Political Economy

Abstract

Political economy is the interdisciplinary study of the relations that concern the distribution of resources and the reproduction of systems of production, extending to life and culture itself. It is a macrolevel analysis, paying close attention to the politics and policies (explicit and implicit) that undergird market structures and other structures of power—a view of the totality of social relations and social change—as well as their historical development. Various streams incorporate elements of sociology, economics, political science, law, and media and cultural studies in their analyses. It sometimes serves both as a field and a method, one focused on social transformation; by the same token, what distinguishes approaches to the field and the strategies of individual analysts tends to fall along lines of the importance of historical analysis, the way markets and individuals are theorized, and the centrality of democratic theory to a variant's constitution.