On ‘blind spots’ in (international) political economy

Abstract

Two recent linked special issues on ‘blind spots’ in (international) political economy present a welcome challenge: to think more carefully about the topics to which (I)PE pays insufficient attention. I argue in this commentary that while these special issues make a compelling case for incorporating certain topics more centrally into (I)PE, their conceptualization of and approach to identifying ‘blind spots’ contain unrecognized tensions, ambiguities and exclusions. The special issues also share with most discussions of (I)PE research a consequential failure to treat (I)PE as labour done by humans who are usually university employees facing professional (dis)incentives that influence how and what they study. I conclude with concrete suggestions regarding how (I)PE scholarship might more effectively incorporate understudied topics and perspectives.

Keywords:

• Political economy
• international political economy
• blind spots
• eurocentrism
• theory
• critical political economy

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Karen Lochead, Kevin Young, and two anonymous reviewers for RIPE for their comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Pauly’s paper is the main exception; others involve authors acknowledging that their past work has contained the blind spots they are now flagging (Gamble, 2021, p. 284; Helleiner, 2021, p. 230).

2 All calculations by author.

3 To say this is not, of course, to say that western-trained and -employed scholars cannot help make (I)PE less Euro/western-centric, a project to which many SI authors have made major contributions.

4 The exception is Marieke de Goede’s citation of a paper in Dutch by F. S. Gaastra (de Goede, 2021, p. 366). Some papers do cite works in English translation.

5 Inspiration for this project can be found in the contributors list for The Routledge Handbook to Global Political Economy (Vivares, 2020, pp. xvi–xxi).

6 Data for 2019 from the World Development Indicators.

7 https://www.wlufa.ca/contract-teaching-faculty/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Derek Hall

Derek Hall is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University. He researches the political economy of food, agriculture, land and environment in, especially, Japan and Southeast Asia, and the history and theory of capitalism.