Editor: Robert W. Cox

Territory, State, Authority and Economy: A New Realist Ontology of Global Political Economy

Strange, Susan. In The New Realism: Perspectives on Multilateralism and World Order, edited by Robert W. Cox, 3-19. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press/United Nations University Press, 1997.

Strange argues that the global economy is in the midst of a transition; the close incidence of political authority, economic activity and geographical territory no longer holds. This has been caused by two main groups of factors: firstly changes derived from science and technology; and secondly structural changes within the global finance structure. Authority has shifted, or is shifting, from states to other actors in the international political economy. She disputes Rosenau's hypothesis of the emergence of a second world of turbulent complexity, disturbing the old world of international relations, instead arguing that it is all the same world, just more complex! Reprinted in: Authority and Markets: Susan Strange’s Writings on International Political Economy. Roger Tooze and Christopher May, editors. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Keywords: Authority; Knowledge; Markets; Money and Finance; States; Authority vs Markets; Technology

Contributor(s): Susan Strange and Editor: Robert W. Cox
Keywords: Authority, Knowledge, Markets, Money and Finance, States, 1990's
Source and Medium: Book Chapter

Year of Publication: 1997

IMF: Monetary Managers

Strange, Susan. In The Anatomy of Influence: Decision Making in International Organisation, edited by Robert W. Cox and Harold K. Jacobson, 263-297. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974.

This is a detailed case study of the IMF, which Strange uses to back up her warning that there can be no justification for an analytical division between the economic and the political. She argues that the IMF can only be understood within its international political context, and suggests that any institutional changes will reflect the continuing development of the international economy. It is important to recognise that the US is its chief initiator of policy and influence, both directly through its constitutionally predominant position in the organisation and through its wider impact on the international environment in which the IMF operates. Although not a full argument for structural power, this article recognises that relational power is insufficient to fully explain power relations within the IMF.

Keywords: Money and Finance; Political Economy

Contributor(s): Susan Strange, Editor: Robert W. Cox and Editor: Harold K. Jacobson
Keywords: Money and Finance, Political Economy, 1970's
Source and Medium: Book Chapter

Year of Publication: 1974

The Meaning of Multilateral Surveillance

Strange, Susan. In International Organisation: World Politics: Studies in Economic and Social Agencies, edited by Robert W. Cox, 231-247. London: Macmillan, 1969.

Taking the relationship between debtor and creditor countries as her starting point Strange argues that multilateral surveillance is not as draconian as it is presented. She notes that military expenditure is seldom included in the requests for debtor country adjustments. Despite the international economic organisations’ role, states were still able to manipulate their creditors through political pressures. Interestingly, Strange notes with great prescience that while at the time states could still play this role, with the continuing internationalisation of money markets (and the emergent technologies that made such developments possible), this would in the future present a strategic problem for states’ governments. The approach she favoured was for the reduction of indebtedness to be borne not by the deficit countries but rather by the surplus countries. That is, the solution to the debt crisis was not more adjustment in the ‘Third World’, but was some form of debt forgiveness.

Keywords: International Institutions, Money and Finance

Contributor(s): Susan Strange and Editor: Robert W. Cox
Keywords: International Institutions, Money and Finance, 1960's
Source and Medium: Book Chapter

Year of Publication: 1969