Restructuring in the Global Economy: From Pax Americana to Pax Nipponica?

Questions about the evolving structure of world order are back on the agenda of contemporary international studies after an absence of more than a decade. The issue was extensively canvassed during the early phase of the era of detente, when many began to speculate about the consequences of the apparent conclusion of the Cold War.’ However, interest in the matter died off during the late 1970s, when the recrudescence of superpower hostilities suggested that talk of the end of bipolarity had been premature. Similarly, recent achievements in superpower arms control, combined with the apparent entrenchment of a campaign of economic reform ip the USSR, provide some of the reasons why the issue now attracts a heightened sense of priority. The substantive issue is not new-but what is new is the framework from within which it is now studied and analysed. The earlier studies were primarily conducted from within the confines of classical political realism, where assumptions about the primacy of force and the centrality of the state in an anarchic international system were dominant. These served to marginalize, if not totally neglect, discussion of the economic dimensions of world order.2 Today, the question ofworld order has primarily been taken up by the now-ascendant political economists of international relations whose analyses are driven, in large measure, by contemplation of the significance of economic changes under way within the global economy. Interest in the field of international political economy (IPE) has moved from being a minority and outsider taste to one of the most dynamic growth poles in the broader field of international relations. There are many ironies contained within this intellectual restructuring of international studies. One which is immediately apparent is seen in the revival of interest in the concept of ‘hegemonic powers’, and the significance of hegemons for the broader structure of the international system. These concerns are primarily manifest in the debates around what is now commonly called ‘hegemonic stability theory’. As with world order studies, the concept ofhegemony is not new; it was previously extensively employed by a variety of

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