International Political Economy and Security

International Studies is a multidisciplinary field, which includes a long and rich tradition of studying both the political economy conditions of war, peace and security, and the impact of security concerns and war on economic developments. While the fragmentation of International Studies has tended to make the essentially interwoven nature of many processes invisible, over time, a number of important claims and hypotheses have been subjected to various empirical tests, especially during the last few decades. In this chapter, I am asking: what is it that we have learnt on the political economy conditions of war and peace, and of security more generally? What about the impact of security and war on the economy? To what extent has our learning about the political economy of security been cumulative? What should we make of the fact that major disagreements persist? Going through the basic arguments of liberal, nationalist, Marxian, underconsumptionist, Keynesian and Neorealist theories and various recent political economy of security studies, I conclude by arguing that capitalist market economy is not inherently peaceful, but involves mechanisms and processes that can give rise to processes of securitization and enemy-construction. While empirical studies have rendered no unequivocal support for any of the political economy utopias of harmony (liberal, Keynesian, Marxian, or Neorealist), they have stressed the importance of the possibility of resolving conflicts by means of peaceful changes.Peer reviewe