THE NEW POLITICAL-ECONOMY

Political economy has been an extremely diverse field of study, embracing a large number of different approaches and methodologies. The fading of old ideological and methodological disputes and the development of new intellectual agendas in response to far-reaching changes in the economic and political structures of the world system have created the possibility of a new political economy which promises a reconstruction of the field and the overcoming of the methodological division between economics and political science. Recent critiques of established literatures in international political economy, state theory, comparative government-industry relations, and public choice are contributing to a new paradigm. Drawing on recent developments in economics such as New Keynesianism it combines the historical and institutionalist analysis of structure with rational choice analysis of agency.