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This event was organized (thanks to @ManuMoschella) in response to the events of the past year and the cancellation of last year's and this year's ISA conferences and the lost networking/professional development opportunities. https://isanet-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_LlSXTUeLQPqnu5CNJmrkyw
@LenaRethel from @RIPEJournal: IPE as a field is thriving -- submissions are on upward trend and 2020 was a record year (433 submissions) -- but we know many IPE scholars are struggling.
Also thriving in terms of diversity of perspectives and methods but plenty of blindspots (see forthcoming @RIPEJournal / @NPEjournal special issues on this topic). Still, number of outlets contributes to variety of approaches and as a result, IPE has a lot to offer ...
... for example, @RIPEJournal began 2020 (very presciently) with a special issue on global health. https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rrip20/27/1
Pandemic pushes our scholarship: e.g., working from home challenges public/private boundaries; relevance of GDP as a measure
But some scholars are struggling: lots of requests of extensions for submissions and reviews, increasingly difficult to find reviewers -- but quality of reviews has been excellent. Also aware of challenges for actually doing research (closed archives, research travels).
@RIPEJournal has started tracking approaches/methods, following @ISQ_Jrnl's example in collecting this data.
@LenaRethel continues: field is at a crossroads. Historically, large communities in US, UK, countries dependent on student debt and overseas income which affects epistemic community of IPE and its future. Readership is up but 85% of downloads in Anglo-America and Europe.
Big cuts in UK, Australia will be challenging for IPE going forward. Job market ... "you just can cry" w/ 250 applications for a single post-doc.
Slow progress w/ diversity in IPE. We are behind other fields but probably better than Economics. We know more about obstacles to diversity in publication and when they occur in submission process.
So far pandemic hasn't impacted gender balance of submissions much at @RIPEJournal. 226/778 authors were women -- slight increase over 2019 (187/718) but far from a balanced gender ratio.
Geographic dist'n of IPE scholars even less balanced. Increase in non-Europe, Anglosphere submissions but has not translated into publications at @RIPEJournal. In 2020, 133/433 manuscripts submitted from outside of Anglo-Europe but only a handful published.
Geography and gender only two markers of diversity but we lack data on other dimensions which makes it more difficult to support scholars whose work is underrepresented in IPE. How can we improve data on this? Maybe following @APSAtweets model on data collection?
@LenaRethel concludes: we hope to see you all in Nashville in 2022 at RIPE-sponsored IPE reception but we know travel restrictions will also have a major impact on diversity in the field.
Next up: Valbona Muzaka from @NPEjournal who invites scholars to use the journal as a venue for pushing the field in new directions.
Editorial board at @NPEjournal sees IPE as a field that starts from an epistemological commitment to historically interdependent economic/social/political realms to provide answers to real-world questions. Econ/social/political order always being made and remade.
@NPEjournal does not define IPE strictly as a discipline; more interested in work that studies unevenness and blockages in that economic/political/social order. Attempts to remain ontologically and epistemologically open as a way to expand political economy as a discipline.
@NPEjournal created in 1996 at Sheffield as a venue which sought to regain depth of vision of political economy pre-marginalist revolution + advances of 20th/21st century research. NPE wanted to move beyond market-centered (political economy) and state-centered (IR) approaches
@NPEjournal attempts to remain faithful to this understanding of political economy in broad, reflexive terms w/ openness to new voices and new approaches while maintaining high editorial standards. Journal rejects articles which adopt ahistorical, asocial, apolitical approaches.
Muzaka continues: @NPEjournal sees submissions in comparative, domestic, and global political economy; environment; development; global mkts. Since 2007/8 crisis, many more submissions on macroeconomics and financialization. More recently, many more on environmental crises.
@NPEjournal would like to see more on topics covered in joint @RIPEJournal /NPE special issues on blindspots in IPE: work that avoids bias to economism and advances the social (e.g., race, colonialism, nationalism, ethnicity).
Also thanks reviewers (the audience!) for excellent work as reviewers. @NPEjournal willing to work with authors through R&R process to improve manuscripts on underrepresented themes in political economy.
Taylor & Francis does not collect data on gender breakdown of submissions. Muzaka's general observation: some attrition of articles by women in revision process.
@NPEjournal would like more submissions from geographers and on feminism -- generally favorably reviewed at the journal.
Next up: Wonjae Hwang representing @ISQ_Jrnl w/ data on past seven years of submissions to the journal. Key words related to IPE: aid, investment, trade, development.
Four main themes of IPE-related submissions (1,084) to @ISQ_Jrnl: trade, aid, sanctions, investment. IPE-related submissions have been declining from 27% of submissions in 2013-4 to 18.8% in 2020. Number of IPE submissions has increased but not as proportion of total submissions.
IPE manuscript authors invited to revise and resubmit at roughly the same rate as non-IPE manuscripts at @ISQ_Jrnl
Some changes in themes of IPE-related submissions to @ISQ_Jrnl: oil (2014), rights (2015), and China -- by 2019, nearly 10% of IPE submissions were China-related and over 13% in 2020.
Wonjae Hwang has brought the data! Here's what IPE submissions to @ISQ_Jrnl have looked like over the past 7 years
Where is IPE going? From Hwang's perspective based on @ISQ_Jrnl submissions: 1) US-China great power competition (nature, role of tech, how domestic ptx affect competition, China's foreign influence via aid and investment, perceptions of rise of China in developing world)
2) public opinion on trade, investment, China/US leadership -- is this bc public is genuinely more influential in political economy or is it driven by data availability and popularity of survey experiments as research design?
3) global South (esp. South-South relations) and social issues, esp. gender (women's representation in IOs, impact of female migrants and labor on domestic politics, impact of foreign aid on LGBTQ rights)
Trends in research design based on @ISQ_Jrnl submissions: survey experiments and focus on sub-national actors as unit of analysis (firms, MNCs, sectors, public, individuals)
How diverse is IPE? In terms of research topic: very and expanding; in terms of geographical focus: more attn to global South but most submissions to @ISQ_Jrnl (overly?) focused on great powers -- need to pay more attn to world outside of great powers
@ISQ_Jrnl would like to see more studies on MNCs and gov'ts (investor-st disputes, judicial politics in int'l courts/arbitration), more disaggregation of big concepts like FDI (greenfield vs. non) and labor rights (law vs. practice), more attn to global health
@ISQ_Jrnl instructs authors upon review that citations should be around 30% female authors; editorial board actively discussing how to increase submissions from and on global South, e.g., by sending editors to conferences outside Anglo-America/Europe
@ManuMoschella observes that @ISQ_Jrnl definition of IPE quite different from that of @RIPEJournal and @NPEjournal
Next up: Geoffrey Underhill from @EuroJournIR. 530 submissions in 2020/publish about 8% of those (increasingly competitive due to page constraints).
@EuroJournIR issues usually around 20-25% IPE-related articles. Gender breakdown: usually around 30% female submissions; increased in 2020 but more in conflict and security than IPE submissions.
@EuroJournIR sees very few submissions on political econ of global health, would like to see more. Also trying to actively encourage diversity from global South via engaged and "persistent" R&R process
Underhill's definition of IPE is great but hard to summarize in a tweet. Fortunately, he brought slides! Addressing the politics of these flows calls for greater interdisciplinarity, returning to IPE's historical roots as predating specific social science disciplines.
Cites Susan Strange that markets, flows, networks do not respect political boundaries: need not be "international" but must focus on interactions. Research crosses lines between comparative, local/developmental, and internationa/transnational.
@EuroJournIR also interested in historical and intellectual history submissions related to IPE.
Underhill references @LenSeabrooke and Kevin Young's 2017 @RIPEJournal article on networks and niches of IPE --> niche proliferation in the field but notes some systematic exclusions persist. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09692290.2016.1276949
See also Clift, Kristensen, and Rosamond (RIPE, 2020) on disciplinary history and topics covered in IPE. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09692290.2020.1826341?journalCode=rrip20
Underhill: But such bibliometric approaches only show us what scholars say is IPE, excludes work done in other fields (IR, econ. geography, socioeconomics) which is relevant to IPE especially as understood in terms of history of interdisciplinarity
Definition of IPE from Clift, Kristensen, and Rosamond (RIPE, 2020) would include much more than what appears in pages of IPE journals.
Underhill's three premises of (I)PE: 1) econ and political domains inseparable; 2) political interaction and social conflict transform structures of mkt and production; 3) while institutional setting matters, political economy cuts across layers of institutions (bottom-up)
Underhill on where IPE is going: little in local political econ that is not linked to trans/international --> need for real interdisciplinarity (e.g., evolutionary bio models) not just nods to it; methodology should be pluralist not reinforce old divisions (US vs. UK)
Younger scholars learning variety of new methods (cites @whinecough's use of network methods to study Strange); have moved way beyond "economics imitationism." Some examples ...
1) @whinecough's use of network analysis to revisit Susan Strange's structural power. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1354066120952876?journalCode=ejta
2) Chengxin Pan's use of quantum theory to rethink what we mean by IR and foreign relations https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1354066120938844
3) Jonathan Luke Austin's "Towards an International Political Ergonomics" https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1354066119842242
Underhill concludes: should think of IPE as including work that does not define itself as IPE, e.g. impact of globalization on party politics; work by Ben Ansell and coauthors on inequality.
Next up: @ErikVoeten from @IntOrgJournal. Begins by noting that IO used to be seen as more of an IPE journal than it is today, as reflected by increasing submissions in security field and flat/declining submissions from IPE
But notes that these categories don't capture everything: research on civil wars clearly has an IPE dimension but probably wouldn't be classified that way.
Patterns in @IntOrgJournal IPE submissions on: globalization backlash, public opinion (why? causal inference revolution esp. in US --> popularity of survey experiments and difficulty of publishing w/o clear causal identification strategy)
These public opinion/experiment submissions tend to be *VERY* US-focused, skews field even further to US-centrism. But also increased focus on sub-national actors, esp. firms (similar to @ISQ_Jrnl submissions). Young scholars at topic universities rejecting state-centrism.
Like other journal editors notes that there are very, very few submissions on health (will change of course but we're lagging on this front). @IntOrgJournal would also like to see more on taxation, esp. w/r/t digital assets and exchange.
@IntOrgJournal has not seen a short-term covid effect on gender balance of submissions but also no long-term increase in submissions from female authors. No gender effect in review process; only finding: single male authors more likely to be desk-rejected (overconfidence?)
Compared to security submissions, IPE submissions to @IntOrgJournal overwhelmingly focused on US, Europe, China. If it's on global South, usually on foreign aid and maybe investment. Don't often see perspectives from global South in IPE submissions.
Editorial board actively discussing how to improve geographic, other forms of representation. One model: "journal cafe" to discuss manuscript improvement for underrepresented scholars at in-person @isanet conferences.
Issue raised in chat: shift toward survey methodologies favors institutions and researchers with large material resources given costs of running surveys and experiments. Hurts grad students, folks at SLACs and other smaller, less well resourced institutions.
In response to ? about whether field shapes journals or vice-versa, Underhill responds that relationship is complex: authors look at what journals have published in the past and this exerts maybe too strong effect on what manuscripts are submitted where (self-selection).
Valbona Muzaka speaks to gatekeeping role of editors in defining what counts as (I)PE. Both Muzaka and Underhill have had work rejected for being "not IPE." This kind of event useful to clarify what journals are looking for beyond what has been published there in the past.
@ErikVoeten speaks to pervasive belief that @IntOrgJournal is biased against IPE (or climate/civil wars/your specific field): reality is that probability of publication at IO is very, very low. No clear correlates of what does and doesn't make it through review process.
Wonjae Hwang on racial/ethnic/geographic diversity: limited publications from underrepresented minorities may reflect underrepresentation in field more broadly. Needs to be addressed beyond editorial process, at level of PhD recruitment and admissions.
@LenaRethel on role of editorial strategy: @RIPEJournal uses collective decision-making model (past initial screening of manuscripts) once reviews are back to fight siloing, promote engaged pluralism. Composition of editorial and international advisory boards matters.
Acknowledges that @RIPEJournal and others need to do better. "If I'm an IPE scholars from Africa. Looking at the screen, I don't see myself." She's right.
Lack of data a major obstacle to improving diversity. Everything has to be coded manually right now, so no way to get data on author, reviewer race and ethnicity. Also notes differences in co-authorship: men more likely to coauthor w/ men; all-female teams of coauthors quite rare
@ManuMoschella wraps up: We have a lot of work to do to make our field as vibrant and diverse as possible. This is a collective endeavor. Huge thanks to @isanet HQ and panelists for making this event possible and be sure to attend the IPE business meeting at ISA this year!
