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The EU and international political economy

6 important questions on The EU and international political economy

Economic order over the past 200 years is often depicted as vacillating between what?

Between periods of economic openness (during which free trade ideology is underpinned by functioning international monetary institutons) and periods of growing protectionism, rising economic nationalism, and the spawning of international economic rivalries.

Within international political economy (IPE), several explanations are offered for the rise and decline of open liberal orders. The most popular focuses on what?

On state power, with the argument that liberal international trading and monetary orders are possible only when sponsored and underwritten by a hegemonic state.

A second explanation focuses on what?

On the presence or absence of international institutions to create systems of rules for a market-based order.

A third type of explanation emphasizes what?

The power of ideas. (From this vantage point, liberal orders emerge and consolidate because of the widespread acceptance of liberal narratives of how to organize the relationship between state, society, and market both domestically and internationally.)

A fourth type of IPE explanation examines what?

The relationship between economic order and domestic social purpose.

The four IPE discussions just outlined can applied to the EU in which two broad ways?

1) The first simply tries to understand the origins and sustainibility of a pan-Europeaon liberal market order sitting above, yet feeding from and also shaping, the national economies of European states.
2) The second revisits the question about the relationship between the creation of a distinctively European economic order, on the one hand, and the project of global market liberalization ('globalization'), on the other.