Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy. It developed in the 18th century as the study of the economies of states, polities, hence political economy.

In the late nineteenth century, the term 'economics' came to replace 'political economy', coinciding with publication of an influential textbook by Alfred Marshall in 1890. Earlier, William Stanley Jevons, a proponent of mathematical methods applied to the subject, advocated 'economics' for brevity and with the hope of the term becoming "the recognised name of a science."

Today, political economy, where it is not used as a synonym for economics, may refer to very different things, including Marxian analysis, applied public-choice approaches emanating from the Chicago school and the Virginia School, or simply the advice given by economists to the government or public on general economic policy or on specific proposals. A rapidly-growing mainstream literature from the 1970s has expanded beyond the model of economic policy in which planners maximize utility of a representative individual toward examining how political forces affect the choice of policies, especially as to distributional conflicts and political institutions. It is available as an area of study in certain colleges and universities.

Etymology

Originally, political economy meant the study of the conditions under which production or consumption within limited parameters was organized in the nation-states. In this way, political economy expanded the emphasis of economics, which comes from the Greek oikos (meaning "home") and nomos (meaning "law" or "order"); thus political economy was meant to express the laws of production of wealth at the state level, just as economics was the ordering of the home. The phrase économie politique (translated in English as political economy) first appeared in France in 1615 with the well known book by Antoine de Montchrétien: Traité de l’economie politique. French physiocrats, Adam Smith, David Ricardo and German philosopher and social theorist Karl Marx were some of the exponents of political economy. In 1805, Thomas Malthus became England's first professor of political economy, at the East India Company College, Haileybury, Hertfordshire. The world's first professorship in political economy was established in 1763 at the University of Vienna, Austria; Joseph von Sonnenfels was the first tenured professor.

In the United States, political economy first was taught at the College of William and Mary; in 1784 Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations was a required textbook.

Glasgow University, where Smith was Professor of Logic and Moral Philosophy, changed the name of its Department of Political Economy to the Department of Economics (ostensibly to avoid confusing prospective undergraduates) in academic year 1997–1998, making the class of 1998 the last to be graduated with a Scottish Master of Arts degree in Political Economy.

Current approaches

In its contemporary meaning, political economy refers to different, but related, approaches to studying economic and political behaviours, ranging from the combination of economics with other fields to the use of different, fundamental assumptions that challenge orthodox economic assumptions: Political economy most commonly refers to interdisciplinary studies drawing upon economics, law, and political science in explaining how political institutions, the political environment, and the economic system—capitalist, socialist, mixed—influence each other. "Traditional" topics include the influence of elections on the choice of economic policy, determinants of electoral outcomes, the political business cycles, central-bank independence, redistributive conflicts in fiscal policy, and the politics of delayed reforms in developing countries and of excessive deficits. From the late-1990s, the field has expanded to explore such wide-ranging topics as the origins and rate of change of political institutions, and the role of culture in explaining economic outcomes and developments. When more narrowly construed, it analyzes such public policy as monopoly, market protection, institutional corruption, and rent-seeking. A more classical-liberal approach that dates from the 1970s that denotes 'public-choice' theory type approaches which question the benevolence of social planners to maximize the utility of a representative individual and instead stress how political forces affect the choice of policies that may not be so benevolent, Historians have employed political economy to explore the ways in the past that persons and groups with common economic interests have used politics to effect changes beneficial to their interests. International Political Economy (IPE) is an interdisciplinary field comprising approaches to international trade and finance, and state policies affecting international trade, i.e. monetary and fiscal policies. In the U.S., these approaches are associated with the journal International Organization, which, in the 1970s, became the leading journal of international political economy under the editorship of Robert Keohane, Peter J. Katzenstein, and Stephen Krasner. They are also associated with the journal The Review of International Political Economy. There also is a more critical school of IPE, inspired by Karl Polanyi's work; two major figures are Susan Strange and Robert W. Cox. Economists and political scientists often associate the term with approaches using rational choice assumptions, especially game theory and social choice theory, in explaining phenomena beyond economics' standard remit, in which context the term "positive political economy" is common.

Anthropologists, sociologists, and geographers use political economy in referring to the neo-Marxian approaches to development and underdevelopment postulated by André Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein.

New political economy students treat economic ideologies as the phenomenon to explain, per the traditions of Marxian political economy. Thus, Charles S. Maier suggests that a political economy approach: "interrogates economic doctrines to disclose their sociological and political premises....in sum, [it] regards economic ideas and behavior not as frameworks for analysis, but as beliefs and actions that must themselves be explained." This approach informs Andrew Gamble's The Free Economy and the Strong State (Palgrave Macmillan, 1988), and Colin Hay's The Political Economy of New Labour (Manchester University Press, 1999). It also informs much work published in New Political Economy an international journal founded by Sheffield University scholars in 1996. Guy Debord agrees: "The commodity's domination was at first exerted over the economy in an occult manner; the economy itself, the material basis of social life, remained unperceived and not understood, like the familiar which is not necessarily known. In a society where the concrete commodity is rare or unusual, money, apparently dominant, presents itself as an emissary armed with full powers who speaks in the name of an unknown force. With the industrial revolution, the division of labor in manufactures, and mass production for the world market, the commodity appears in fact as a power which comes to occupy social life. It is then that political economy takes shape, as the dominant science and the science of domination."

Education

Countries offering education in political economy are Norway and United Kingdom among others.

Related disciplines

Because political economy is not a unified discipline, there are studies using the term that overlap in subject matter, but have radically different perspectives:

Sociology studies the effects of persons' involvement in society as members of groups, and how that changes their ability to function. Many sociologists start from a perspective of production-determining relation from Karl Marx. Marx's theories on the subject of political economy are contained in his book, Das Kapital.

Political Science focuses on the interaction between institutions and human behavior, the way in which the former shapes choices and how the latter change institutional frameworks. Along with economics, it has made the best works in the field by authors like Shepsle, Ostrom, Ordeshook, among others.

Anthropology studies political economy by studying the relationship between the world capitalist system and local cultures.

Psychology is the fulcrum on which political economy exerts its force in studying decision-making (not only in prices), but as the field of study whose assumptions model political economy.

History documents change, using it to argue political economy; historical works have political economy as the narrative's frame.

Economics focuses on markets by leaving the political—governments, states, legal frameworks—as givens. Economics dropped the adjective political in the 19th century, but works backwards, by describing "The Ideal Market", urging governments to formulate policy and law to approach said ideal. Economists and political economists often disagree on what is preeminent in developing production, market, and political structure theories.

Law concerns the creation of policy and its mediation via political actions that have specific results, it deals with political economy as political capital and as social infrastructure—and the sociological results of one society upon another.

Human Geography is concerned with politico-economic processes, emphasizing space and environment.

Ecology deals with political economy, because human activity has the greatest effect upon the environment, its central concern being the environment's suitability for human activity. The ecological effects of economic activity spur research upon changing market economy incentives.

International Relations often uses political economy to study political and economic development.

Cultural Studies studies social class, production, labor, race, gender, and sex.

Communication examines the institutional aspects of media and telecommuncation systems, with particular attention to the historical relationships between owners, labor, consumers, advertisers, and the state.

See also

Economic study of collective action

Constitutional economics

Public choice theory

EAEPE

Economic system

Economic ideology

Institutional economics

Important publications in political economy

Perspectives on Capitalism

Social model

Social Capital

Notes

References

Acemoglu, Daron (2003). "Why Not a Political Coase Theorem? Social Conflict, Commitment, and Politics," Journal of Comparative Economics, 31(4), pp. 620–652 (close Bookmarks).

Breyer, Friedrich (1994). "The Political Economy of Intergenerational Redistribution," European Journal of Political Economy, 10(1), , pp. 61-84. Abstract.

Alesina, Alberto, and Roberto Perotti (1994). "The Political Economy of Growth: A Critical Survey of the Recent Literature," World Bank Economic Review, 8(3), pp. 351-371.

_____ (1995). "The Political Economy of Budget Deficits" IMF Staff Papers, 42(1), pp. p. 1-31.

Baran, Paul A. (1957). The Political Economy of Growth. Monthly Review Press, New York. Review extrract.

Becker, Gary S. (1983). "A Theory of Competition among Pressure Groups for Political Influence," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 98(3), pp. 371-400.

Bolton, Patrick, and Gérard Roland (1997). "The Breakup of Nations: A Political Economy Analysis," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112(4), , pp. 1057-1090.

Commons, John R. (1934 [1986]). Institutional Economics: Its Place in Political Economy, Macmillan. Description and preview.

Drazen, Allan (2000). Political Economy in Macroeconomics. Princeton. Review extract, description & ch. 1-preview link.

Leroux, Robert (2011), "Political Economy and Liberalism in France : The Contributions of Frédéric Bastiat", London, Routledge.

Krusell, Per, and José-Víctor Ríos-Rull (1999). "On the Size of U.S. Government: Political Economy in the Neoclassical Growth Model," American Economic Review, 89(5), , pp. 1156-1181.

Maggi, Giovanni, and Andrés Rodríguez-Clare (2007). "A Political-Economy Theory of Trade Agreements," American Economic Review, 97(4), pp. 1374-1406.

Persson, Torsten, and Guido Tabellini (2000). Political Economics: Explaining Economic Policy MIT Press. Review extract, description and chapter-preview links.

Rose, N. L. (2001). "Regulation, Political Economy of," International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, pp. 12967-12970. Abstract.

Shubik, Martin (1981). "Game Theory Models and Methods in Political Economy," in Handbook of Mathematical Economics, v. 1, pp. 285-330.

_____ (1984). A Game-Theoretic Approach to Political Economy, MIT Press. Description and review extract.

Sturzenegger, Federico, and Mariano Tommasi (1998). The Polítical Economy of Reform, MIT Press. Description and chapter-preview links.

Weingast, Barry R., Kenneth A. Shepsle, and Christopher Johnsen, (1981). "The Political Economy of Benefits and Costs: A Neoclassical Approach to Distributive Politics," Journal of Political Economy, 89(4), pp. 642-664.

O'Hara, Phillip Anthony, ed. (1999). Encyclopedia of Political Economy, 2 v. Routledge. 2003 review links.

Pressman, Steven, Interactions in Political Economy: Malvern After Ten Years Routledge, 1996

Weingast, Barry R., and Donald Wittman, ed., 2008. The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy. Oxford UP. Preview.

Winch, Donald (1996). Riches and Poverty : An Intellectual History of Political Economy in Britain, 1750–1834 Cambridge [etc.]: Cambridge U.P.

Winch, Donald (1973). "The Emergence of Economics as a Science, 1750–1870." In: The Fontana Economic History of Europe, Vol. 3. London: Collins/Fontana.

Journals

Constitutional Political Economy

Economics & Politics

European Journal of Political Economy

Public Choice

Review of Radical Political Economics

External links

NBER (U.S.) "Political Economy" working-paper abstract links.

VoxEU.org (Europe) "Politics and economics" article links.

National System of Political Economy—Major work on political economy by Friedrich List.

Harmony of Interests—Work contrasting American System and British System of political economy by Henry C. Carey

International Political Economy at Jacobs University Bremen

Global Political Economy at City University London, UK

Centre for Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex, UK

O'Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom at the SMU Cox School of Business Dallas, TX USA

Institute for the study of Political Economy and Law (IPEL) at the International University College of Turin (IUC), Italy

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