Nikolay Eletsky Describing the preconditions, sequence and logic of researching the topic "Global Political Economy in...
Nikolay Eletsky
Describing the preconditions, sequence and logic of researching the topic
"Global Political Economy in Context of Evolution of Political-Economic
Thought" (Global Journal of Human-Social Science: Economics. 2017. Vol. 17, Is.
1, P. 17-26), I’d like to mention three main points.
First of all, I was interested in the impact of fundamental changes in the
socio-economic basis of society (which led to the transformation of
methodological, theoretical and practically-applied paradigm of General Economic
Theory) on the name of the science (from "Economy" to "Political Economy", and
from it to "Economics"). It’s well known, that after the publication of the works of
W. Jevons and A. Marshall, since the late nineteenth century, the term “political
economy” began to be perceived as historically traditional, essentially inaccurate
and outdated. In any case, in anglophone literature, new scientific developments in
the field of General Economic Theory were firmly correlated with the term
"Economics". Although the term "political economy" even kept somewhere to be
used traditionally (e.g. in the title of "Journal of Political Economy", published by
the University of Chicago), but the actual content of the research, largely,
gravitated to the mathematical formalization of economic models – mainly of the
neoclassical orientation.
The situation began to change in the last third of the twentieth century.
Globalization and Informatization had got, as one of their consequences, the
emergence of the different varieties of "new" political economy. There spread the
concepts of "International Political Economy", developed in the 70-80- ies of the
last century in the works of T. Sandler, C.W. Kegley, P. McGowan, B. Frey, R.
Gilpin, J.A. Frieden, D.A. Lake and a number of other researchers. The real
content of the researches of these authors was correlated with the study of political
factors of economic decision-making in the field of international relations, on the
one hand, and economic prerequisites and consequences of political decisions and
actions, on the other. Thus, in fact, it appeared a new interdisciplinary research
area at the intersection of International Relations Theory and International
Economics. And although some representatives of neo-institutionalism (J.
Conybeare, etc.) linked the investigated problems with the influence of property
rights, but the actual content of a new interdisciplinary research directions it would
be better to define as "international economic politology", because the just
political-economic problematics – the study of property relations – was of minor
importance.
Meanwhile, further development of globalization processes, the emergence
of global added value chains, global property and global governance, the formation
of global profits and strengthening economic power of the "ultimate beneficiaries"
of the global economic interactions required scientific explorations in the context
of the just political-economy approach. In this context, the studies in framework of
international economic politology (albeit self-styled as "international political
economy") have shown their insufficiency. It emerged the objective necessity of
the development of the global political economy, for which the main problems are
the problems of globalization of the production process, the formation of global
value chains, global profits, global property and global economic governance. For
me, a particularly important role in the comprehension of research approaches in
global political economy played works of T.H. Cohn, R. Gilpin, J.M. Gilpin, T.
Oatley, C. Lindsay, M. Wolf, J. Ravenhill, G. Young, M. Watson, R. O'Brien, M.
Williams, V. Rittberger, M. Nettesheim, R. Desai, E. Thun, R. Wade and
discussion estimates of other authors.
The next factor, caused my interest in this topic, is the obvious connection of
the above mentioned issues with the extremely important for the modern world
question of inequality. The inequality has always existed, but globalization and
informatization have made this issue the most clear, sharp and painful.
Unprecedented concentration of wealth in the hands of the "ultimate beneficiaries"
contrasts sharply with the scale and dynamics of income as within developed
countries (that they actively discuss the so-called "problem of 99%"), as, to an
even greater degree, with the poverty of a significant part of the population in
developing countries. It has become one of the causes of the catastrophic rise of the
refugees flow to the wealthy countries of Europe. The US are also not spared from
this problem that, in particular, had an impact on the results of the last presidential
election. However, the prospects of this problem are much more dangerous. For
nearest decades the world population will increase by several billion people, and
almost all of this growth will occur in underdeveloped countries. And these new
billions, being familiar, thanks to modern means of communication, with the level
and way of life in affluent countries, will require the same level and lifestyle. The
modern economy isn’t in a position to ensure that – mainly due to resource and
environmental constraints. New billions will either tend to migrate to prosperous
countries, or, in the case that this migration will not be possible, - to destroy the
prosperous world. This is one of the most profound causes of terrorism and the
occurrence of various antisocial phenomena. This problem cannot be considered
outside of the context of formation of global property and global mechanisms of
the allocation and assignment of benefits.
And finally, the third reason of enhancing my attention to the discussed topic
is the revealed in the last time crisis of modern forms of globalism. It revealed the
contradiction between objective conditions and factors of globalization, on the one
hand, and actual to date mechanisms of regulation of global processes, on the
other. In response to this contradiction, the concepts of fragmentarization of world
economy and revival of neoprotectionism are originated. These phenomena
develop against the background of increasing understanding that global governance
is one of the forms of realization of interests of the global owners, those "ultimate
beneficiaries" who have economic and political power in the modern world.
Incomplete compliance of their decisions and actions to the objective requirements
of economic development of civilization led to the formation of the modern system
of contradictions of global economic governance, some of which I tried to describe
in one of my recent publications (Nikolay Eletsky, 2016. Contradictions of
Formation of the Global Economic Governance System. International Journal of
Management Science and Business Administration. Vol. 2, Issue 10, P. 7-16;
dx.doi.org/10.18775/ijmsba.1849-5664- 5419.2014.210.1001). Obviously, the
exploring of contradictions of the global economic governance requires a
deepening of the political-economic aspect of the analysis. I am fully aware of the
exceptional complexity of the addressed issues and of the need for concentration of
efforts of a substantial number of researchers for critical political-economic
comprehension of the contradictions and prospects of development of the modern
global economic system.
Research Article:
https://globaljournals.org/GJHSS_Volume17/2-Global-Political-Economy-in-Context.pdf
