KÜRESEL POLİTİK EKONOMİ - Deneme Sınavı - 1

The British school reflects classical political economy tradition and as such often discusses normative questions and uses an interpretive tone on the contrary to the American school’s commitment to positivist methodologies.

Emerging approaches in International Political Economy
• Positive IPE
• Constructivist IPE
• Post-Structuralism
• Feminism• Green Approaches in IPE

The Physiocrats were French social reformers and their immediate influence in French economic and political affairs lasted about two decades and ended when their most politically influential member, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot ( 1727- 1781), lost the office of comptroller general of finances in 1776 (Hunt & Lautzenheiser, 2011, 35).

François Quesnay (1694-1774) was the leading figure of the French physiocrats
School. He served as a medical doctor (surprisingly not as an economist) in the Louis
XV’s Versailles palace. Quesnay was the doctor of Madame de Pompadour, King Louis
XV’s favourite mistress.

Mercantilism was properly regarded as a blend of economic fallacy and state creation of special privilege. As the earliest systemic understanding of IPE, mercantilism goes back to the period between the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.

The origins of economic nationalism can be traced back to the work of Alexander Hamilton and Friedrich List. Alexander Hamilton (1755–1804) was the first secretary of the treasury of the United States. As such, he was a statesman rather than a theorist.

Classic liberalism has rose from thinking in response to the mercantilist conventional wisdom of the seventeenth century. In this sense, David Hume (1711-1776) was probably the first thinker who criticized the mercantilist thinking and practice. Before the WW I, gold standard was a functional tool in resolving and easing international transactions.

One of the big questions in international relations is about how to achieve cooperation. One type of explanation for that is the neo-realist argument of hegemonic stability theory based on the distribution of power argument. In a simple term, it argues countries cooperate in international politics since hegemon force them with sticks or influence them with carrots to do so.

There are different variants of contemporary Marxism, and it is not an easy task to group them into generally accepted groupings. However, we can find at least two categories that are often used when it comes to International Political Economy. These two neo-Marxist approaches are Neo Gramscian School and Dependency Schools.

Bringing Gramsci’s ideas into the IR jargon, Robert Cox probably is the most cited scholar in this genre of IPE theories. Cox, himself, called his approach as historical materialism, which is a critical theory of the international political economy. Cox distinguishes historical materialist Marxism from other types of Marxism by saying that the first seeks to explain, as well as promote, change in social relations, while the latter provides a framework for the analysis of the capitalist state and society

Dependency school is another neo-Marxist variant of theories of IPE that explains development processes by looking at the dominance and subordination relation taking place between core and periphery. Practically this model departs from the perpetuating inequalities/ discrepancies between core and periphery and the way in which that inequalities/discrepancies has been institutionalized and produced over and over again.

The concept of political economy, based on the words “polis” (independent city state) and “oikonomike” (management of assets) in ancient Greek, means the management of a country’s people or state. The answer is B.

The main characteristics of the International Political Economy can be listed as follows: 

• IPE is a branch of science in which the economic system and the political system work together.

• IPE is not a branch of science that can only be studied theoretically. 

• With globalization, the development process of IPE has accelerated. 

• Due to the large number of terms it covers and uses, it covers a wide area that can be understood with different approaches. 

• IPE has an autonomous structure. 

• The emergence and development of IPE as a separate discipline has led to the establishment of international organizations.

The answer is A.

Hegemon State: It is the state which has put pressure on other states in the international system and is the most superior.

The answer is D.

The theories are put forward in order to explain certain events in certain periods. However, in time, it is seen that a theory has lost its capacity to explain and a new theory has come into its place. For example, in the realist approach, states have kept themselves within their borders with the desire to preserve the territorial integrity and to survive. However, in the following process, states understood that they could not remain within these limits and they had to adapt to the new order with the effect of globalization and communication revolution which dominated the system. The new dominant force of the international system has been liberalism. The financial liberalization, capital flows, invisible hand and open market, which have been experienced in this process in which the individual comes to the fore, have had a positive effect on the system for a while. However, this softening and liberalization wind in the global system has evolved into a process where the rich becomes richer and the poor becomes poorer. In this process Marxism, in response to liberalism and the global system, has emerged by emphasizing class. It should not be forgotten that every theory emerges as a reaction “to correct what is wrong” in the global system. The answer is D.

The broad areas and issues covered by the International Political Economy (IPE) discipline, whose source and formation are very old, can be explained in different ways by the different theoretical approaches of international relations. From this point of view, we can list the main approaches to help us explain IPE as
Mercantilism/Realism, Liberalism and Marxism, and alternative approaches as Constructivism and Feminism. There are some concepts associated with these five theories. In the Realist approach, nation states, power, survival, security, and anarchy; in the Liberal approach, the individual, capital flows, open market, and invisible hand; in the Marxist approach, class, interest, exploitation, bourgeois, and proletariat; in the Constructivist approach, idea, norm, discourse, belief, and structure-maker relationship; and in the Feminist approach, concepts such as gender equality, sexist
exploitation, and the end to oppression come to the fore. Since the theories of IPE are included as a separate section in the second part of this book, the theories here are explained in a short and concise way. The answer is B.

National Security: The realization of the national interests of a state, and the protection of these interests against internal and external threats. The concept of national security aims to strengthen the perception that the object of security, that is, the security which is under threat, and the one that needs to be protected is the nation. The answer is E.

Liberalism is the theory that emerged to respond to the facts and events that the security-centered and
nation-state-oriented mercantilist/realist theory cannot explain. Liberalism as a concept means “liberty under the law”. Liberalism opposed mercantilism, which states that human nature is aggressive, offensive and skeptical, and argues that there is a constructive relationship between people competing for their own interests. This approach has been influential in the history of political and economic thought in the 18th and 19th centuries and is based on the concepts of equality, rationality, freedom, and property. In addition, this theory formed the basic philosophies of philosophers of the age of enlightenment. David Hume and Adam Smith from Scotland, Locke from England, Kant from Germany, Montesquieu and Voltaire from France were the ones who left their mark on this period. According to this approach, human (individual) is innately positive or can be educated. The answer is C.

Marx used proletariat to define the working class that is working for a wage for the profit of the employer class with the means of production, which was used to define the subclass of society until the 19th century. The answer is B.

Immanuel Wallerstein, left its mark on this period with his World System Theory. This theory emerged as
a continuation of the analysis of social scientists such as Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim, and the concept of “semi-periphery countries” was added to the concepts of coreperiphery countries. Semi-periphery countries are characterized as both exploiting and exploited countries. Specifically, the core countries interact with the periphery and semi-periphery countries and transform them. Hence, Wallerstein defines the semi-periphery countries as transferring the information and technologies of the western states to themselves, starting to industrialize, and in this process they are both exploiting other countries, and being exploited themselves at the same time. In addition, the proponents of the world system theory share the same view with Lenin as the coreperiphery relationship ends with imperialism. The answer is A.