Improving Perspectives of International Political Economy
International Political Economy is a collection of aspects from economics, political science, sociology, history and some philosophy. With information coming from multiple sources there are bound to be numerous different perspectives of IPE. The three most common and well known perspectives examined will be liberalism, mercantilism and historical structuralism. Being that these are the three most accepted perspectives suggests that the majority of the views within these theories are strengths. However, with so much information, there are bound to be weaknesses and flaws found within these theories as well. There are always ways to improve on these the weaknesses and theories in general. International Political Economy deals with three main approaches: liberalism, historical structuralism and mercantilism. Each theory has its own strengths and weaknesses, but the way to improve them all is not to fix each individual weakness but to combine the strengths of all the perspectives into to create an entirely new theory.
Liberalism is often described as the IPE perspective that focuses on the individual and the primacy of freedom or liberty in the book “Introduction to International Political Economy” by David Balaam and Michael Veseth. Individual freedom and capitalism are the overarching ideas found within the idea of liberalism. Capitalism is commonly referred to as a market-based economic system where free-markets and competition are the governing factors. Within the discipline of capitalism, Adam Smith is arguably one of the most significant figures. Smith created the idea of “the invisible hand”, or the idea that an “invisible hand” that guides the economy and common good. The market is self regulated so the state government is never needed to intervene. Another, more commonly used tern for this