This book argues that the lack of adequate theories of contemporary capitalism is due to the increasing separation of the sub-disciplines of Comparative and International Political Economy. Theorizing only takes place in one of the two over-specialized sub-disciplines of Political Economy, thereby leading to a neglect of the interplay between national and international dimensions of capitalism. The author seeks to rectify this gap by developing a theory of Second Image IPE. Based on the “second image” notion developed by Kenneth Waltz, he furthers the classical theoretical approaches as developed by Peter Gourevitch and Peter Katzenstein. For this purpose, he incorporates recent analytical developments in Comparative Capitalism and Growth Model analysis. The book demonstrates the usefulness of Second Image IPE theory by studying the major empirical topics of Global Political Economy, including security, finance, regional integration, trade, production and global order.

Ten years after the global financial crisis of 2008/09 there is widespread scepticism about the ability to curb volatile financial markets and achieve true international cooperation. Changes in the global rules of finance discussed in the G20 during the last decade remain limited, and it is uncertain whether they are suitable to help mitigate and manage future crises to come. This book offers an alternative to the popular notion that this failure is the result of the 'nature' of international relations, the clash of national egoisms, or ineffective national leadership. It instead provides an understanding of recent lapses in international cooperation by revealing their deeper structural origins in the competing models of capitalism operating across the globe. US finance-led, EU integration-led, and East Asian state-led capitalism complement each other globally yet have conflicting preferences on how to complement their distinct domestic regulations at the international level. This interdependence of capitalist models is relatively stable but also prone to crises caused by volatile financial flows, global economic imbalances, and 'currency wars'. To understand international economic cooperation, we must understand the diverse dynamics of the different models of capitalism on a domestic level, not only in financial markets but also in areas of corporate structure, labour markets, and welfare regimes. By establishing a deeper integration of approaches from International Political Economy and Comparative Capitalism, this book shows that regulating international finance is not a technocratic exercise of fine-tuning the machinery of international institutions, but rather a political process dependent on the dynamic of institutional change on a national and regional level

Two significant areas of study that are continually impacting various dimensions in computer science are computer vision and imaging. These technologies are rapidly enhancing how information and data is being exchanged and opening numerous avenues of advancement within areas such as multimedia and intelligent systems. The high level of applicability in computer vision and image processing requires significant research on the specific utilizations of these technologies. Advancements in Computer Vision Applications in Intelligent Systems and Multimedia Technologies is an essential reference source that discusses innovative developments in computational imaging for solving real-life issues and problems and addresses their execution in various disciplines. Featuring research on topics such as image modeling, remote sensing, and support vector machines, this book is ideally designed for IT specialists, scientists, researchers, engineers, developers, practitioners, industry professionals, academicians, and students seeking coverage on the latest developments and innovations in computer vision applications within the realm of multimedia systems.

This book seeks to explore the ethical dimensions of economic governance through an engagement with Adam Smith and a critical analysis of economistic understandings of the Global Financial Crisis. It examines ethical and political dilemmas associated with key aspects of the financialisation of Anglo-American economy and society, including systems of asset-based welfare, modern risk management and debt. In the wake of the financial crisis, recognition of the way in which everyday lives and life chances are tied into global finance is widespread. Yet few contributions in IPE explicitly tackle this issue as a question of ethics. By developing Adam Smith’s under-utilised account of how market-oriented behaviour is constituted through a process of ‘sympathy’, this book provides an innovative way of understanding contemporary issues of economic governance and the possibilities and limits for intervention within it. By taking Adam Smith’s moral philosophy seriously, it becomes evident that the ever-deeper enmeshing of finance in our everyday lives is a failed experiment. Turning the common understanding of Smith on its head, we can also turn accepted wisdom about the recent financial crisis on its head and see the urgency of making better known the ethico-political contestation that lies at the heart of financial market relations. It will be of interest to students and scholars of IPE as well as those across the social sciences who wish to question the foundations of contemporary economy and society.

Published 35 years after Palgrave Macmillan’s landmark International Political Economy (IPE) series was first founded, this Handbook captures the state of the art of contemporary IPE. It draws on the series’ history of focusing on the oft-neglected study of the global South. Providing interdisciplinary perspectives from scholars hailing from the global North and South, the Handbook illustrates the theoretical innovations and empirical richness necessary to explain today’s ever-changing world. This is a world in which the global South and North are not only being transformed by the end of bipolarity and the rise of the BRICS, but also by diverse global crises and growing cross-border challenges. It is a world where human development, governance and security are becoming ever more elusive, where, profoundly altered by the rise of new technologies, the structure of relations between nations itself is changing, becoming increasingly interconnected, both digitally and physically. Understanding these issues is of critical importance to better anticipate current and future global transformations. This Handbook is the ideal primer for all scholars, practitioners and policy makers looking to do so.

Essential reading for anyone interested in the cutting edge debates in contemporary international political economy (IPE), this book features contributions from the most influential scholars in the field from North America, Canada and the UK who debate the most important issues in IPE.

This book brings together researchers from different analytical perspectives for the study of contemporary geoeconomics to create a broader and more useful catalogue of conceptual tools, empirical entry points, and case studies around the subject. The distinctive contribution this book offers is its firm rooting in International Political Economy and the hitherto under-researched geoeconomics dynamics of Europe. Many existing accounts of geoeconomics have been developed in International Relations and often reproduce some of the state-centric and static assumptions of the discipline. Recent scholarship furthermore tends to focus on the US-China rivalry, thus discounting the role of other global powers in shaping geoeconomics. As a first collective contribution to the topic in the field of International Political Economy, the book stands to become a major reference point in the field for the coming years. Interest in geoeconomics as well as in related concepts like weaponized interdependence or emerging new rivalries has been on the rise in recent years and will be one of the key research areas in the coming decade of transition and change in Europe and beyond. Chapters 1, 2 and 7 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

After describing NAFTA as ‘the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere’, Donald Trump’s election seemed to represent the final nail in the coffin for North American economic integration. Following a decade of stagnation, however, Trump’s victory presents a timely opportunity to reconsider North American integration and evaluate NAFTA’s democratic track record in Mexico. In this book, Pablo Calderón Martínez presents a detailed analysis of NAFTA’s influence as a political tool for democracy in Mexico. Extending beyond a mere economic or social exploration of the consequences of NAFTA, Calderón Martínez uses a three-tiered analysis based on causality mechanisms to explain how the interactions between internationalisation and democratisation unfolded in Mexico. Calderón Martínez’s analysis demonstrates that Mexico’s internationalisation project under the framework of NAFTA gave shape to, if not made, Mexico’s democratisation process. An original and timely resource for scholars and students interested in understanding how – in cases like Mexico where transitions to democracy are characterised by a finely poised balance of power – small influences from abroad can make significant long-lasting differences domestically.