Global Political Economy

Employing a critical analytical lens, this course offers an introduction to Global Political Economy (GPE), understood to be both a field of study and an approach to understanding the world of International Relations. As a field of study, GPE encompasses the processes of trade, production, finance, the division of labour, “development”, the environment, gender, and ideas as they operate at and across all scales of human activity, from global to the local. As an approach, GPE is rooted in classical political economy, recognizing the mutually constitutive nature of politics and economics. This is seen not only in the ways in which the political and economic spheres influence each other, but also in the recognition that the full reality of political processes, possibilities, and outcomes cannot be adequately understood without reflection on the associated economic dynamics, and vice versa.