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This concluding chapter summarizes the key aspects of international political economy (IPE). IPE can be described as the study of global systems of production, exchange, and distribution, with a view to understanding what these mean for the basic values of wealth, security, freedom, and justice. This book connects this academic field and its animating questions to everyday life. Alongside states and markets, it looks at households as important sites of power. Alongside production, exchange, and distribution, it also considers the contested economic sphere of consumption. Using the I-PEEL approach, the book takes everyday objects and economic practices as both entry points into IPE and things to be studied in themselves. The chapter then demonstrates the process of creating I-PEEL tiles, highlighting the merits of the I-PEEL approach in studying global capitalism.

This chapter examines the topic of food in everyday international political economy (IPE). It primarily focuses on the international trade of agricultural commodities and its developmental implications within the Global South. It explains the concepts of governmentality and the global value chain. The chapter begins by looking at corporate brands behind the globalization of chocolate, the associated transformation of dietary patterns, and the attempts to manage the exploitation that persists in the cocoa industry. It shows how these trends can be drawn together conceptually with reference to neoliberalism, a key term in IPE and in food studies generally. The chapter then analyses the meaning of food security, looks at how diets are governed, and looks at where value is distributed in the agri-food sector. It also considers how autoethnography and foodscaping can be used to reflect theoretically on daily diet and the moral economy of veganism.

This chapter addresses the concept of the global city in international political economy (IPE), relating it to changes in the international financial system. It begins by looking at mega-events like the Olympic Games. The chapter shows how these are used in place branding strategies adopted by host cities, how they drive urban transformation through infrastructural investment, and how they have been politicized to challenge social injustice. It then considers the broader questions of what the concept of the global city reveals about the process of globalization; how urban development takes place, and the role of the state in managing this; and how the right to the city is being used to articulate and link up struggles against urbanized inequality. Finally, the chapter studies urban development, highlighting the racialized processes of gentrification and ableist environments.

This chapter discusses the ambiguous subject of humour in the everyday politics of globalization. It begins by drawing out three related concepts of resistance, carnival, and subversion to reflect on how joking and pranks can critique, but also reproduce, the inequalities and exclusions of market life. The chapter then analyses the ethical, social, and political functions of comedy. Satirical resistance has contributed to seemingly laudable interventions in the sphere of international development, like the Comic Relief fundraiser and the Make Poverty History campaign. Humour therefore seems to carry a productive association with issues of global justice and responsibility. Yet postcolonial scholars, and comedians themselves, have questioned the privileged agency of the white, male, Western comedian typically at the centre of such interventions. Moreover, the widespread circulation of humour and irreverence within the public sphere might even create an opportunity for the ‘weaponization’ of irony by populists and authoritarian states.

This chapter discusses the topic of clothing in everyday international political economy (IPE). It begins by looking at how the garment industry and workers in that industry have been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, focusing in particular on the vulnerabilities faced by women workers in Leicester. This analysis introduces the concepts of fast fashion and commodity fetishism, and demonstrates how the globalization of garment production relates to the feminization of low-wage labour. The chapter then considers the broader politics of international trade that have shaped where in the world the production and disposal of clothing has been located. It also reviews efforts to reform the garment industry, including corporate social responsibility initiatives and the use of podcasting to highlight the under-researched topic of clothing disposal.

This chapter assesses feminist international political economy (IPE) insights about care. It begins by discussing military spouses and the vital everyday role that their care labour plays in sustaining the military as an institution. The chapter then looks at three interrelated debates that show the importance of care in everyday IPE: feminist work on social reproduction; the extent to which care can be commodified; and the heteronormative assumptions that underpin understandings of care. It also examines three crucial areas of feminist work on care that have informed IPE scholarship. These are the ‘care crisis’, how this crisis is experienced in everyday life as a form of depletion, and the transnationalization of commodified care labour in global care chains. Finally, the chapter reflects on how care can be measured through time use surveys and how policymakers have responded to the concerns raised by feminists about the significance of unpaid caring labour.

This chapter explores the increasing significance of social media in international political economy (IPE). How we experience and represent social media has profound implications for the ethical possibilities and limits of global market life. The chapter begins by problematizing social media through the related concepts of self-branding, the attention economy, and the prosumer. It then looks at social media via two popular documentaries on Netflix: Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened (2018) and The Social Dilemma (2020). These documentaries tackle questions of reform and regulation, identifying how social media data carries immense value for corporate marketing, political strategy, credit rating, and other ways of knowing and governing society. This helps to establish an important dilemma: is social media a free and democratic space or a new infrastructure of surveillance? Finally, the chapter reflects on the politics of social media by considering different forms of critical agency.

This chapter introduces the rationale for everyday international political economy (IPE). IPE is primarily concerned with the interrelationship of wealth and power across state borders. Whether through the sites of routine behaviour, the role of popular culture, or the stuff of mass consumption, everyday IPE has sought to show that the economy is continually remade in, and through, our daily lives. The chapter then identifies the lineages of everyday IPE which draw from the influences of theoretical traditions such as liberal, economic nationalist, Marxist, feminist, black, and post-structural theories. It also describes the I-PEEL approach and its implications for learning about and doing IPE. The I-PEEL approach looks at interrelated daily life experiences and explores how social relations of class, gender, race, nationality, and others sustain and subvert global inequalities.

The issues at the core of the global political economy are complex and multidimensional, but must be dealt with in a clear and decisive way. This work examines how political ideologies can help to explain the contemporary politics of globalisation, anti-globalisation, and global governance including new forms of populism and economic nationalism. It outlines the main ideologies of international relations and economic policy including liberal internationalism, progressivism, neoliberalism, populist conservatism and, to a lesser extent, realism and neoconservatism. It also shows how these ideologies influenced the preferences of political actors and contributed to a globalisation/anti-globalisation sequence that has been strongly consistent across Anglo-American countries.

The multilateral economic order is facing several major challenges, including the persistent impact of COVID-19 on global output and growth, the shift towards decoupling and fragmentation in economic relations with China, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the disruption of global value chains, and the rise of conservative populism. Together these challenge the principles of liberal internationalism and provide a clear illustration of the relationship between trade, finance, international institutions, and the difficulties governments face in coping with the problems generated by complex interdependence. This chapter explores past and emerging challenges in the Global Political Economy (GPE) through a range of theoretical lenses. It also pays attention to the significance of race, colonialism, gender, and the intersections of GPE with everyday life.

How can one understand the problems of collaboration and coordination in the global political economy (GPE)? In situations of global interdependence, individual action by states often does not yield the desired result. Many argue that the solution to the problem of interdependence is to create international institutions. Yet this approach itself raises the issue of how states might go about creating such institutions in the first place. This work examines the conditions under which states might wish to cooperate and provides an introduction to game theory as an approach to understanding interdependent decision-making. It then discusses the conditions under which international institutions are likely to be developed and how they may facilitate international cooperation. Finally, the work examines dimensions of institutional variation, with a discussion of factors that shape the design of international institutions.

This chapter discusses globalization's impact on states. There is no topic more controversial in the field of global political economy than the impact of globalization on the accountability, autonomy, capacity, and sovereignty of the nation state; and the controversy has only intensified since the onset of the global financial crisis. Arguably, the democratic character of governance in contemporary societies is at stake in such debates. The chapter reviews the extensive controversy that surrounds such questions, focusing attention on the principal mechanisms in and through which globalization is seen to impact upon the nation state and the empirical evidence that might either substantiate or question the existence of such mechanisms. It also provides a detailed assessment of the case for and against the globalization thesis, examining the extent to which global economic integration might be seen to restrict the parameters of domestic political autonomy. Moreover, the chapter differentiates between the politics of globalization and the globalization of politics. It concludes by considering the complex and sometimes paradoxical relationship between globalization, democracy, and the nation state.

This chapter examines the political economy of development. Despite the many accomplishments since the end of the Second World War, the problems of development in the contemporary global political economy are still of arresting proportions, and the various incarnations of a ‘global development agenda’ to deal with these problems have had a very mixed record. In fact, there is still little consensus on what development actually is, let alone how it might be achieved, in either academic debates or public discourse. One of the most disputed questions in this context relates to the relationship between globalization and development, and how people should understand the impact of globalization on development across the world. The chapter explores these debates. It starts by reviewing the different ways of thinking about development that have emerged since the end of the Second World War, and demonstrating how particular understandings of development have given rise to particular kinds of development strategies, at both the national and global levels. The chapter then considers the impacts and consequences of these strategies for development, and shows on this basis that many of the problems and failures of development have not only persisted but also worsened in the contemporary period.

This chapter addresses the globalization of production. Although companies have been investing abroad for centuries, the most recent era of globalization has created an unprecedented range of possibilities for global firms to reorganize and relocate their activities. The chapter analyses how advances in transportation and technology allow a firm to divide up a global value chain — the sequence of activities that lead to the production of a particular good or service — and how these decisions create new opportunities and challenges for both companies and the societies within which they operate. It first reviews the rise of global production and the forces that have led to dramatic increases in foreign direct investment (FDI) and outsourcing. The central questions for any firm involved in global production involves how to govern the value chain and where to locate different activities. The chapter then provides a framework for understanding these issues and the implications of the various choices. It also applies these concepts to the case of East Asia, particularly China.

The GPE is characterized by tremendous disparities in wealth and income both within and between countries. Patterns of inequality have their origins in both historical institutions, like colonial extraction, as well as contemporary institutions, like the liberal trading order and financial capitalism. Although typically measured in economic terms, this work shows that the consequences of global inequality go beyond wealth and income to affect political institutions, labor conditions, and migration pressures and restrictions. However, not everyone agrees that global inequality is inherently a bad thing: some approaches to global justice emphasize absolute measures of economic well-being, such as GDP growth or declines in the number of people living in poverty, over relative concepts like levels of inequality. Nonetheless, many scholars and practitioners would prefer to reduce the level of global inequality in practice, and this work concludes with an overview of some policies that have been proposed as partial solutions.

Some major advances in the betterment of human life have been made in recent years but at the cost of accelerated climatic change and through uneven means of development. A reduction in child mortality, a rise in literacy and education, and by some measures the fewest people live in extreme poverty than they ever have before. Nevertheless, inequality on the multiple axes of health, income, environment, gender, education, technology, finance, shelter, food, water, and various other issues concerning access persist. This work examines efforts by various actors to deal with these problems with mixed and contested results. The analysis is centered around a key question: who benefits and why from globalised development? In so doing, it examines various development theories, traces the history of globalisation-led development post-WWII, and scrutinises contemporary challenges like the Great Recession and the Global Refugee Crisis, in order to understand the crisis prone tendencies of globalisation and its linkages to everyday practices in global political economy.

Some major advances in the betterment of human life have been made in recent years but at the cost of accelerated climatic change and through uneven means of development. A reduction in child mortality, a rise in literacy and education, and by some measures the fewest people live in extreme poverty than they ever have before. Nevertheless, inequality on the multiple axes of health, income, environment, gender, education, technology, finance, shelter, food, water, and various other issues concerning access persist. This work examines efforts by various actors to deal with these problems with mixed and contested results. The analysis is centered around a key question: who benefits and why from globalised development? In so doing, it examines various development theories, traces the history of globalisation-led development post-WWII, and scrutinises contemporary challenges like the Great Recession and the Global Refugee Crisis, in order to understand the crisis prone tendencies of globalisation and its linkages to everyday practices in global political economy.

The international monetary and financial system plays a central role in the global political economy (GPE). This work examines how the contemporary system is still shaped by many legacies of the Bretton Woods monetary and financial order established in 1944 and the political priorities of its architects. That order has also undergone several pivotal transformations. An important gradual change has been dramatic globalisation of financial markets since the 1960s. A more sudden one was the abandonment of the Bretton Woods gold exchange standard in 1971. The dollar standard that replaced it faces a number of challenges in the contemporary era. Also significant have been the breakdown of the adjustable peg exchange rate regime in the early 1970s as well as regionalization and decentralization trends.

This chapter assesses the global political economy of the environment. The growth of the world economy is transforming the Earth's environment. Nothing is particularly controversial about this statement. Yet, sharp disagreements arise over the nature of this transformation. Is the globalization of capitalism a force of progress and environmental solutions? Or is it a cause of the current global environmental crisis? The chapter addresses these questions by examining the debates around some of the most contentious issues at the core of economic globalization and the environment: economic growth, production, and consumption; trade; and transnational investment. It begins with a glance at the general arguments about how the global political economy affects the global environment. The chapter then traces the history of global environmentalism — in particular, the emergence of international environmental institutions with the norm of sustainable development. It also evaluates the effectiveness of North–South environmental financing and international environmental regimes.