International Relations and International Political Economy: notes for the debate

This paper aims to open a dialogue between the International Political Economy (IPE) field and the International Relations discipline dominated by foreign policy studies. It does so by discussing the epistemological roots of the IPE tradition. The main claim is that IPE rejects and overcomes the false dichotomies that are reproduced in foreign policy studies between the so called domestic and international levels of analysis, and between the spheres of politics and economics. Instead, IPE comes in to rescue the discipline of International Relations from a dominant view that leaves economic interests on the sidelines of interpretations of international politics and in the care of economists.