GPE: a growing research field Global Political Economy (GPE) as a research field is expanding,

although it is still limited in its scholarly outputs both in the North and South, East and West.
Different research contributions in Western countries, Africa, Asia, Latin America and the
Middle East make this evident (Seabrooke and Young 2017; Shaw 2019; Tussie 2018). GPE and
International Political Economy (IPE) have different ontological, epistemological and
methodological status. By IPE, the primary referent is mainstream and English-speaking IPE
that defines itself as an international American paradigm (Lake 2011), while GPE presents a
broader range of pluralistic perspectives and research orientations, to examine development
and conflict according to the history and latitude of the themes of study (Helleiner 2015;
Hobden and Hobson 2002). Under this pluralist and eclectic categorization, Critical IPEs,
Feminist, Critical Geopolitical Economy, Post Colonial and Post Development IPEs, among
others, can be considered segments within GPE. Therefore, GPE includes IPE but no vice-versa,
as they have different ontological and epistemological standing and research orientations
defined by diverse historical, geographical and methodological elements that set in different
ways very diverse approaches. That is from empirical positivist OPE to the most radical Post
Developmental and Feminist GPEs. Accordingly, we assume that GPE is not a counter-
hegemonic approach in contrast to Western thinking or a means to throw away all done in IPE.
Instead, GPE emerges as an ongoing set of conversations and inquiries to the world order from
diverse perspectives focused to a significant extent upon the wide conceptual umbrellas of
development and conflict. In that sense, GPE may includes all strands of thinking, under the
common factor of addressing development and conflict, within the coordinates between
politics and economics, domestic and international, in the formal and informal pursuit of
wealth and power in the world order (Cohen 2019a; Frieden et al. 2017; Gilpin 1975; Oatley
2018; Shaw et al. 2019; Underhill and Stubbs 2000). There are boundaries that impede to set a
unique and universal definition for the field and the essential limitation to consider it as a
traditional discipline.

Beyond that, the central concern of IPE and GPE assumed in this Handbook are related to the
development of structures and orientations of their scholarship, and the vital task to update
and reassess their missions today, as, in particular, IPE still bears the orientations set out four
decades ago to explore the liberal world order (Ashworth 2002; de Carvalho 2011; Hobson
2012). Indeed, the central approaches of the English-speaking IPE were developed between
the 1970s and 1980s (Cohen 2019a). IPE thus emerged as a subfield of International Relations
(IR), bringing into IR the debate about the power of markets and financial globalization. IPE
was, however, not an alternative to IR, but a door that broadened the scope of power with
wealth, state and markets. The end of the Bretton Woods system, the Cold War and the rise of
globalization consolidated the dominant idea that nothing was going to take back the liberal
order and its universal standards. In other words, the ensemble among liberal democracy, the
market economy and international conduct as standards of civilization (Bull and Watson 1984;
Hobson 2013). English-speaking IPE was born within the optimistic limits of the liberal order
and was vulnerable to its decline. However, reality changes and, nearly four decades later, we
realize that historical responses concerning development and conflict in the international
order were already developed in the early eighteenth century in different parts of the world
(Helleiner 2015; Hobson 2013). In the 2020s, the mission of IPE is outdated, limited and rather
insufficient for GPE, the former showing severe constraints in its scholarship when it comes to
comprehending unforeseen changes forty years ago (Lake 2013).

There is a long list of issues that IPE is not prepared to address, and that is due its ontological
and epistemological orientations defined to produce knowledge between the formal economy
and politics in their links with the international (e.g. trade, finance, institutions, regimes,
economic integration and others). Issues such as power transitions and hard tensions between
a declining neoliberal order and rising nationalisms remain outside the scope of mainstream
IPE. Indeed, mainstream IPE has never claimed to be able to deal with themes such as media
manipulating democracies, xenophobia, security conflicts, humanitarian crises, environmental
disasters, informal worlds and regionalisms, let alone the uncontrollable technological
revolution, and the increasing inequality between countries and within societies. IPE and GPE
constitute two different perspectives whose tools and big questions have to converge open
and plurally in teaching, learning and research.

At some point, IPE lost its focus on the questions concerning development and conflict in
world affairs and became more technological sets that function to explain and justify the
liberal political–economic order. Thus, its main strength turned into its major weaknesses
today, that is its lack of adaptability and dialogue with other epistemic groups and factions out
of the West. Instead of undertaking a search for universal answers, GPE develops scholarship
by exploiting the possibilities of pluralistic debates, problematizing realities and widening
global inquiries drawing on an eclectic range of tools.

Indeed, these dynamics are experienced by students and lecturers alike who have to deal with
opposite and outdated interpretations about what IPE is, narrowing the development of the
scholarly. While mainstream approaches can be self-referential and lack dialogue with other
perspectives, we can also find a loose sense of how IPE approaches in the Global South are
applied and reproduced (Deciancio 2018). Beyond Western approaches, IPE features by
epistemic segmentation and, in many cases, parochial orientations in terms of conversations
and exchange with the dominant academic communities (Tussie 2018).

The central problem behind dominant interpretations about IPE in the Global South is the
tendency to have an insufficient dialogue with inadequate or lack of access to global, regional
and developmental voices, for epistemic academic progress. Narrowing the scholarly research
even more, in some cases mainstream IPE is still taught as a formal field of study laying
inbetween two fields of studies, political science and economics (Cohen 2019a). For graduates
that is a necessary introduction but for postgraduates it is a poor teaching. Furthermore, it is
taught as the study of power within the liberal order on the intersections between states and
markets, and the domestic and international (Gilpin 1975: 43). All the above mentioned have
been the great tools of IPE up to now but are not enough for teaching GPE and the new world
dynamics of development and conflict, wherein we still do not unlock the new transformations
and role of power and wealth.

The picture of mainstream IPE is useful, however, as considering the state of world affairs,
plagued of unpredicted developments and crises, we need to offer more to students and
scholars for teaching, learning and research in GPE. The idea that IPE owns a formal object of
inquiry and shares standards to certify specialists and legitimize their research and academic
publications is more a definition for specific epistemic communities than for the whole, and
does not help (i.e. Cohen 2019a). Even in the Anglo-Saxon IPE that is not present. According to
Seabrooke and Young (2017), between five and seven organizational logics at work in IPE can
be identified that defines how it is reproduced and how scholars are educated (Seabrooke and
Young 2017: 323). Traditional divides in IPE dominate in classrooms, while Western control
over the generation of theories or their questioning prevails in the top publications (ibid.).
However, with the production of IPE in other latitudes other than that of the West, similar
limitations appear. In the Global South, IPE generally resembles more a global imported and
local-oriented, either orthodox or heterodox, field of research about development and conflict
but with different tonalities of exchange (Leiteritz 2005; Madeiras et al. 2016; ). There the
dialogues with the Anglo-Saxon IPE derivate either in mechanic importations, dependence,
hybridizations or even resistances to the epistemic relationship (Tickner 2003; Tickner and
Weaver 2009). The barrier in the South is its centrifuge parochialism and segmentation in small
factions, generally defined by gatekeepers, their lack of conversations with other epistemic
communities and the strong tendency to hydride concepts to explain current political
tendencies.

Concept cages: In his The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber warned
how the successful ideas and projects of one era had been turned into political iron cages of
another (2017). According to Weber (2017), the use of certain concepts for current research,
removed from their original meaning, and the political purposes given to them by their
founders, usually justify the survival and expansion of existing powers rather than explaining
social change. Weber calls such historical ideas, namely those with a strong political sense in
their orientation of development, “long lasting iron cages” of ideas, derived from rationalized
forms of how reality functions in one historical context (2017). The Weberian metaphor might
be a useful concept as a basis to identify and analyse the theoretical and methodological
elements that are necessary in order to avoid the biases in teaching, learning and research.

Despite limitations, GPE is growing in the Western world, into that beyond the old traditional
and peripheral traditions of IPE. For instance, the research of Seabrooke and Young highlights
how IPEs are moving towards the contributions of evermore junior scholars (2017:322). Hence,
IPE is moving towards multiple IPEs and to the wide field research of GPE, and this Handbook is
only part of that evidence. If we consider that the nature and orientation of social knowledge
are tied to time, space and social structures, then, it follows that GPE is no different from other
fields of social knowledge. It reflects regional and local historical orientations similar or
different to dominant Western IPE and GPE perspectives, given their diverse international
insertions, orientations and outcomes of developments. Today, we know that IPE and GPE did
not start in the Anglo-Saxon world as different research shows, but still, we teach that around
a core of academic myths (de Carvalho et al. 2011; Hobson 2013). Evidence demonstrates how
international and global political–economic contributions have been raised as historical
responses in different parts of the world throughout history (Helleiner and Rosales 2017a,
2017b).

The existence of the Western core mainstream does not necessarily invalidate the presence of
other political economic perspectives, as conversations with the world order, based on
knowledge process of either import, dependence, hybridization or resistance (i.e. Grosfoguel
2009; Tickner and Waever 2009). On the contrary, Western IPEs would benefit from the
opening up of the horizon for a broader and inclusive range of different understandings of
IPEs, and this is why the first section of the Handbook is devoted to different ontological and
epistemic architectures, research scope and historical shifts of the multiple faces of IPE and
GPE

We need to bear in mind something about GPE. Whatever the orientation of IPE, one concept
remains common to all its varied strands and orientations: that is the promise to bring new
insights to the comprehension of development and conflict. That is the result of the formal or
informal pursuit of wealth and power in the connections between state and market, politics
and economics, and international and domestic. All IPEs fall somehow within some part of
these ontological coordinates, creating a multiplicity of alternatives for teaching, learning and
research that we define here as GPEs. In this Handbook we are rephrasing the study and
research of how the political power and wealth production and distribution, formal and
informal, have been intertwined throughout world history, in different latitudes shaping
international, regional and local orders in terms of development and conflict (Braudel 1979;
Payne and Phillips 2010). Exploring one way to globalize the field, Helleiner, for instance, as
well other scholars (de Carvalho et al. 2011; Hobson 2013) have evidenced that, in order to
engage in a real global conversation, the teaching, learning and research of IPE must review
the limited history of North American and European thinking, developing a more global
intellectual history (Hobson 2012). Moreover, positively, different contributions identify the
significance of the IPE approaches in diverse parts of the world (all quoted by Chin et al. 2014;
Helleiner 2015: Özveren 2015; Sartori 2008).

Variations about the teaching, learning and research in IPE and GPE populate the IPE, and
usually, they are inundated with different divides such as Realism, Liberalism, Marxism, OPE,
North American–British, positivist versus interpretivist methodologies and more. These
divisions are reproduced in classrooms and are thus translated into research, which in many
cases dominates epistemic communities, factions or clusters, claiming to educate the real
discipline of IPE and GPE (Cohen 2019a; Mignolo 2016; Seabrooke and Young 2017: 324).

Two main issues arise as a result of this bias. The first is related to how in several international
and regional academic programmes, scholars are taught and trained in the field. That, in turn,
frames the orientations and chances for the academic growth of the field. Second, these
limited parameters of study produce a methodological bias, due to omissions, within the
research that deals with issues and different approaches to political economy – this is the
importance of pluralistic teaching, learning and research within GPE.

The debate about what is GPE and what types of knowledge the field produces varies
depending on the range of the diverse ontological and epistemological positions in the field
(Ravenhill 2017). These include the contentions and controversies in the field, whether they
are normative, scientific, interpretivist, or an alternative discipline or research enterprise.
Seabrooke and Young (2017), present one of the last pictures of political economy today,
mapping its varied communities and orientations concerning teaching, researching and
publishing (291) but they remain focused on the English-speaking academy. Language is a
serious barrier in the field. Paradoxically, most of the academic communities make an effort to
produce or translate their scholarship to English, something that does not happen the other
way. That raises the question as to where the rest of the world falls on the map when
academic communities do not speak English. The problem related to this is an academic cage
of self-reference and self-legitimacy, a common mistake of the diverse analyses in the field of
IPE.

Teaching GPE:

The dominant formats of teaching political economy are generally tied to the ahistorical and
essentialist ideological division among liberalism, economic nationalism and Marxism, the
Transatlantic divide, or related to the (North) American Open Economic Politics style (OEP),
actor-oriented and neoliberal institutionalist approaches (Cohen 2019a. 2019b; Frieden et al.
2017; Gilpin 1987; Oatley 2018). This Handbook begins with the part “Historical waves and
diverse ontological axes” discussing the chapter of Professor Robert Gilpin “Three Ideologies of
Political Economy (1987)”. We consider that this historical academic piece continues to provide
a central conceptualization to grasp the liberal retreat and the return of nationalism and
mercantilism with all their perils. Gilpin points out: Economic liberalism, Marxism, and
economic nationalism are all very much alive at the end of the twentieth century; they define
the conflicting perspectives that individuals have concerning the implications of the market
system for domestic and international society. (1987: 23)

While some scholars may have preferred to start by questioning the traditional or mainstream
frameworks in IR (e.g. Strange 1986); we considered it necessary to begin with the dominant
conceptual apparatus in the field in order to broaden the discussion of foundational academic
tools. Each format taught, we need to bear in mind, brings particular approaches to address
some of the concepts within the coordinates identified above, although a central lesson is that
each of those are defined specific methodological architectures for research, in terms of the
varied combinations between ontology, epistemology and methodologies. Furthermore, they
define how our research in GPE is analytically related to history, geography, development and
conflict.

There is a consensus among the scholars that the North American school is the dominant
format of teaching IPE and GPE. Increasingly the so-called (North) American Open Economic
Politics style (OEP), actor-oriented and neoliberal institutionalist approaches converge due to
their emphasis on formal political economy (Frieden and Martin 2002; Krugman and Obstfeld
2006; Lake 2009; Leiteritz 2005; Oatley 2018). For them, the North American and the trinity
formats (Realism, Liberalism and Marxism) are the central academic assets, while contributions
from other regions are usually peripheral, except the Latin American IPE, from several decades
ago. Professor Cohen (2007, 2008), however, taking an internalist approach, managed to break
the mould of the Holy Ideological Trinity and the North American School, by explaining the
(North) American and British school divide. As in the case of Gilpin’s work, Professor Cohen’s
contribution thus provides another critical tool for the academic formation in our field: “The
American School” and “America’s Left-Out” (2019a, 2019b) are included in the first part of the
Handbook. This text remains, for many, a fundamental conceptualization and discussion in the
Anglo-Saxon Political Economy that has highlighted several essential debates (Ravenhill 2017;
Seabrooke and Young 2017: 324).1 The controversy around the teaching of IPE, however,
softened somewhat, due to the surge of another conceptual innovation within IPE. In 2005,
John Ravenhill changed the ontological orientation of the debate by arguing that rather than a
disciplinary discussion, IPE should be considered as a “field of inquiry” and therefore as a GPA,
a field with many missing middles of research in-between different dual conceptions (2005).
Thus, IPE can be distinguished by its ontological and epistemological varied formats to inquiry
realities, focusing on the interrelations between public and private power, and in the allocation
of scarce sources, to see who gets what, when and how. Briefly, Ravenhill opened the middle
space in the divide, although still aligning the notion of IPE research to formal IPEs, that is, the
relations between formal politics and economics, domestic and international (2005).

Moderating the debates, Blyth thus introduced the open and pluralist concept of “global
conversations”, opening up possibilities for teaching within an umbrella that included the holy
troika: (North) American, British and the quantiative–qualitative divides in the first Routledge
Handbook (2009). His contribution was defining IPE as multiple versions of teaching and
research, but this work continued entrenched in the self-referenced side of the Anglo-Saxon
Political Economy. That is because of the focus on the scholarly of the North American
perspectives, and some past contributions from the South, such as Dependency Theory and
Developmentalism.

Indeed, many scholars still find it unscientific and of little use to teach without universal
definitions, issues, concepts and methodologies. The argument put forward here is that, within
GPE, and we need to view this as a productive pedagogical challenge, the classroom is the best
laboratory for testing and refining knowledge. The classroom is a unique collective of sharp
young scholars with whom to explore, discuss and reflect on IPE and GPE from a plurality of
perspectives in order to avoid reproducing bias or factions within the academy. Unfortunately,
still, some scholars remain tied to the idea that scientific IPE and GPE often remain set on
searching for unique and universal definitions, which can be misleading and lead to the
reproduction of partisans and factions rather than scholars and academic communities.

The reality is that different strands of thought make up GPE, and those are based on different
ontologies and epistemologies. For example, Diana Tussie from FLACSO Argentina argues that
the structural difference between international and regional IPEs, despite their limitations, is
that their contributions lay in the strength of their different ontologies (2018). Latin American
IPE departs from the regional global insertion thesis to explain the international–domestic link
rather than wars, institutions or casino capitalisms, as it is discussed within mainstream IPEs
(Krasner 1994; Strange 1994; Tussie 2018:5). She contends that Developmentalism and
Dependency Theory departed from how domestic–international interactions and dynamics
framed regional development in the liberal world order of the Cold War. She shows that the
central contributions of Latin American IPE, by then, were rooted in the political–economic
history of global insertions concerning development models and type conflicts in the region,
ontologies that even today mark regional IPEs (Tussie 2018).

Box 2: “Ontology,” Norman Blaikie suggests, “refers to the claims or assumptions that a
particular approach to social [or, by extension, political] inquiry makes about the nature of
social [or political] reality—claims about what exists, what it looks like, what units make it up
and how these units interact with one another” (1993:6). Ontology relates to being, to what is,
to what exists, to the constituent units of reality; political ontology, by extension, relates to
political being, to what is politically, to what exists politically, and to the units that comprise
political reality”. (Extracted from Political Ontology. Colin Hay. The Oxford Handbook of
Political Science. Edited by Robert Goodin 2011.
www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199604456.001.0001/ oxfordhb-
9780199604456-e-023). Ontology in GPE always takes us to different assumptions that we
keep clear concerning the theoretical perspective followed: 1 Nature of the dynamic of power
in the historical and geographical context. 2 Nature of the dynamic of conflict and
development. 3 Nature of the dynamic and relations between state and markets. 4 Nature of
the dynamic and relations between the international and domestic. 5 Nature of the dynamic
and relations between agency and structure. 6 Nature of the dynamic and relations between
ideas and power. 7 Nature of the dynamic and relations between the world order and regions.
8 Nature of the dynamic and relations between international institutions and world
economies. 9 Nature of the dynamic of conflict and development. “Epistemology is the
“science“ or “philosophy“ of knowledge. In Blaikie’s terms, it refers “to the claims or
assumptions made about how it is possible to gain knowledge of reality“ (1993, 6–7). In short,
if the ontologist asks, “what exists to be known?”, then the epistemologist asks “what are the
conditions of acquiring knowledge of that which exists?” Epistemology concerns … the extent
to which specific knowledge claims might be generalized beyond the immediate context in
which our observations were made, and, … how we might adjudicate and defend a preference
between contending political explanations.… Epistemological assumptions are invariably
ontologically loaded—whether knowledge is transferable between different settings for
political analysis and hence whether we can legitimately generalize between “cases” (an
epistemological consideration) depends on (prior) assumptions about the ontological
specificity of such settings” (Hay 2002).

One way to be inclusive of the varied orientations within the field is to conceptualize GPE as
heterogeneous, plural and eclectic, whereby each student, scholar or practitioner can choose
their options concerning their academic aims and aspirations. We thus understand GPE as a
heterogeneous field of inquiries, methodologically eclectic and oriented to the study of power,
development and conflict in the dynamics and intersections between ideas and power, politics
and economics, the international and the domestic, agencies and structures in a socio-
historical and geographical context. GPE is unique today as a field of inquiry as teaching and
learning within the field demands the sorting out of fundamental multidisciplinary tensions
between the fields of philosophy, social history and geography, which are intertwined with
each other in order to grasp how the realities of development and conflict come about.

Furthermore, the full range of possibilities for the combination and connection of different
ontologies, diverse epistemologies and methodologies are in themselves essential lessons for
scholars, helping to bridge socio-historical and geographical contexts in order to guarantee the
consistency and coherence of research. A survey about how IPE and GPE are taught and used
in research paradoxically shows that the application of unique methodologies in the fields
represents only a small fraction of the whole, even in the Anglo-Saxon world (Madeiras et al.
2016). Scholars, according to several studies, tend to apply mixed methodologies and complex
combinations of the methodologies (Madeiras et al. 2016; Seabrooke and Young 2017).
Moreover, the key to GPE’s teaching and learning are the indissoluble links between ontology,
epistemology and methodology but also have to consider the bridges between them and
socio-historical and geographical contexts. This will help to take us out from conceptual cages
and universal affirmations based on assumptions that erase different knowledges of the
specificities of context and time. These are the cases with Eurocentrism, hegemony, complex
interdependence and other similar notions that impose their conceptual, political meanings
into different scenarios.

Undeniably, GPE lacks the infrastructure and power of the organized mainstream IPE,
especially its self-referencing and self-legitimization capabilities of their research institutions
and leadership in research and publishing. Nevertheless, the North American and European
academies are in a unique and unsurpassable position to unpack the crucial task of opening
the doors to new conversations and inquiries. Unfortunately, the images and frameworks of
the North in the political economy in the Global South are so entrenched, and, in some cases,
although scholars may use its conceptual apparatus, they adopt of the term IPE because of its
focus upon pro-Western formal political economy. Indeed, orientations from the North and
South today take scholars to different academic paths in IPE and GPE, and that does not
necessarily have to be like this. In the same regard, these opposite views can, however,
become, complementary under specific methodological strategies based on more complex
ontological and epistemological frameworks. Besides, as we can see in the Handbook, that
kind of research can count for missing dimensions of the global political realities of
development and conflict today in different contexts, concerning critical issues.
While there is no one, universal definition and methodology for IPE or GPE, it is possible to see
the common ontological grounds and potential, connections and dialogues among their
different practices, and the opportunities for teaching are vast. The intellectual history of IPE in
the world is a substantive source to start and set different interpretations at the same level to
teach and research the dialogue, something that shows how non-Western thinkers, well
before 1945, developed similar ideas to those of liberalism, mercantilism, and Marxism
(Helleiner and Rosales 2017a; Hobson 2012). These types of contributions are focused on how
locating a broader global intellectual history of IPE allows us to avoid Eurocentric and Anglo-
Saxon worldviews of IPE. In a significant contribution, Cox defines the purpose of IPE (2009:
324): Different approaches to IPE have to be understood historically. The English-Speaking
world, long hegemonic in the dissemination of thought about Global affairs, will need to listen
more carefully to the other voices in a global dialogue. It is when scholars are confronted with
the full variety of perspectives that the work of intellectual bridge building can seriously begin.
(2009: 324)

In summary, the institutionality, extension and power of the English-speaking IPE community
are central to the development of the field, but the field needs to develop beyond this. GPE
thus demands that we account for a broader range of perspectives to become global (i.e.
Acharya 2011). The key to understanding requires seeing GPE as a research field to overcome
the limitations in the teaching and research about world political economy orientations, affairs,
agencies and structures (Ravenhill 2017).

Research in GPE:

Research is not a linear process, but a series of different stages and processes, continuously
overlapping and adjusting, which works on different levels, with diverse ends, means,
analytical formats and protocols (Burgess 1982; Sautú et al. 2005). Popular textbooks have
extended the distorted idea that research is a linear process, which may initially help students
to identify stages throughout the process of a research project but ends as a conceptual
limitation deforming the real tasks of knowledge production at postgraduate level (Jackson
2011; Sautú et al. 2005). It is central to bear in mind the abovementioned at the time of
designing programmes for teaching and learning research in GPE, since research is a critical
skill in the education of undergraduate and postgraduate students. Bearing this in mind, we
selected the chapters for Part V of this Handbook, “New research arenas,” independently to
the different methodological formats and approaches of each scholar. What the chapters on
research in the Handbook demonstrate is that only a few scholars, as Seabrooke and Young
conclude (2017), pursue a pure lineal model of research. On the contrary, most of their
approaches are marked by pluralism and eclecticism about some theoretical basis and
ontological assumptions (Burgess 1982; Hay 2002).

According to the literature, we can identify three types of circular patterns or stages, which
overlap with one another during the research, where the researcher continuously goes back
and forth adjusting the objective, research strategies and outcomes (Jackson 2011; Sautú et al.
2005). Different specialists in methodology have stressed, in different ways, the importance of
this methodological concept, but this is still weak in the scholarly field (Hay 2002; Jackson
2011). Methodology for research is still a poorly developed tool in the field, vastly dependent
on traditional Political Sciences, being a pending subject that limits the growth of GPE
(Madeiras et al. 2016; Seabrooke and Young 2017).
In 1982, Burgess argued that “research does not occur in separated “stages“ and does not
follow a linear path but instead is a social process, whereby overlap occurs between all areas
of the investigation” (211). The central issues thus become focused on understanding the role
of theory in research (Creswell 2014; Lake 2013; Sautú et al. 2005) (see Figure 1.3).

There are two main ways of teaching and learning how to explore in the field in order to
produce research (White 2009). One is through studying the small group of great thinkers; the
other by exploring what is taught, researched and published from the diverse IPEs. The first
path is useful but limited, as great thinkers of our time are generally mainstream thinkers from
the relatively homogeneous network of scholars, or what David Lake has defined as the “white
man’s IR” (2016). Their opinions crowd the media and journals, which are predominantly made
by and for Western academia. They commonly act as owners of interpretations, gatekeepers
that typically appear with a similar mantra or are quoted in different top-ranked textbooks and
journals. Another line of exploration takes us to a more substantial learning process and
represents an excellent academic habit of being nourished by new and old scholars. That is to
explore, concerning our area of interest, what is presented, taught, researched and published
in the field from international to local conferences and classrooms in different places (White
2009). The assumption here is that knowledge is always historical and situated. It is created for
some reason and someone, and in that sense, different configurations and scholars produce
distinctive orientations of not one, but several Global Political Economies.

The consensus is that there are different definitions about what IPEs and GPEs are an academic
asset. That allows us to address the presence of different ontological, epistemological and
methodological assumptions in the field, and second, to find the endless and possible
alternatives of methodological combinations and research designs. These open different doors
and raise new issues for research in IPE, representing the prime strength of the scholarship
within the field. The critical point in the teaching and research of IPE and GPE is not the
definition of what it is or what it is not (something impossible to delineate in simple terms) but
to identify their significant strands of thought (like Weberian ideal types). Thus, how they, in
particular, methodologically based on specific rationalities, can play complementary roles in
diverse research designs. Indeed, any academic attempt to tie postgraduate teaching to
universal and unique definitions of GPE would become an inoperable effort and another
academic conceptual cage.

Teaching how to use concepts for research must be focused on helping students to open doors
to varied and nuanced comprehensions of the political economy. IPE and GPE research
outputs, in most cases, can be complementary to each other. Several scholars have already
identified some of these common elements, doors or bridges, for instance, Cox (2000),
Underhill and Stubbs (2000) and Lake (2003) have demonstrated cases for sharing common
assumptions about IPE. Figure 1.4 provides a simple and easy way to grasp different
methodological strategies and combinations. It illustrates the most commonly used
approaches in GPE in their closer or distant relations with the most-known ideal-type research
designs on the basis of contributions of different scholars (Creswell 2014; Hay 2002; Jackson
2011; Lake 2013). The vertical dimensions range from the role of theories in GPE at the top,
location of research approaches, the methodological lines to types of evidence construction
that define them. That combines the ontological, epistemological and methodological levels of
any investigation (Hay 2002). Seen from the horizontal axis, the diagram ranges from the more
empirical positivist designs to the further interpretative views (Creswell 2014; Jackson 2011).
For instance, the methodological possibilities of design research combining the two extremes
of the horizontal axis are fewer than seeking merging between closer strands of thoughts,
while all research must logically gather all the levels. The picture is limited but convenient for
introducing types of research in the classroom.

GPE brings about a meaningful set of research lines that cut across major concepts such as
development and conflict, domestic and international, technology and welfare, globalization
and transition powers. Some of these lines are: Global Governances (Cooper 2019); Transition
Powers (Paul 2018; Xing 2018); Development Finance (Ocampo and Johns 2019); Trade Wars
(Lau 2019); technological change, labour and welfare (Greve 2018); Organized Crime (Ponton
and Guayasamin 2018); Armed Conflict (Goodhand 2008); Media Power (Freedman et al.
2016); Bid Data (Balsillie 2018; Saetnan et al. 2018); Productive and Commodity Value Changes
(Scholvin 2015); Inequality (Boushey et al. 2017; Milanovic 2016) and Migration (Lindley 2014).
Moreover, we can also mention other lines such as the decline of the liberal order (Luce 2017);
globalization (Maswood 2013); the return of nationalism and xenophobia (Ruzza 2018);
informal economies (Medina and Schneider 2018); regionalisms (Söderbaum and Shaw 2003);
warfare (Gow et al. 2019); cities (Sassen 2018) among others.

The demand for plurality and interdisciplinary conceptualizations is a condition sine qua non
for the existence of GPE, what it means to understand GPE as a research-oriented and diverse
field, whose common factor is a complex dynamic ontology that falls in the coordinates of
state– market, international–domestic, formal–informal development and conflict. However,
this focus demands a critical effort on the development of research methodologies as critical
assets to bridge methodological, ontological and epistemological relations between the
dimension of social life that are studied and the different disciplines and methodologies
involved. Therefore, any attempt to expand the boundaries of mainstream IPE requires
consideration that it is a research endeavour oriented to improve dialogues and epistemic
exchange more than to replace formal IPE, and we can only consider this endeavour to be but
a starting point.

However, the magnitude and importance of this change are not minor for both IPE and GPE in
terms of research. For instance, today more than 50 per cent of real-life in the Global South
develops in informal worlds, shadow economies, malign regionalism and the covert world
(Medina and Schneider 2018). These are distinct and growing areas of research that have a
central impact upon development and conflict at a global and regional level. Given the
academic reference in the historical Western and Anglo-Saxon experiences, it is undeniable
that the formal mainstream of IPEs insufficiently addresses these kinds of realities that
distinguish the Global South. In terms of research, both North and South, depending on the
type of research, tend to demand different ontologies. The regions of the Global South are not
only the most unequal in the world but also those with the highest levels of informal and
shadow economies, which has been made evident thanks to GPE research in this area (Abdih
and Medina 2013; Feld and Larsen 2009; Medina and Schneider 2018).

The abovementioned research issues within GPE cannot be denied and deserve a more
thorough research agenda within the field. These are just a few of the distinctive central issues
that have not been on the radar or within the ontologies of formal IPEs. New research on
organized crime, drugs trafficking, laundering money, solidarity urban and rural economies,
guns trafficking, illegal mining and informal work as well as migration are all central issues that
impact on the Global Political Economy, yet these have received very little attention in formal
IPE and GPE research. One exception is the study of public policies or international regimes,
although usually seen from the top of the agency without a clear comprehension of its formal
and informal dynamics. Something that highlights the difference today between the concept of
migration and current tendencies of exodus as the result of national disasters and conflicts.

The fast technological growth of biotechnology and infotech are other research lines emerging
in GPE. Scholars and students should consider in global and regional power the increasing rise
of issues of big data, cyber politics and security, global cities and their governance. They are
becoming more and more important for investigation in GPE given their rise in parallel to the
decline of liberal order and impact on the capacity to control corporate, social media, finance
and above all democracy (Balsillie 2018). The revolutions in biotech and infotech are giving
states and big corporations the control to engineer and manufacture life on an unprecedented
scale. Technological change, inequality and the disruption of the ecological system by humans
are the quintessence of the liberal order decline today and are necessary to address with new
research. Thus, the old promises of the liberal order such as liberty, work and equality are
quickly vanishing with the rise of an unpredictable world (Harari 2018).

It is also important to consider that today, geopolitics in a world order are in transition. The
power of states to do damage is more significant than in the past centuries, and this is why the
GPE must also take this into consideration as another research area in combination with
geopolitics. IPE was born with a focus and ontology on interstate wars and international
anarchy. Wars and state security remain relevant research issues since they can trigger other
occurrences such as nuclear war. However, since the 1980s until nowadays, global realities
have changed to the point that the only foreseen future seems one marked by inequality,
environmental depredation and technological manipulation of democratic societies. Whatever
the definitions of GPE, this must start with an updated mission and research focus in order to
put the inquiry in perspective. If IPE rose as the study of interstate wars in an anarchical world,
GPE needs to start with a focus on new, complex and dynamic ontologies and move beyond
state-centric models to look at state–market and international–domestic research concerning
development and conflict today. There is a famous quote from Lao Tzu (2019) that exemplified
that: “Why is the sea king of a hundred streams? Because it lies below them.”

Some additional research lines should be based on the new tendencies of development. For
instance, according to Our World in Data, a non-profit organization integrated to SDG-Tracker.
org, today the majority of people die from cardiovascular diseases, cancer, respiratory
diseases, diabetes, blood pressure, neonatal diseases, road incidents, tuberculosis and
HIV/AIDS. That means, in simple terms, that today we die mostly for our way of manufactured
life and the inequality between and within societies, produced by a specific format of
development, poor welfare and environmental issues, all themes generally absent in formal
IPE, but on the radar of GPE.

Cities constitute another new research line in GPE since these are the locus of the outcomes of
different kinds of development and conflict at the global, regional and national scale. The GPE
of cities constitutes another growing line of research of significant importance in the field,
being the central anchor where time and geography of development and conflict meet in
intertwined dynamics (Weber 2017); although the concept has been central in social sciences
it has not been relevant for IPE. Perhaps, with the primary focus of IPE on institutions, agencies
and nation-state, mainstream perspectives have not seen one of the central geographical
stacks in the dynamics of the GPE. Cities are urban geographical anchors and metropolitan
centres where development and conflict become tangible in daily lives, from inequalities,
shadow economies, violence, gender and migration, up to environmental issues. Contributions
in these areas are growing in the region and are already considered as significant research
focuses on GPE (Macdonald 2017; Muggah 2015).

This Handbook map out new lines of inquiry rather than promoting divides by bolstering
universal definitions of IPE or GPE. However, this raises challenges such as: To what extent
should the field be opened? So the answer is that this is something currently ongoing as the
result of innovative research beyond the essentialists, ahistorical and divides of international
and regional IPE. The Routledge Handbook to Global Political Economy aims to contribute to
broadening and updating notions concerning political economy and the shift from IPE to GPE,
making it important for scholars to decide how far and at what pace to go in this transition.