ABSTRACT

The chapter argues that political economy scholarship in Britain is in very poor health, and identifies the persistence of the ‘British School’ of International Political Economy – as both an actual and imagined community of academic political economists – as a key dimension of its demise. The British School remains wedded conceptually to a small number of influential scholars, most notably Susan Strange and Robert Cox, and has distanced itself from the broader traditions of classical political economy which have long featured in British social science. While the work of Strange, in particular, and Cox is rightly venerated, their legacies have locked the British School into a subservient relationship within the broader, American-centred field of International Political Economy. The chapter argues that, far too often, the British School is invoked simply as a positioning device vis-à-vis the ‘American School’, with scholars associated with the British School content to engage with sub-disciplinary niches, by way of attracting the stateside recognition craved by elite universities in Britain. The concentration of British School scholars in Russell Group political science departments is a key part of this story – as the increasingly positivist character of British political science squeezes the space available to classical political economy – and serves as a barrier between the British School and political economists located in other social science disciplines, both in Britain and continental Europe.