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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.

This chapter explores income inequality in the global political economy. Income inequality matters for intrinsic and instrumental reasons, and intersects with inequalities between social groups based on gender, race, and other factors. There are three ways to think about income inequality at a global level: ‘international inequality’, ‘world inequality’, and ‘global inequality’. One can say that international inequality and world inequality have unambiguously declined since 1980. However, the magnitude of the decline depends on whether the size of countries' populations is taken into account. Meanwhile, national inequality refers to differences in income between individuals within a country. The chapter then discusses poverty. Ultimately, explanations for patterns of inequality in the contemporary period can be traced to many of the dynamics associated with globalization, particularly the reorganization of the global economy around global value chains (GVCs) and the implications for countries pursuing ‘late development’.

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.

This chapter evaluates the contested concepts of globalization and neoliberalism, and looks at their role in Global Political Economy (GPE). There are significant debates about the political salience of globalization, with hyperglobalists, sceptics, and transformationalists disagreeing on its implications for the power of the state. Scholars also disagree about when the era of globalization began. Meanwhile, neoliberalism is a set of economic ideas and policies built upon a belief in the ‘free market’ as an unquestionable value in political and economic life. Neoliberal globalization has increased living standards in many parts of the world while also intensifying inequality along the lines of class, race, and gender. At the heart of debates about neoliberalism and globalization are three core puzzles: whether they are primarily depoliticizing or repoliticizing strategies; whether they are best understood by looking at global-level processes or at changes in everyday life; and whether their power is primarily material or ideational.

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 studies the joint efforts of states to tackle crime through bilateral or multilateral action. The criminal activities that fuel global concern are transnational in nature; they involve more than one country and thus require an internationally coordinated response. These transnational criminal activities involve illicit flows; that is, the movement between countries of people, goods, or money. What makes these flows illicit is that they are prohibited by the laws of the country that is the source of the flows and/or the laws of the country receiving them. Smuggling drugs or firearms across borders; laundering illegally obtained funds through international financial transactions; the sale of women to engage in sex work—these are some examples of the transnational flows that constitute the illicit global economy. The chapter examines each of these flows, the challenge of measuring them, and their relationship with globalization, before turning to the efforts against them.

This chapter illustrates the complex and contested relationship between global production and labour. The mode of global production has changed dramatically since the 1970s. Since the 1990s, corporations have outsourced the production of goods to suppliers around the world. At the core of this contemporary form of global production is the ability of lead firms to profit through advanced sourcing strategies, economies of scale, and branding. This gives corporations significant bargaining power over their fragmented and geographically dispersed supplier base. In the contemporary global economy, conditions of poverty and marginalization can be attributed not only to exclusion from employment, but also to the adverse incorporation of precarious workers into global production. The chapter then considers the role of national governments in the governance of labour in global production, before looking at the impact of e-commerce and automation on the future of work.

This chapter addresses global production, which has powerful effects on the incomes, working conditions, and development opportunities of populations around the world. It is not surprising that the organization and regulation of global production have become one of the most contentious subjects of debate within the field of Global Political Economy (GPE). The chapter confronts several difficult questions linked to these debates. Who does the work of global production, and how has its organization changed over time? Who exercises power within evolving systems of global production, and what winners and losers do such arrangements produce? How is global production governed, and with what consequences for labour rights and the environment? In exploring these questions, analytical lenses drawn from a range of political economy perspectives help us to make sense of the complex economic and political forces through which the organization and governance of contemporary global production is shaped and contested.

This chapter begins by looking at mainstream and critical perspectives on the relationship between globalization and the environment. It shows how race and gender are implicated in the distribution of environmental harms, and how clean and safe environments in the Global North often come at the expense of communities in the Global South. A case study of green technology reveals that this asymmetry also characterizes efforts to transition to more sustainable societies. There are four key perspectives on globalization and the environment: liberal environmentalism, eco-Marxism, environmental justice, and ecofeminism. The chapter then turns to the topic of global governance to see how environmental multilateralism has developed over the past five decades, and the tensions that remain between global rules on trade and the environment.

This chapter covers three dimensions in answering questions about the role of state power and geopolitics in the Global Political Economy (GPE). The first answer focuses on how changes in the global economy affect the nature and the effectiveness of the economic instruments available to governments as they pursue their foreign policy goals. The second cluster of answers focuses on the ways in which politics and economics are bound together in the construction and evolution of economic institutions and economic orders. The third cluster of answers accepts the need to think in terms of power operating within economic orders but this time with the causal arrow flowing from politics into the economy. Ultimately, the dynamics of the international political system are what drive the foreign economic policies of governments, shape the states and societies making up the global system, and help explain the character and operation of the global economy.

This chapter focuses on the Global Political Economy (GPE) of finance. It begins by exploring the key pillars of the GPE of finance, starting with money, currencies, and the international monetary system, before examining the dynamics of credit and debt. While money is ubiquitous, its usages are characterized by great variety and so are the practices—economic, political, and cultural—to which money gives rise. The chapter then looks at both public and private mechanisms which were established to govern global finance. Recurring financial crises are a key feature of the Global Political Economy. These crises can be triggered in different segments of the global financial system, including currency and debt markets, and can result from shocks outside the financial economy such as the Covid-19 pandemic. The chapter also considers different ideas that may shape the international organization of credit, such as Islamic finance.

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.

This chapter explores the transition in the dominant policies and practices that have impelled the momentum in international migration as a defining feature of globalization. It begins with a brief survey of current policy priorities, before considering some dominant theories of migration. The securitization of national borders by many OECD governments has enabled the restriction of rights to migrate and privileged certain groups of migrants over others. Labour migration has come to be privileged over other forms of migration, but often involves temporary work visas and significant vulnerability for migrant workers. The global movement to protect migrants' labour rights has had generally limited impact, but with some notable successes and continued momentum. Ultimately, migration continues to be politically and socially contentious in many parts of the world, adding to the vulnerability of many migrant workers.

This chapter discusses ‘global governance’, the term now used widely to analyse the international system. Global governance consists of collective efforts to identify, understand, and address worldwide problems and processes that go beyond the capacities of individual states. The question of how to improve global economic governance can be understood by addressing the main ‘gaps’ in the international system: knowledge, norms, policies, institutions, leadership, and compliance. The chapter then presents three illustrations of current issues in global governance—and the gaps therein—to help in understanding international responses (both weak and strong) to communicable diseases, economic instability, and child welfare. Ultimately, addressing global governance problems requires more robust intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

This chapter discusses the question of how to study Global Political Economy (GPE), presenting three arguments. First, it makes the case for why the study of GPE is fundamentally exciting and wonderful. GPE is exciting because of its sheer scale and potential comprehensiveness in offering macrosocial explanations for the operation of the world. This fundamentally interdisciplinary orientation is very different from other areas of study, and it makes GPE a refreshing contrast to a lot of conventional thinking within the social sciences. The chapter also argues that the study of GPE is really hard. In order to navigate both the wonderfulness and the challenges of studying GPE, a particular conceptual device can be tremendously helpful. The chapter then identifies the different ‘modes’ of intellectual activity that operate within GPE scholarship: critique, advocacy, and discovery.

This chapter examines the question of how we should think about Global Political Economy (GPE), and offers a multitude of theoretical approaches and perspectives. Perspectives can be distinguished from one another along five key dimensions: ontology, agenda, purpose, boundaries, and epistemology. At the most general level, the field is divided between two broad approaches, described as either orthodox or heterodox theoretical perspectives. Orthodox perspectives share a preference for a state-centric ontology, positivism, closed disciplinary boundaries, and rigorous methodology. They may be subdivided into three main variations: liberalism, realism, and constructivism. Heterodox perspectives are less state-centric, agendas are broader and more normative, boundaries are more open, and methodology is less formal. They include a variety of system-level theories, critical theory, and approaches that seek to extend the boundaries of the field in one direction or another. Fundamentally, our thinking about GPE should be ruled by two paramount principles: pragmatism and eclecticism.