Page 44 - Global Political Economy_Understanding The International Economic Order

THE NATUR E OF PO LITIC AL ECO NOMY
model of human behavior. Other scholars used the term to mean em-
ployment of a specific economic theory or theories to explain social
behavior; a good example is found in Ronald Rogowski’s use of the
Stopler-Samuelson theorem to explain political outcomes over time
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and space. For those political scientists, including myself, who be-
lieve that social and political affairs cannot be reduced to a subfield
of economics, political economy refers primarily to questions gener-
ated from the interactions of economic and political affairs. Propo-
nents of this broad approach to the subject are eclectic in their choice
of subject matter and methods (economic, historical, sociological, po-
litical, etc.).

What You Seek Is What You Find

Interpretations of economic affairs are highly dependent upon the an-
alytic perspective of the observer and upon his or her assumptions as
these determine what the observer looks for or emphasizes. Funda-
mental differences between economics and political economy are ex-
emplified in their differing definitions of the economy to be studied,
of the basic economic entities or actors, and of the forces responsible
for economic and, more broadly, sociopolitical change. Members of
each academic specialization differ in their perspectives on economic
affairs, questions asked, and methods employed. The differences, il-
lustrated in the coming paragraphs, are important because they pro-
foundly influence the ways in which economists and political econo-
mists study economic affairs at both the domestic and international
levels.
Definition of an Economy
In April 1992, the prestigious National Bureau of Economic Research
(NBER) sponsored a conference to analyze whether or not Japan was
deliberately creating an exclusive economic bloc in East and South-
east Asia. According to Martin Feldstein, NBER director, in his
charge to conference participants, the conference was the first attempt
by the Bureau to bring together a group of economists and political
scientists (the latter included experts on Japanese and international
politics) to address an issue of mutual concern. The results of the
conference were published in Regionalism and Rivalry: Japan and the
United States in Pacific Asia (1993), edited by Jeffrey Frankel (an

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Ronald Rogowski, Commerce and Coalitions: How Trade Affects Domestic Politi-
cal Alignments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
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