Political Economy Defined
Political Economy Defined
No.1
Political economy
WRITTEN BY:
David N. Balaam
Michael A. Veseth
https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-economy
…to the developing science of political economy. Ricardo invented the concept of the economic
model—a tightly knit logical apparatus consisting of a few strategic variables—that was capable of
yielding, after some manipulation and the addition of a few empirically observable extras, results of
enormous practical import. At the heart of…
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international relations: International political economy
Nothing is more illustrative of the inherently interdisciplinary nature of international relations inquiry
than the nexus between economic and political factors. Although politics and economics have been
studied separately for analytic purposes and as academic disciplines, and although each has its own
paradigms,…
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John Stuart Mill: Public life and writing
…in his development as a political economist. In 1844 he published the Essays on Some Unsettled
Questions of Political Economy, which he had written several years earlier, and four out of five of
these essays are solutions of perplexing technical problems—the distribution of the gains of
international commerce, the influence…
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political science
Political science, the systematic study of governance by the application of empirical and generally
scientific methods of analysis. As traditionally defined and studied, political science examines the
state and its organs and institutions. The contemporary discipline, however, is considerably broader
than this, encompassing studies of all the societal, cultural, and
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sociology
Sociology, a social science that studies human societies, their interactions, and the processes that
preserve and change them. It does this by examining the dynamics of constituent parts of societies
such as institutions, communities, populations, and gender, racial, or age groups. Sociology also
studies social status or stratification, social movements,
READ MORE
MORE ABOUT Political economy
3 REFERENCES FOUND IN BRITANNICA ARTICLES
Assorted References
No.2
Political economy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with Economic policy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy
Political economy is the study of production and trade and their relations
with law, custom and government as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth.
Political economy as a discipline originated in moral philosophy in the 18th century and sought
to explore the administration of states' wealth, with "political" signifying the Greek
word polity and "economy" signifying the Greek word "okonomie" or "household management".
The earliest works of political economy are most often attributed to British scholars like Adam
Smith, Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo, although the case is sometimes made that the still
earlier works of the French physiocrats constitute the true beginnings of the discipline.
In the late 19th century, the term "economics" gradually began to replace the term "political
economy" with the rise of mathematical modelling coinciding with the publication of an
influential textbook by Alfred Marshall in 1890.[1] Earlier, William Stanley Jevons, a proponent
of mathematical methods applied to the subject, advocated economics for brevity and with the
hope of the term becoming "the recognised name of a science".[2][3] Citation measurement
metrics from Google Ngram Viewer indicate that use of the term "economics" began to
overshadow "political economy" around roughly 1910, becoming the preferred term for the
discipline by 1920.[4]Today, the term "economics" usually refers to the narrow study of the
economy absent other political and social considerations while the term "political economy"
represents a distinct and competing approach.
Political economy, where it is not used as a synonym for economics, may refer to very different
things. From an academic standpoint, the term may reference Marxian analysis, applied public
choice approaches emanating from the Chicago school and the Virginia school. In common
parlance, "political economy" may simply refer to the advice given by economists to the
government or public on general economic policy or on specific economic proposals developed
by political scientists.[3] A rapidly growing mainstream literature from the 1970s has expanded
beyond the model of economic policy in which planners maximize utility of a representative
individual toward examining how political forces affect the choice of economic policies,
especially as to distributional conflicts and political institutions.[5] It is available as a stand-alone
area of study in certain colleges and universities.
Contents
[hide]
1Etymology
2Current approaches
3Related disciplines
4See also
5Notes
6References
7Journals
8External links
Etymology[edit]
Originally, political economy meant the study of the conditions under which production or
consumption within limited parameters was organized in nation-states. In that way, political
economy expanded the emphasis of economics, which comes from the Greek oikos(meaning
"home") and nomos (meaning "law" or "order"). Political economy was thus meant to express the
laws of production of wealth at the state level, just as economics was the ordering of the home.
The phrase économie politique (translated in English as "political economy") first appeared in
France in 1615 with the well-known book by Antoine de Montchrétien, Traité de l’economie
politique. The French physiocrats were the first exponents of political economy, although the
intellectual responses of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, David Ricardo, Henry George and Karl
Marx to the physiocrats generally receives much greater attention.[6] The world's first
professorship in political economy was established in 1754 at the University of Naples Federico
II in southern Italy. The Neapolitan philosopher Antonio Genovesi was the first tenured
professor. In 1763, Joseph von Sonnenfels was appointed a Political Economy chair at
the University of Vienna, Austria. Thomas Malthus, in 1805, became England's first professor of
political economy, at the East India Company College, Haileybury, Hertfordshire. In its
contemporary meaning, political economy refers to different yet related approaches to studying
economic and related behaviours, ranging from the combination of economics with other fields
to the use of different, fundamental assumptions that challenge earlier economic assumptions:
Current approaches[edit]
New political economy which may treat economic ideologies as the phenomenon to
explain, per the traditions of Marxian political economy. Thus, Charles S. Maier suggests
that a political economy approach "interrogates economic doctrines to disclose their
sociological and political premises.... in sum, [it] regards economic ideas and behavior
not as frameworks for analysis, but as beliefs and actions that must themselves be
explained".[36] This approach informs Andrew Gamble's The Free Economy and the
Strong State(Palgrave Macmillan, 1988), and Colin Hay's The Political Economy of New
Labour (Manchester University Press, 1999). It also informs much work published
in New Political Economy, an international journal founded by Sheffield University
scholars in 1996.[37]
International political economy (IPE) an interdisciplinary field comprising approaches to
the actions of various actors. In the United States, these approaches are associated with
the journal International Organization, which in the 1970s became the leading journal of
IPE under the editorship of Robert Keohane, Peter J. Katzenstein and Stephen Krasner.
They are also associated with the journal The Review of International Political Economy.
There also is a more critical school of IPE, inspired by thinkers such as Antonio
Gramsciand Karl Polanyi; two major figures are Matthew Watson and Robert W. Cox.[38]
The use of a political economy approach by anthropologists, sociologists, and
geographers used in reference to the regimes of politics or economic values that emerge
primarily at the level of states or regional governance, but also within smaller social
groups and social networks. Because these regimes influence and are influenced by the
organization of both social and economic capital, the analysis of dimensions lacking a
standard economic value (e.g. the political economy of language, of gender, or of
religion) often draws on concepts used in Marxian critiques of capital. Such approaches
expand on neo-Marxian scholarship related
to development and underdevelopment postulated by André Gunder Frank and Immanuel
Wallerstein.
Historians have employed political economy to explore the ways in the past that persons
and groups with common economic interests have used politics to effect changes
beneficial to their interests.[39]
Political economy and law is a recent attempt within legal scholarship to engage
explicitly with political economy literature. In the 1920s and 1930s, legal
realists (e.g. Robert Hale) and intellectuals (e.g. John Commons) engaged themes related
to political economy. In the second half of the 20th century, lawyers associated with the
Chicago School incorporated certain intellectual traditions from economics. However,
since the crisis in 2007 legal scholars especially related to international law, have turned
to more explicitly engage with the debates, methodology and various themes within
political economy texts.[40][41]
Thomas Piketty's approach and call to action which advocated for the re-introduction of
political consideration and political science knowledge more generally into the discipline
of economics as a way of improving the robustness of the discipline and remedying its
shortcomings, which had become clear following the 2008 financial crisis.[42]
Related disciplines[edit]
Because political economy is not a unified discipline, there are studies using the term that
overlap in subject matter, but have radically different perspectives:[43]
Politics studies power relations and their relationship to achieving desired ends
Philosophy rigorously assesses and studies a set of beliefs and their applicability to
reality
Economics studies the distribution of resources so that the material wants of a society are
satisfied; enhance societal well-being
Sociology studies the effects of persons' involvement in society as members of groups
and how that changes their ability to function. Many sociologists start from a perspective
of production-determining relation from Karl Marx. Marx's theories on the subject of
political economy are contained in his book Das Kapital.
Anthropology studies political economy by investigating regimes of political and
economic value that condition tacit aspects of sociocultural practices (e.g. the pejorative
use of pseudo-Spanish expressions in the U.S. entertainment media) by means of broader
historical, political and sociological processes. Analyses of structural features of
transnational processes focus on the interactions between the world capitalist system and
local cultures.
Archaeology attempts to reconstruct past political economies by examining the material
evidence for administrative strategies to control and mobilize resources.[44] This evidence
may include architecture, animal remains, evidence for craft workshops, evidence for
feasting and ritual, evidence for the import or export of prestige goods, or evidence for
food storage.
Psychology is the fulcrum on which political economy exerts its force in studying
decision making (not only in prices), but as the field of study whose assumptions model
political economy.
History documents change, often using it to argue political economy; some historical
works take political economy as the narrative's frame.
Ecology deals with political economy because human activity has the greatest effect upon
the environment, its central concern being the environment's suitability for human
activity. The ecological effects of economic activity spur research upon changing market
economy incentives. Additionally and more recently, ecological theory has been used to
examine economic systems as similar systems of interacting species (e.g., firms).[45]
Cultural studies examines social class, production, labor, race, gender and sex.
Communications examines the institutional aspects of media and telecommuncation
systems. As the area of study focusing on aspects of human communication, it pays
particular attention to the relationships between owners, labor, consumers, advertisers,
structures of production and the state and the power relationships embedded in these
relationships.
See also[edit]
Economic sociology
Economic study of collective action
Constitutional economics
European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE)
Economic ideology
Institutional economics
Land value tax
Law of rent
Important publications in political economy
Perspectives on Capitalism
Social model
Social capital
Notes[edit]
References[edit]
Baran, Paul A. (1957). The Political Economy of Growth. Monthly Review Press, New
York. Review extrract.
Commons, John R. (1934 [1986]). Institutional Economics: Its Place in Political
Economy, Macmillan. Description and preview.
Leroux, Robert (2011), Political Economy and Liberalism in France : The Contributions
of Frédéric Bastiat, London, Routledge.
Maggi, Giovanni, and Andrés Rodríguez-Clare (2007). "A Political-Economy Theory of
Trade Agreements," American Economic Review, 97(4), pp. 1374-1406.
O'Hara, Phillip Anthony, ed. (1999). Encyclopedia of Political Economy, 2 v. Routledge.
2003 review links.
Pressman, Steven, Interactions in Political Economy: Malvern After Ten
Years Routledge, 1996
Rausser, Gordon, Swinnen, Johan, and Zusman, Pinhas (2011). Political Power and
Economic Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.
Winch, Donald (1996). Riches and Poverty : An Intellectual History of Political Economy
in Britain, 1750–1834 Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.
Winch, Donald (1973). "The Emergence of Economics as a Science, 1750–1870." In: The
Fontana Economic History of Europe, Vol. 3. London: Collins/Fontana.
Journals[edit]
External links[edit]
Wikibooks has a
book on the topic
of: Political
Economy
No.3
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/sgabriel/political_economy_main.htm
Satyananda Gabriel
Associate Professor Economics
Mount Holyoke College
Email: sgabriel@mtholyoke.edu
Teaching Assistants:
Political economy is the study of the role of economic processes in shaping society
and history. Political economy (particularly when the word "radical" is added as an
adjective) has come to be closely associated with the work of economists who adopted
key concepts developed by Marx, in particular his focus on class processes or
relationships, but who rejected the economic determinism of orthodox versions of
Marxian theory. Thus, political economy makes extensive and intensive use of class
analysis in making sense of society and history, but does so in the context of political,
cultural, and environmental processes, as well as other economic processes.
Nevertheless, most of the writings in political economy, including the work of Marx,
have been concerned specifically with understanding the role of capitalism(as the
prevalence of a specific class arrangement or set of class processes) in shaping society
and history. This course introduces students to a post-structuralistapproach to
political economy, an approach that de-centers political economy from this narrow
focus on capitalism. Post-structuralist political economy provides an alternative to
orthodox (neoclassical) economic theory (taught in its purest form in the introductory
course in microeconomics), as well as to more traditional (economic determinist)
versions of Marxian (or Marxian-influenced) political economy.
In the architecture of this new form of political economy, all social processes are
significant determinants of economic outcomes, the behavior of economic agents and
institutions, and the direction of historical change. In other words, the post-
structuralist approach studied in this course rejects economic determinism in favor of
a more open-minded approach to social causality and the creation of history
(overdetermination). For instance, unlike orthodox economic theory or economic
determinist versions of Marxian theory, the post-structuralist approach would view
cultural processes as no less significant than economic processes in shaping
investment decisions. The same could be said for political or environmental
processes. This point, among others, will be made by essays and papers read during
the semester.
Grading: Final grades will be based on two midterms and a final exam. The first
midterm contributes 25% to the semester grade, the second contributes 35%, and the
final examination 40%.
Calendar:
February 4-6: J.K. Gibson-Graham, Stephen Resnick, and Richard Wolff, "Toward a
Poststructuralist Political Economy," pps. 1-22 of GGRW
Gabriel, Greater Caribbean: Crossing the Boundary, chapters 1 & 2*
February 11-13: Bruce Norton, "Reading Marx for Class," pps. 23-55 of GGRW
Gabriel, Capitalism, Socialism, and the 1949 Chinese Revolution
February 18: No class --- Note that Mount Holyoke College does not recognize the
power of UMass administrators to change days of the week, so the Monday class
scheduled on a Tuesday is cancelled.
February 20-25: J.K. Gibson-Graham and Phillip O'Neill, "Exploring a New Class
Politics of the Enterprise," pps. 56-80 of GGRW
Gabriel, Lecture Notes on Post-structuralist Theory of the Firm
March 25-27: Andriana Vlachou, "Nature and Class: A Marxian Value Analysis,"
pps. 105-130 of GGRW
April 1-3: Carole Biewener, "The Promise of Finance: Banks and Community
Development," pps. 131-157 of GGRW
............Case Study: Belize Rural Women's Association
............Gabriel, Belize Rural Women's Association, Revolving Loan Fund,
............ & Women's Cooperatives
April 3-8: J.K. Gibson-Graham and David Ruccio, "After Development: Re-
imagining Economy and Class," pps. 158-181 of GGRW
April 8-10: Gabriel, "A Class Analysis of the Iranian Revolution of 1979," pps. 206-
226 of GGRW
April 22-24: Serap Kayatekin, "Sharecropping and Feudal Class Processes in the
Postbellum Mississippi Delta," pps. 227-246 of GGRW
April 29-May 1: Dean Saitta, "Communal Class Processes and Pre-Columbian Social
Dynamics," pps. 247-263 of GGRW
May 6-8: Gabriel, "Ambiguous Capital: The Success of China's New Capitalists"
Gabriel, "Ambiguous Capital II: Restructuring China's State-owned
Enterprises"
May 13-15: Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff, "Struggles in the USSR:
Communisms Attempted and Undone," pps. 264-290 of GGRW
Final Exams
Heterodox Economic Theory (essay in progress --- what is the difference between
political economy and heterodox economic theory?)