‘Occupy Wall Street’ and IPE: Insights and Implications

The academic discipline of International Political Economy (IPE) is a hard-nosed and empirically-oriented field of study. The usual subjects of IPE often include the organization of international trade, global finance, transnational production, national welfare and competitiveness, productivity levels and of course state actions and expenditures. The actions of a handful of protestors such as the ‘Occupy Wall Street’(OWS) movement rarely attract academic attention. In this case, however, we should take note. In our view, the actions of OWS provide further clues that we are entering an era of significant transformation in the organization and structure of world order. The insights generated by reflecting on this movement suggest that the inter-subjective mentality at the heart of global capitalism is no longer coherent, with the implication thatwe are at long last about to leave behind a half century of American hegemony.