Dialogue instead of mutual neglect? International political economy meets foreign policy analysis
Fouquet, Stephan / R. Melis Baydag / Klaus Brummer / Stefan A. Schirm / Sibel Oktay / Francesco Niccolò Moro / Manuela Moschella / Cameron G. Thies / Leslie WehnerExternal Publications (Prepublished March 19, 2026)
in: Cooperation and Conflict, first published 19.03.2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00108367261424470
Open access
This forum opens up a dialogue between two subfields of International Relations (IR) that have so far talked past, rather than with, each other: international political economy (IPE) and foreign policy analysis (FPA). Many scholars of IPE or FPA would welcome more cross-pollination in principle but remain reluctant to embrace specific concepts, theories or issues from each other. Our forum seeks to address the underlying structural and conceptual barriers by initiating eclectic conversations between different perspectives on individual or collective agency, bottom-up preference formation versus top-down decision-making, or domestic political and international systemic drivers. Six contributions written by IPE or FPA experts address two guiding questions: First, how could tried-and-tested theoretical perspectives and methodologies in both fields interact with each other? Second, what are the key conceptual and empirical next steps in moving the proposed IPE-FPA research agenda forward and leveraging its impact on wider IR scholarship? The contributions tackle both questions by discussing existing or illustrative novel research, and proposing new conjectures and avenues for future integrative studies. Altogether, the forum highlights how transcending compartmentalized boundaries can move IR towards more refined theories and deeper understandings of contemporary issues, ranging from geo-economic crises to the political economy of climate change.
