Katzenstein maintains that democratic corporatism is an effective way of coping with a rapidly changing world--a more effective way than the United States and several other large industrial countries ...have yet managed to discover.
Although the meltdown in the American financial system in 2008 created the most profound financial crisis in sixty years, the field of International Political Economy (IPE) has remained curiously ...silent. More worrisome is the inability of the paradigmatic approach to the study of IPE in the United States - Open Economy Politics (OEP) - to shed much light on the causes of the crisis. We develop the conceptual distinction between risk and uncertainty to explain why the rationalist (and largely materialist) "American School" of IPE failed so badly. OEP followed orthodox economics in conflating risk and uncertainty. Preserving the distinction, as constructivist IPE scholars and economic sociologists have done, enables us view the crisis through dual rationalist and sociological optics. Our illustrative evidence, drawn from public (the Federal Open Market Committee of the US Federal Reserve) and private actors (accountants, credit rating agencies, and arbitrage traders) in financial markets, shows that only eclectic approaches that make use of both rationalist and sociological optics give IPE scholars the depth of vision and the breadth of imagination necessary to make sense of the financial crisis of 2008.
Author and economist Peter J. Katzenstein discusses his book Small States. Small States was a follow-on project to an analysis of comparative foreign economic policies of advanced industrial states ...published under the title Between Power and Plenty. In contrast to many of the more recent, statistically inclined scholarly works on economic performance, the primary dependent variable in Small States is political strategy rather than economic outcome. Political strategy is a variable that may be harder to measure than are economic outcomes. that fact does not make it any less important. The main message of Small States continues to be timely. Large states are growing smaller. Each large state is experiencing the condition of vulnerability differently and is trying to cope in different ways.
This paper responds to two issues raised in this special issue on the American school of international political economy (IPE). I react first to the assumed convergence towards an open economy ...politics (OEP) framework. While OEP clearly has merits, I find that its narrow conception of actors and interests neglects other approaches' insights into preference formation and institutions that would enable it to offer better explanations of political economy. Second, I respond to the perceived monoculture in American IPE, which many (wrongly) attribute to professional power over journals and (rightly) tie to graduate training in the United States. More to the point of deconstructing the perceived intellectual hegemony driving IPE's monoculture, I challenge Randall Germain's indictment of the Harvard school of IPE. I show that the early Harvard Mafia indeed played a critical role in shaping the field, but it did not determine the myopic paradigmatic and methodological trends we currently see in the discipline. Finally, I reflect on why we have, and indeed need, this transatlantic debate and make a plea for more pragmatism, pluralism and problem-driven research in IPE today.
Karl Deutsch: Teacher and scholar Katzenstein, Peter J
International relations (London),
09/2014, Letnik:
28, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The article provides a reminiscence of Karl Deutsch as a teacher and scholar. I examine his scholarship and focus on its enduring qualities. In particular, I highlight how he was a passionate ...advocate of innovative approaches to enduring political problems. His comprehensive theoretical vision, with central concepts such as communication and learning, remains as inspiring as his methodological eclecticism. It offers a synthesis of traditional sociology of the Europe he had left behind with the rationalist empiricism that he encountered in America.
With specific reference to Japanese and Asia-Pacific security affairs, Katzenstein and Okawara argue against the privileging of parsimony that has become the hallmark of paradigmatic debates. The ...complex links between power, interest, and norms defy analytical capture by any one paradigm.
Observing the dramatic shift in world politics since the end of the Cold War, Peter J. Katzenstein argues that regions have become critical to contemporary world politics. This view is in stark ...contrast to those who focus on the purportedly stubborn persistence of the nation-state or the inevitable march of globalization. In detailed studies of technology and foreign investment, domestic and international security, and cultural diplomacy and popular culture, Katzenstein examines the changing regional dynamics of Europe and Asia, which are linked to the United States through Germany and Japan.
Regions, Katzenstein contends, are interacting closely with an American imperium that combines territorial and non-territorial powers. Katzenstein argues that globalization and internationalization create open or porous regions. Regions may provide solutions to the contradictions between states and markets, security and insecurity, nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Embedded in the American imperium, regions are now central to world politics.
Katzenstein argues that regions have become critical to contemporary world politics, challenging those who emphasize the purportedly stubborn persistence of the nation-state or the inevitable march ...of globalization.
A distinct subfield of international relations, IPE, has emerged over the last thirty years, largely in the pages of International Organization. IPE began with the study of international political ...economy, but over time its boundaries have been set more by a series of theoretical debates than by subject matter. These debates have been organized around points of contestation between specific research programs, reflecting fundamental differences among the generic theoretical orientations in which these research programs are embedded. The fate of specific research programs has depended on their ability to specify cause and effect relationships and to operationalize relevant variables. Scholarship in IPE has become more sophisticated both methodologically and theoretically, and many of its insights have been incorporated into policy discussions. Past points of contestation, including those between realism and its liberal challengers and between various conceptions of domestic structure and international relations, help us to understand recent debates between rationalism and constructivism.
