Political Economy and the Development of State Theory

Political economy as a branch of knowledge has experienced a marked revival over the recent years as a result of a number of developments, including the partial erosion of boundaries between traditional humanities subjects like politics, economics, sociology, history, geography and psychology. However, as a result of the process of self-adjustment within academics the concept has been stretched considerably to accommodate a wide variety of often quite different areas of study. Because of this wild abundance of ‘political economies’ — which include, e.g. the study of economic statecraft or of political behaviour using economic categories — it is important to define the point of departure of this variant. Here political economy is understood as the study of the production and distribution of social wealth, and this book is concerned with the historical reality of the politico-economic development in West Germany rather than with the development of German political economy as a (national) branch of knowledge. Within this framework particular attention is paid to the development of state policy. The following conspectus of theories of political economy thus pays particular regard to the role of the state. Even so such a conspectus can only be introductory and abbreviated in nature.