Political Economy

Political economy is a field of research and a body of theory concerned with the integrated study of political and economic decision making. It analyzes the behavior of political agents who make decisions in the presence of institutional and economic opportunities and constraints. Political economy has attracted growing interest within the social sciences, since the standard paradigm in economics of fully rational economic agents has failed to explain the continued prevalence of underdeveloped and even stagnating economies throughout the world. Similarly, political scientists have increasingly recognized the need to take economic constraints into account in analyzing political behavior. Political economy is currently one of the most intense fields of social science research. Many of the major recent theories in political economy consider geography to play ...