10.1017/S1537592713002818

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Credit Suisse (2021) Global Wealth Databook 2018, Zurich: Credit Suisse Research Institute.

  • Davis, L.E. and Gallman, R.E. (2001) Evolving Financial Markets and International Capital Flows: Britain, the Americas, and Australia, 1865–1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Eichengreen, B. (1992) Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919–1939, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Elson, R. (1992) International commerce, the state and society: economic and social change, in N. Tarling (ed) The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia: Vol. 2: The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp 12792.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Enloe, C. (1989) Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, Berkeley: University of California Press.

  • Federico, G. and Tena-Junguito, A. (2018) Federico-Tena world trade historical database: World trade, doi: 10.21950/JKZFDP.

  • Feis, H. (1930/1964) Europe the World’s Banker, New York: Augustus M. Kelley.

  • Fichtner, J., Heemskerk, E. and Garcia-Bernardo, J. (2017) Hidden power of the big three? Passive index funds, re-concentration of corporate ownership, and new financial risk, Business and Politics, 19(2): 298326. doi: 10.1017/bap.2017.6

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish, New York, NY: Pantheon.

  • Frederiksen, D.M. (1894) Mortgage banking in Germany, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 9(1): 4776. doi: 10.2307/1883634

  • Frieden, J. (1994) International investment and colonial control: a new interpretation, International Organization, 48(4): 55993. doi: 10.1017/S0020818300028319

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Fröbel, F., Heinrichs, J. and Kreye, O. (1980) The New International Division of Labour, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Furnivall, J. (1948) Colonial Policy and Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Garcia-Bernardo, J., Fichtner, J., Takes, F. and Heemskerk, E. (2017) Uncovering offshore financial centres: conduits and sinks in the global corporate ownership network, Scientific Reports, 7(1): 110.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Gereffi, G., Humphrey, J. and Sturgeon, T. (2005) The governance of global value chains, Review of International Political Economy, 12(1): 78104. doi: 10.1080/09692290500049805

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Gidron, N. and Hall, P. (2017) The politics of social status: economic and cultural roots of the populist right, The British Journal of Sociology, 68: S5784.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Gindin, S. and Panitch, L. (2012) The Making of Global Capitalism, London: Verso Books.

  • Gowan, P. (1999) The Global Gamble: Washington’s Faustian Bid for World Dominance, London: Verso.

  • Haggard, S. (1990) Pathways from the Periphery: The Politics of Growth in the Newly Industrializing Countries, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Halperin, S. (2017) The imperial city-state and the national state form: reflections on the history of the contemporary order, Thesis Eleven, 139(1): 97112. doi: 10.1177/0725513617700455

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Hilferding, R. (1981 [1910]) Finance Capital: A Study of the Latest Phase of Capitalist Development, Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

  • Hiscox, M. (2001) Class versus industry cleavages: inter-industry factor mobility and the politics of trade, International Organization, 55(1): 146. doi: 10.1162/002081801551405

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Hobson, J. (1902) Imperialism: A Study, London: Spokesman Books.

  • Hodgson, G.M. (1994) Some remarks on ‘economic imperialism’ and international political economy, Review of International Political Economy, 1(1): 218. doi: 10.1080/09692299408434266

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Hünnekes, F., Schularick, M. and Trebesch, C. (2019) Exportweltmeister: The Low Returns on Germany’s Capital Exports, Kiel Working Paper No. 2133, Kiel: Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Ikenberry, G. (2011) Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Immerwahr, D. (2019) How to Hide an Empire: A Short History of the Greater United States, New York, NY: Random House.

  • Jordà, Ò., Schularick, M. and Taylor, A. (2016) The great mortgaging: housing finance, crises and business cycles, Economic Policy, 31(85): 10752.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Judson, P. (2016) The Habsburg Empire: A New History, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

  • Keohane, R. (1984) After Hegemony, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  • Klein, M. and Pettis, M. (2020) Trade Wars Are Class Wars, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

  • Krasner, S. (1999) Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  • Lake, D. (2011) Hierarchy in International Relations, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

  • Lake, M. and Reynolds, H. (2008) Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the Question of Racial Equality, Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Lenin, V.I. (1970 [1917]) Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Moscow: Progress.

  • Linsi, L. and Mügge, D. (2019) Globalization and the growing defects of international economic statistics, Review of International Political Economy, 26(3): 36183. doi: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1560353

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Lustick, I. (1993) Unsettled States, Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and the West Bank-Gaza, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Mann, M. (1986) The Sources of Social Power: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Maier, C. (2006) Among Empires: America’s Ascendancy and its Predecessors, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

  • Marx, K. (1977) Capital, Vol 3, New York, NY: International Publishers.

  • Mgbeoji, I. (2014) Global Biopiracy: Patents, Plants, and Indigenous Knowledge, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

  • Mitchell, T. (1988) Colonising Egypt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Mügge, D. and Linsi, L. (2021) The national accounting paradox: how statistical norms corrode international economic data, European Journal of International Relations, 27(2): 40327.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Nichols, R. (2020) Theft Is Property!: Dispossession and Critical Theory, Durham: Duke University Press.

  • Nitzan, J. and Bichler, S. (2009) Capital as Power: A Study of Order and Creorder, London: Routledge.

  • Oatley, T. (2011) The reductionist gamble: open economy politics in the global economy, International Organization, 65(3): 31141. doi: 10.1017/S002081831100004X

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Oatley, T. (2015) A Political Economy of American Hegemony, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Oatley, T. (2017) Open economy politics and trade policy, Review of International Political Economy, 24(4): 699717. doi: 10.1080/09692290.2017.1325766

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Obeng-Odoom, F. (2015) Understanding land grabs in Africa: insights from Marxist and Georgist political economics, The Review of Black Political Economy, 42(4): 33754. doi: 10.1007/s12114-015-9209-2

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Offer, A. (1989) The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation, New York: Oxford University Press.

  • Palan, R. (2006) The Offshore World: Sovereign Markets, Virtual Places, and Nomad Millionaires, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

  • Pearson, D. (2001) The Politics of Ethnicity in Settler Societies: States of Unease, Basingstoke: Springer.

  • Peterson, V.S. (2004) A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy: Integrating Reproductive, Productive and Virtual Economies, London: Routledge.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Pfluke, C. (2019) A history of the five eyes alliance: possibility for reform and additions, Comparative Strategy, 38(4): 30215. doi: 10.1080/01495933.2019.1633186

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Philippon, T. (2019) The Great Reversal: How America Gave up on Free Markets, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

  • Phillips, R., Petersen, H. and Palan, R. (2020) Group subsidiaries, tax minimization and offshore financial centres: mapping organizational structures to establish the ‘in-betweener’ advantage, Journal of International Business Policy, doi: 10.1057/s42214-020-00069-3.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Phillips, R., Pyle, J. and Palan, R. (2021) The Amazon Method, Brussels: The Left in the European Parliament.

  • Pistor, K. (2019) The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.

  • Pun, N. (2005) Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

  • Ricardo, D. (1821) On the Principles of Political Economy, London: J. Murray.

  • Robinson, C. (1983) Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, London: Zed.

  • Satariano, A. and Burrows, P. (2011) Apple’s supply-chain secret? Hoard lasers, Bloomberg Businessweek, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-11-03/apples-supply-chain-secret-hoard-lasers.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Schwartz, H. (2016) Wealth and secular stagnation: The role of industrial organization and intellectual property rights, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 2(6): 22649. doi: 10.7758/rsf.2016.2.6.11

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Schwartz, H.M. (2009) Subprime Nation, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

  • Schwartz, H.M. (2019a) States Versus Markets: Understanding the Global Economy, Basingstoke: Macmillan.

  • Schwartz, H.M (2019b) American hegemony: intellectual property rights, dollar centrality, and infrastructural power, Review of International Political Economy, 26(3): 490519. doi: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1597754

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Seabrooke, L. and Wigan, D. (2017) The governance of global wealth chains, Review of International Political Economy, 24(1): 129. doi: 10.1080/09692290.2016.1268189

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Seguino, S. (1997) Gender wage inequality and export‐led growth in South Korea, The Journal of Development Studies, 34(2): 10232. doi: 10.1080/00220389708422513

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Seguino, S. (2000a) Accounting for gender in Asian economic growth, Feminist Economics, 6(3): 2758. doi: 10.1080/135457000750020128

  • Seguino, S. (2000b) Gender inequality and economic growth: a cross-country analysis, World Development, 28(7): 121130. doi: 10.1016/S0305-750X(00)00018-8

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Sell, S. (2003) Private Power, Public Law: The Globalization of Intellectual Property Rights, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • Song, J., Price, D., Guvenen, F., Bloom, N. and von Wachter, T. (2019) Firming up inequality, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(1): 150. doi: 10.1093/qje/qjy025

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Strange, S. (1988) States and Markets: An Introduction to International Political Economy, London: Pinter.

  • Studwell, J. (2013) How Asia Works: Success and Failure in the World’s Most Dynamic Region, New York: Grove/Atlantic.

  • Tooze, A. (2008) The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, London: Penguin.

  • United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) (2020) World Investment Report 2020, New York, NY: United Nations.

  • US Treasury (2021) Foreign portfolio holdings of U.S. securities as of 30 June 2020, https://ticdata.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/tic/Documents/shla2020report.pdf.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • van Apeldoorn, B. and de Graaff, N. (2014) Corporate elite networks and US post-cold war grand strategy from Clinton to Obama, European Journal of International Relations, 20(1): 2955. doi: 10.1177/1354066111433895

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Vitali, S., Glattfelder, J. and Battiston, S. (2011) The network of global corporate control, PLoS ONE, 6(10): e25995, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0025995.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Vitalis, R. (2015) White World Order, Black Power Politics: The Birth of American International Relations, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Weaver, J.C. (2003) Great Land Rush and the Making of the Modern World, 1650–1900, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press-MQUP.

  • Weber, M. (1978) Economy and Society, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

  • Wittgenstein, L. (2013) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, London: Routledge.

Herman Mark Schwartz University of Virginia, USA

Search for other papers by Herman Mark Schwartz in
Current site
Google Scholar
Close
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5571-3644

Content Metrics

May 2022 onwards Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 1714 686 21
Full Text Views 833 11 1
PDF Downloads 837 17 1

Altmetrics

Dimensions