Abstract
This chapter presents the aims and scope of The Palgrave Handbook of Political Economy. It defines political economy as an object of study and as a type of investigation. As an object of study, political economy is the domain of relations between individuals and groups within the polity and the structures of division of labour that characterize the material sphere. As a type of investigation, so far political economy has focused either on means-ends reasoning or on the structure of division of labour. The chapter starts by noting that economic actions involve the objectives of actors at a plurality of levels (micro, meso and macro) and the means provided by the material sphere to pursue those objectives. A polity includes a complex and multi-layered system of objectives. The material sphere also has a multi-layered, internally differentiated structure as actors at any level of aggregation are subject to specific resource constraints and proportionality conditions. Because of the internal differentiation of both objectives and constraints, political economy as a type of investigation needs to study the relations between the opportunities open to actors at different levels of aggregation and the constraints on their pursuit that are posed by the material sphere at each level. Political economy should therefore recognize the complementarity between means-ends reasoning and the structure of division of labour, devising analytical tools that can encompass both.
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Cardinale, I., Scazzieri, R. (2018). Political Economy: Outlining a Field. In: Cardinale, I., Scazzieri, R. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-44254-3_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-44254-3_1
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