An Intellectual History of IPE
In his Introduction to International Political Economy: An Intellectual History, Cohen traces the genesis and development of the rapidly growing field of international political economy. He documents the work of the key pioneers of the discipline: Robert Cox, Robert Gilpin, Peter Katzenstein, Robert Keohane, Charles Kindleberger, Stephen Krasner, Joseph Nye, and Susan Strange and he charts the development of IPE from these foundations to the present.
At the heart of the book is a depiction of IPE being divided into American and British camps. The Americans being positivist and attempting to develop intermediate level theories that are supported by some form of quantitative evidence. The work asserts that British IPE is more "interpretivist" and looks for "grand theories" and that they use very different standards of empirical work. Cohen sees benefits in both approaches.
This characteristion of IPE has been debated hotly. One forum for this was the "2008 Warwick RIPE Debate: ‘American’ versus ‘British’ IPE" where Cohen, Mark Blyth, Richard Higgott, and Matthew Watson followed up the recent exchange in RIPE. Higgott and Watson in particular querrying the appropriateness of Cohen's categories.
Read more about this topic: Benjamin Cohen (political Economist)
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