Rethinking Global Political Economy contains incisive analysis of history, linguistics, class, culture, empirical data and normative concerns. This important volume presents innovative approaches to fundamental issues in global political economy. Together they provide multiple arguments and avenues for rethinking global political economy in a time of turmoil and system transformation. It will appeal to those interested in seeing new perspectives and healthy heterodoxy in the study of political economy.

Contents:
Introduction
1. New Odysseys in the Global Political Economy: Fundamentalist Contention and Economic Conflict Mary Ann Tétreault
2. Analytical Advances to Address New Dynamics V.Spike Peterson
3. Metageographical Moments: A Geohistorical interpretation of Embedded Statism and Globalization Peter J. Taylor
4. Creating Global Hegemony: Culture and the Market Barbara Jenkins
5. Globalization as Global History: Introducing a Dialectical Analysis Barry K. Gills
6. Mergers, Stagflation, and the Logic of Globalization Jonathan Nitzan
7. Global Dreams and Local Anger: From Structural to Acute Violence in a Globalizing World Peter Uvin
8. Globalization, "New" Trade Theory, and a Keynesian Reformist project Hartmut Elsenhans
9. Exploitation and Solidarity: Putting the Political Back into IPE Alejandro Colás
10. The Globalization of Human Affairs: A Reconsideration of Science, Political Economy, and World Order Clark Miller
11. Alternative Directions in the Study of the Global Political Economy Robert A. Denemark

This book highlights the importance of mobile resources as a feature of globalization, and challenges the received wisdom about the causes and effects of international capital mobility. From a world concerned with strategic weapons and the risks of mutual annihilation, a new world order is emerging in which different forces loom large in the communal consciousness. In this new order, resources and the jobs they produce have—at least in the West—pushed security matters firmly into second place.

This book challenges the established wisdom regarding the balance of bargaining power between multinational corporations and host governments. Most theories, beginning with Raymond Vernon's, claim that the bargaining power of host states should increase over time. This work shows the opposite is true, at least for the automobile industry in the industrialized world. The reason for this is the growing mobility of production, which undercuts host states' bargaining positions. Capital mobility is thus central to both firm-state relations and IPE generally.

As corporations search for new production sites, governments compete furiously using location subsidies and tax incentives to lure them. Yet underwriting big business can have its costs: reduction in economic efficiency, shifting of tax burdens, worsening of economic inequalities, or environmental degradation.

"Competing for Capital" is one of the first books to analyze competition for investment in order to suggest ways of controlling the effects of capital mobility. Comparing the European Union's strict regulation of state aid to business with the virtually unregulated investment competition in the United States and Canada, Kenneth P. Thomas documents Europe's relative success in controlling -- and decreasing -- subsidies to business, even while they rise in the United States.

Thomas provides an extensive history of the powers granted to the EU's governing European Commission for controlling subsidies and draws on data to show that those efforts are paying off. In reviewing trends in North America, he offers the first comprehensive estimate of U.S. subsidies to business at all levels to show that the United States is a much higher subsidizer than it portrays itself as being.

Thomas then suggests what we might learn from the European experience to control the effects of capital mobility -- not only within or between states, but also globally, within NAFTA and the World Trade Organization as well. He concludes with policy recommendations to help promote international cooperation and cross-fertilization of ways to control competition for investment.