Annual Warwick/RIPE debate: Rethinking World Politics with Philip G. Cerny and Jan Aart Scholte – 8th March 2011

The Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick will host on Tuesday 8th March the fourth annual public debate in IPE organised in conjunction with the Review of International Political Economy.

The debate will revolve around the recent contributions to the study of IPE made by Professor Philip G. Cerny, Emeritus Professor of Politics and Global Affairs at the University of Manchester (UK) and Rutgers University (USA). Drawing on his recent book 'Rethinking World' Professor Cerny will speak on the transformation of world politics by globalisation and the ‘neo-pluralism’ fostered by transnational actors.

Acting as respondent will be Professor Jan Aart Scholte of the University of Warwick (UK). His forthcoming book ‘Building Global Democracy?’ speaks to the changing relationship between civil society actors and global governance institutions, providing similar subject material. Presiding as Chair will be Professor Richard Higgott, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Warwick (UK).

The Warwick/RIPE debate is one of the highlights of the year for the Department’s IPE Group. Previous debates have been conducted in front of large audiences, including scholars drawn from many different universities. More details can be found here: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/ipe/ripedebates/

This year’s debate will take place between 5.30pm and 7.00pm in M1 in the Warwick Business School Teaching Centre. This is number 66 in the campus map: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/about/visiting/maps/campusmap/

The Lecture Theatre will be open from 5.00pm for audience members to take their seats. There is no entrance charge for attending the debate or need to register, so this message constitutes an open invitation for all to turn up and attend!

The Third Warwick/RIPE public debate, 2nd of March 2010

The Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick will host on Tuesday 2nd March the third of what is now an annual public debate in IPE organised in conjunction with the Review of International Political Economy. Please put this date in your diaries.

The content of the Debate will revolve around the recent contributions to the study of IPE and Comparative Political Economy made by Professor Vivien Schmidt of Boston University in the United States. She will talk on the theme of 'The Fall, Rise, Fall and Rise of the State within Modern Capitalism - and how to explain it', drawing on Professor Schmidt's recently published articles in World Politics (vol 61, no. 3), and European Political Science Review (vol. 2, no. 1). The event will take the form of a roundtable discussion on analysing the state within capitalism, and 'discursive institutionalism'. In addition to Professor Schmidt, the other speakers will be Professor Colin Hay (University of Sheffield), and Professor Colin Crouch (University of Warwick).

It is one of the highlights of the year for the Department's IPE Group. Previous debates have been conducted in front of large audiences, including scholars drawn from many different universities, and I suspect that something similar will also be the case this year. In order to give you a flavour of what the debate might be like, the content of last year's debate - complete with full audio recording - can be found here. This year's debate will take place between 5 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. in Warwick Business School Scarman Road building, lecture theatre B3.20. (number 62 in this campus map. It will also be recorded for uploading onto the Departmental website.

There is no entrance charge for attending the debate, so this message constitutes an open invitation for all to attend. The Lecture Theatre will open at 4.30 p.m. for audience members to take their seats. The Department of Politics and International Studies looks forward to welcoming as many people as possible to the event.

regards,

Ben Clift

Call for Papers and Panels - Politics in Hard Times: International Relations Responses to the Financial Crisis

7th Pan-European International Relations Conference, Stockholm, 9-11 September 2010

The conference will feature keynote speeches by Peter Gourevitch, Professor of Political Science, University of California at San Diego, and Ambassador Jan Eliasson, Senior Visiting Scholar at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and former United Nations Special Envoy for Darfur.

The conference consists of sections on the following topics:
* New Approaches to Cold War: History and Current International Politics
* The European Union's Relations with Major International Powers
* The Politics of World Community: Beyond the International in Theory and Practice
* Credit and Crisis
* Spaces of Global Capital: Territoriality, Markets and Democratic Politics
* English school
* International Security
* Security and Ethics
* The Critical Limits to the Financial Crisis: World Politics, Aesthetics, and Re-Politicization
* Energy Resources and Social Change
* The Return of the State? Global Capitalism and Geopolitics after the Crisis of Neoliberalism
* The Future of Armed Conflict
* Challenges of Democracy Promotion: Do all good things go together?
* Searching for State Identity in Post-crisis period: theories and policies
* European Sea Power - A Critical Appraisal
* Critical Approaches to Security in Europe
* Changing Tide in Global Economic Regulation? The Crisis and Global Economic Governance
* The Bright and Dark Sides of the Discipline
* New Approaches to Foreign Policy Analysis: Integrating rational, social and psychological perspectives
* Gender in Transnational Politics: Transitions and Transformations in a Time of Crises
* Identity and Conflict
* Social Democratic Responses to the Contemporary Humanitarian Military Intervention Dilemma: A Comparative Analysis.
* Biopolitics, Governmentality, Circulation
* Another Europe is possible? Alternatives and Resistance to Neoliberal European Governance
* European Foreign Policy in Transition: New IR Approaches to EU Foreign Policy
* Putting critical IPE in its place?
* Emergence of Humanitarian World Politics
* Global Order: Historical Perspective or Fiction?
* Strategic Narratives
* Politics in Hard Times: The Human Impact of the Financial Crisis
* The European Sub-prime: The Financial Crisis in Eastern Europe
* International Institutions, Global Politics, and Law
* The Debate on Turkey - Creating an inclusive or exclusive Europe?
* Democratic Governance and International Institutions
* The "Other" Crisis: The Political Economy of the Environment and Our Relationship To It
* The Transformation of Security Culture
* Crisis - Whose Crisis? Southern Actors between Contagion, Concurrence and Cooperation
* Re-Discovering International Organisations
* Constructing the Knowledge Society: A Global Challenge
* Nordic Scholars/ Nordic Countries in International Relations
* Regional Powers in Latin America, Africa and Asia: Winners or Losers of the Financial Crisis?
* Economic Communities and Institution-Building in Times of Crisis
* Global Citizenship and Cosmopolitanism



Each section will comprise either 5 or 10 panels. For more information on these sections and their convenors see http://www.sgir.eu/conference. Please get in touch with the section convenors on any question regarding their section. There will be no Open Section - all paper and panel proposals have to fit into the sections outlined above.

The conference will take place at the congenial and atmospheric Stockholm City Conference Centre, a prime downtown venue. A reception for all participants will be given at Stockholm City Hall, the same hall in which the annual Nobel Prize banquet is held. The conference is organised by the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Södertörn University, Stockholm University and the Swedish National Defence College, in cooperation with the Standing Group on International Relations (SGIR) of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR). The local organizing committee is chaired by Johan Eriksson (Södertörn University and Swedish Institute of International Affairs).

All sections welcome individual paper proposals, most welcome complete panel proposals as well. Each 105-minute panel should comprise four to five papers plus discussant and chair. Proposals must be submitted via our online submission system at http://www.sgir.eu/conference.

ECPR-SGIR does not request membership for conference participation. It offers reduced rates of conference fees for students. Prospective participants should note that the ECPR-SGIR is unable to reimburse expenses incurred in connection with the conference.

The closing date for paper and panel proposals is February 28, 2010.

Accepted participants will be notified by April 1, 2010.

Andreas Nölke and Antje Wiener

ECPR-SGIR 2010 Programme Chairs

Call for Applications: 2010 PhD Programme - Transnational Studies

Scholarships: 8 Doctoral Scholarships
Date: 3 year full-time PhD programme starting September 2010
Starting date for Applications: 1 December, 2009
Deadline for Applications: 1 February, 2010
Online application: www.transnationalstudies.eu

The Berlin Graduate School for Transnational Studies (BTS), a joint endeavour of the Freie Universität Berlin (FUB), the Hertie School of Governance (HSoG) and the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), announces its next call for applications for its full-time PhD programme. All three are leading institutions in the field of political science and its neighbouring disciplines. The programme draws upon their faculty, research projects, facilities and services.

The three-year English language doctoral programme is designed for exceptionally talented and motivated graduate students. It offers state-of-the-art survey classes, a strong training in research methods and research design, skills courses and individualised supervision. While the courses and training present an important part of the curriculum, the bulk of the workload for the PhD candidates in the programme will be in the form of independent research for their dissertations.

The successful applicants will be informed in the first half of April 2010 in order to enter the doctoral programme in September of the same year. The three-year programme has a strong focus on social science theories and methods but also welcomes applications from adjacent disciplines like economics, history, law, and area studies. Dissertation topics should refer to one of the following three research areas broadly defined:

The analysis of national and transnational causes and consequences of political, societal and cultural globalisation.
The challenges to governance in international and transnational settings including issues of politisation and legitimacy, as well as in areas of limited statehood.
The comparative study of regional cooperation, including the EU.

The application requirements for the programme are:

· An exceptionally strong completed university degree qualifying for PhD studies in political science, international relations, sociology, economics, law or adjacent disciplines
· Proof of C1 level English language skills or the equivalent
· CV
· A short letter of motivation (600 words maximum)
· A research proposal including a timetable (5000 words maximum)
· Two letters of reference from faculty members

Call for Papers: Finance in question/finance in crisis. CRESC, University of Manchester, 12-14 April 2010

I would like to draw your attention to the Call for Papers below for the upcoming conference Finance in Question/Finance in Crisis which promises to be a big (150 people) event with participants from all disciplines: sociology, anthropology, critical business and economics, geography and politics/IPE.

If you are interested in submitting a panel (3-4 papers) please contact me at your earliest convenience: j.montgomerie@manchester.ac.uk. As the person responsible for the Politics and IPE section of the conference I am hoping to secure a good number of panels with a wide cross-section of participants.


ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change
Call for Papers

Finance in question/finance in crisis
University of Manchester, 12-14 April 2010

This international conference about finance is distinctive in that it invites analysis by, and encourages debate between, researchers from many disciplines who represent different kinds of political and cultural economy as well as social studies of finance. The emphasis is on finance in question as much as finance in crisis because, well before the onset of crisis in 2007, there were many unresolved issues about the role of finance in present day capitalism. The conference aims to re-examine received ways of understanding finance and to consider what changes to financial arrangement may follow from present strains.

As with other major conferences, there will be multiple themes and an opportunity for academic researchers to present papers and propose sessions. Themes so far proposed include: money, capitalist calculation, market devices and techniques; financial crisis, social relations and trust; the limits of prescience and the irrelevance of many economic knowledges; finance, restructuring and labour; politics/markets/moralities; states, re-regulation and governance of finance.

There will be media and practitioner sessions as well as plenary panels where distinguished academics will be set to answer big questions about what and who is in crisis, why did nobody see it coming and whether more democratic control of finance is possible. Plenary academics include Michel Aglietta (CEPII), Andrew Gamble ( Cambridge) Donald MacKenzie (Edinburgh), Doreen Massey, Philip Mirowski (Notre Dame), Onora O’Neill, Mike Power (LSE), Saskia Sassen (Columbia) and Wolfgang Streeck (Max Planck)
Please submit either (a) proposal for individual papers, or (b) panel proposal including 3 papers by 11th December 2009 Guidelines and Proposal Forms are available here and should be sent to:

CRESC Conference Administration
178 Waterloo Place, Oxford Road, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL
Tel: +44(0)161 275 8985 / Fax: +44(0)161 275 8985
Email: CRESC.AnnualConference@manchester.ac.uk

This conference is co- hosted by CRESC and the IWGF at the University of Manchester; and by the Australian Working Group on Financialization at the University of Sydney



Johnna Montgomerie
Research Fellow
ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC)
178 Waterloo Place
The University of Manchester
Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL
Tel: +44 (0)161 275 8997
Email: j.montgomerie@manchester.ac.uk

Conference: 'Globalisation and European Integration: the Nature of the Beast', 5th-6th June 2009, University of Warwick

A cutting-edge event on Critical Political Economy approaches to European integration and its relationship with globalisation. The conference aims to stimulate a constructive engagement between historical materialist, constructivist and post-structuralist approaches to European integration. It aims to encourage interdisciplinary exchange between specialists from the fields of politics, international relations, international political economy and sociology on their research findings regarding global governance, regional integration and the national state with special reference to the European Union.

Registration fee: £27 including refreshments, buffet lunch and wine reception on Saturday.

Registration deadline: 15 May 2009.

There is a limited number of places available, so please register as soon as possible in order to secure your participation.

Keynote Speakers: A. Cafruny and M. Ryner.

Participants:
K. Van der Pijl, B. Jessop, H. Overbeek, L.S. Talani, A. Bieler, W. Bonefeld, B. Clift, A. Wigger, H. Buch-Hansen, O. Holman, H.J. Bieling, S. Shields, C. Belfrage, J. Grahl, G. Menz, J. Baines, H. Macartney, I. Bruff, J. Drahokoupil, L. Levidow, C. Shaw, G. Strange, J. Tittenbrun, H. Plaschke, E. de Zutter, F. Ercan, S. Oguz, S.M. Rodrigues Balão, C. Dannreuther, K. Möller, C. Hermann, L. Horn, V.Muzaka, M. Notshulwana, A. Popa, O. Parker, J. Caballero, F. Capano, M. Fini, N. Fuentes, E. Gundogdu, W. Ko, O. Yaka, S. Braconi, J.W.Son.

For more information (conference programme, registration procedure, transport/accommodation information), please click here.

Co-organisers: Andreas Tsolakis (A.A.Tsolakis@warwick.ac.uk) and Petros Nousios (P.Nousios@warwick.ac.uk).

This event is kindly funded by the American Study and Student Exchange Committee and the PAIS department at Warwick.

The Second Warwick/RIPE Debate in IPE - Tuesday 5th May 2009

This is a reminder to all PESG members and to those people who keep an eye on our blog site that the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick will host on Tuesday 5th May the second of what is now an annual public debate in IPE organised in conjunction with the Review of International Political Economy. Last year's debate was conducted in front of an audience of 100 scholars drawn from 20 different institutions, and the content of the debate - complete with full audio recording - can be found here. This year's debate will take place between 4.30 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. in Lecture Theatre MS.01 in the Mathematics and Statistics Building. This is building number 35 on the campus map, and the closest car park is number 15.

The content of the Debate will revolve around the recent contribution to the study of IPE made by Professor Mark Blyth of Johns Hopkins University in the United States, who will be talking about and promoting his new book, Handbook of International Political Economy (Routledge, 2009). The event will take the form of a roundtable discussion of the intellectual rationale underpinning the organisation of the Handbook, and in addition to Professor Blyth it will also involve Professor Barry Gills (University of Newcastle, and a former Editor of RIPE), Dr Jeffrey Chwieroth (London School of Economics) and Professor Shirin Rai (University of Warwick).

There is no entrance charge for attending the debate, so this message constitutes an open invitation for all to attend. The Lecture Theatre will open at 4.00 p.m. for audience members to take their seats, as Routledge will be running a book stall advertising their IPE list from that time onwards. The Debate will begin promptly at 4.30 p.m., so please do try to take your seats at least five minutes before that time. The Department of Politics and International Studies looks forward to welcoming as many people as possible to the event.

PESG at the PSA

PESG is making its debut at this year's PSA conference in Manchester (7-9 April). We are putting on a roundtable and sponsoring or co-sponsoring four panels.

To mark our first outing at the PSA, we start off in the first session of the conference (Tuesday, 12.30, Room E1) with a roundtable on 'the case for political economy'. Andrew Gamble (Cambridge), Alan Finlayson (Swansea), Nicola Philips (Manchester) and Matthew Watson (Warwick) will be exploring the contribution that a political economy approach has made and can make to different subfields of political science.

The PESG sponsored panels are:

Session 2 (Tuesday 14.30, Room G2)
Representing Business in Changing Capitalism 1

Session 4 (Wednesday 11.30, Room H6)
Representing Business in Changing Capitalism 2

Panels co-sponsored with the Labour Movements Specialist Group:
Session 5 (Wednesday 16.00, Room G1)
Social Democracy and Political Economy 1

Session 6 (Thursday 09.30, Room H6)
Social Democracy and Political Economy 2

The Second Warwick/RIPE Debate in IPE - Tuesday 5th May 2009

The Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick hosts an annual public debate in IPE organised in conjunction with the Review of International Political Economy.

Last year's debate was conducted in front of an audience of 100 drawn from 20 different institutions, and the content of the debate - complete with full audio recording - can be found by clicking here.

This message is advanced warning of the date and the contents of the 2009 Warwick/RIPE Debate in IPE. It will take place on Tuesday 5th May and it will revolve around the recent contribution to the study of IPE made by Professor Mark Blyth of Johns Hopkins University in the United States, who will be talking about and promoting his new book, Handbook of International Political Economy (Routledge, 2009). The event will take the form of a roundtable discussion of the intellectual rationale underpinning the organisation of the Handbook, and in addition to Professor Blyth it will also involve Professor Barry Gills (University of Newcastle, and a former Editor of RIPE), Dr Jeffrey Chwieroth (London School of Economics) and Professor Shirin Rai (University of Warwick).

There is no entrance charge for attending the debate, so this message constitutes an open invitation for all to attend. The debate will take place between 4.00 p.m. and 6.00 p.m. on the afternoon of 5th May, and further details along with travel information will shortly be circulated about the precise room booking. The Department of Politics and International Studies looks forward to welcoming as many people as possible to the event.

The financial crisis: Responses and implications in Europe

Critical Political Economy RN at the ESA conference, Lisbon, 2-5 September 2009

Europe is experiencing its most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression. The response of the EU and member states to this crisis has been paradoxical. The crisis has discredited the ‘Anglo-American’ model of finance-led capitalism and gravely weakened the American imperium.

Yet, the countries of Europe have been unable either individually or collectively to devise a concerted regional solution to the crisis. The result has been rising unemployment, the intensification of intra-regional disparities, signs of inter-state rivalries and is likely to result in growing poverty. Notwithstanding the deployment of massive resources to failing banks, the EU and member states continue to pursue the main planks of the neoliberal agenda, including labour market reforms, privatisation, and financialisation. This session seeks to address the prospects for a European alternative to U.S.-led neoliberalism. Addressing the theme of this conference, we aim to consider to what extent does the current crisis unite or divide Europe and prospective allies in the world order, and what are its implications for the European project of integration. We invite papers which consider at least one of the following:

• Limits and contradictions of the mode of development currently in crisis, which may enable us to understand the current conjuncture.
• The problem of translating intellectual criticism into policy prescription or alternative strategies
• The political consequences of the crisis, its implication for political strategies pursued in relation to the 'European model' as well as to the regulatory frameworks on national and sub-national levels
• The issue of contemporary social and political mobilization and attendant effects on the ‘limits of the possible’.

Abstracts should be submitted by 26 February 2009 (online submission form: view Call for Abstracts button at http://www.esa9thconference.com)

More information on CPE RN, see here.

Post-doc opportunities at the University of Helsinki

Two attractive post doc positions at the Centre of Excellence in Global Governance Research (University of Helsinki) have been announced. The deadline for applications is on Jan 29.

In Helsinki, we are constructing new spaces for research on global political economy and on private property rights. These two positions are intended to strengthen these areas.

Apart from the salary and related benefits, the other benefits include travel funds and, of course, an exciting and hip environment. In the coming years, we will have high-profile global political economy people in shorter and longer visits and appointments at the University of Helsinki.

For more information on our Centre of Excellence, see here

And for the ad itself, see here

CfP: 16th Symposium of the International Consortium for Social Development

This is just a quick note to bring to your attention the call for papers for the 16th Symposium of the International Consortium for Social Development. This academic conference is jointly organized by University of Southern California and Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon and is going to take place from 27th to 31st July 2009 at Monterrey, Mexico.

All relevant information and further details on the 16th ICSD Symposium can be found at:
http://www.fts.uanl.mx/_symposium/

Contact:

Héctor Cuadra Montiel (PhD)

h.cuadra.montiel@gmail.com
hcuadra@facts.uanl.mx

Subdirección de Estudios de Posgrado
Facultad de Trabajo Social y Desarrollo Humano
Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León
Ciudad Universitaria C.P. 66451
San Nicolás de los Garza,
Nuevo León, México

phone: (+52)(81) 83521309 ext. 103
fax: (+52)(81) 83769177 ext. 129

PSA Conference 2009 - Call for papers

Material States

Co-convenors:

Angus Cameron – Leicester University

Ian Bruff – Edge Hill University

Panel abstract:

The rejection across the critical social sciences of environmental determinism in all its guises means that the material foundation of politics has tended to be sidelined. Theoretical and empirical priority has, as a consequence, been given to processes of structuration, social construction, planning, autopoesis, dialectics and so on. Whilst material processes are implied in many of these narratives, the nature of materiality itself is not always explored or accorded agency. Despite this emphasis, the political, economic and social domains continue to be shaped and constrained – historically and contemporaneously – by the material. This can include the physical aspects of life (e.g. biofuel vs. food) and the wider physical environment (climate change, hurricane Katrina, etc.) but also includes other non- or less physical material orders (money, virtual materials and places, spiritual domains, etc. (Miller 2007)). The purpose of this panel is to explore critically both the political economies of materiality and the materialities of political economies.

Topics of relevance might include:

The nature of political materiality

The material construal of political possibilities

Political economies of artefacts

Virtuality and virtualism vs. materiality

Please send abstracts (200 words or less) to awgc1@le.ac.uk by 25th September 2008.

The 2008 Warwick RIPE Debate: ‘American’ versus ‘British’ IPE

On Monday May 12th 2008 the Department of Politics and International Studies hosted the first of what will become the annual Warwick RIPE Debates. It took place in front of an audience in excess of one hundred, comprised of staff and graduate students from around fifteen different institutions. The 2008 debate featured Professor Benjamin Cohen of the University of California, Santa Barbara, talking about his new book, International Political Economy: An Intellectual History (Princeton University Press, 2008). It was chaired by Mark Blyth of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who is one of the editors of the Review of International Political Economy, and it also involved two members of PaIS, Richard Higgott and Matthew Watson. The focal point of the debate was a discussion of Professor Cohen’s identification of two distinct schools of IPE, one of which he labels the ‘American School’ and the other the ‘British School’. It followed a recent exchange in RIPE after Higgott and Watson published a response to Professor Cohen’s original outline of those categories.

A recording of the debate can be found here.

More about this debate and the Warwick RIPE Debates series in general can be found at the website.

New Political Economy 2008/9 Graduate Student Prize Paper Competition

New Political Economy invites submissions to the 2008/9 Graduate Student Prize Paper competition. We would welcome submissions from graduate students working across the
field of political economy, from all relevant disciplinary backgrounds and on any topic consistent with the overall aims and remit of the journal. The prize is £500 (GB sterling) and publication of the paper in New Political Economy. The closing date for submissions is Friday 5 December 2008.

Papers submitted to the competition must be no longer than 10,000 words in length, including all endnotes. Papers should be submitted according to the usual submission guidelines, and candidates should indicate clearly in the title of the e-mail that the paper is intended for submission to the Graduate Student Prize Paper Competition. All submissions must be fully in NPE house style. All candidates must be currently registered as doctoral students at recognised institutions of higher education. All the relevant information – details of the aims and remit of the journal, submission guidelines and details of house style – can be found at: www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/13563467.asp
The judges in the competition will be the editors of NPE. The outcome will be announced
by the end of March 2009 and the winner duly notified. The decision of the editors is final.

Celebrating the 25th anniversary of the pubhlication in 1983 of "Laws of Chaos: a probabilistic approach to political economy" by Emmanuel Farjoun and

www.probabilisticpoliticaleconomy.net

July 14 -- 17, 2008
Kingston University, UK

The publication of "Laws of Chaos" was an event of genuine theoretical innovation in the field of political economy. The book was a response to the impasse reached by the input-output method of representing an economy, in particular when applied to the theory of economic value.
Farjoun and Machover's innovations include the systematic introduction of probabilistic modelling, statistical mechanics, and probabilistic laws to the field of political economy. They rejected the adequacy of deterministic models to capture essential features of a dynamic and distributed market economy, which they viewed as a complex system characterised by a huge number of degrees of freedom.
Employing probabilistic arguments, Farjoun and Machover developed a broad model of the capitalist economy that, in contrast to deterministic approaches, had a more immediate connection to empirical reality and yielded important and theoretically distinct, macroeconomic conclusions, including probabilistic laws governing the relationship between price and labour-content, the distribution of the profit rate, and the tendency of labour productivity to increase.

The conference will concentrate on four main themes:
(i) "Laws of Chaos", a reflection on the reception and subsequent impact of Farjoun and Machover's book,
(ii) "Theory and methods", an exploration of the concept of statistical equilibrium in political economy,
(iii) "Models and empirical reality", investigations of specific non-deterministic, economic models and their relationship to empirical data, and
(iv) "Disequilibrium and out-of-equilibrium dynamics", examining the disequilibrium properties and empirical plausibility of non-deterministic models of capitalism.

Our aim is to reflect on the past and stimulate the next 25 years of the research programme of probabilistic political economy.

Final programme
==============
The final programme is now available, and may be downloaded from here.

The conference will open at 11.30 a.m. on Monday, July 14 and will continue through to a reception and gala dinner on the evening of Wednesday, July 16.

Papers and abstracts
=================
Abstracts of all contributions can be found here.

Participation
===========
Places are still available for participants; booking forms are available from the Kingston University conference web-site. The actual URLs for the forms are available here for pdf file and here for word document.
The core option includes all meals and refreshments during the conference, including the concluding reception and dinner, and three nights' accommodation (Monday, July 14 to Wednesday, July 16) together with breakfast on the morning of departure (Thursday, July 17). There will also be a daily registration rate for participants wishing to attend particular sessions.
Information about the Kingston Hill campus, including the residential accommodation, is available here. Information about Dorich House, Kingston University's own "stately home" and the venue for the closing dinner, is available here.

Keynote speakers
==============

• Emmanuel Farjoun, Professor of Mathematics, Einstein Institute of Mathematics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• Moshé Machover, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, King's College London

Invited speakers
=============

• Masanao Aoki, Professor Emeritus of Economics, UCLA
• Paul Cockshott, Reader in Computer Science, Department of Computer Science, University of Glasgow
• Allin Cottrell, Professor of Economics, Wake Forest University
• Jurgen Essletzbichler, Lecturer, Department of Geography, UCL
• Alan Freeman, Visiting Lecturer in Economics, School of Business and the Humanities, University of Greenwich
• Mauro Gallegati, Professor of Economics, University of Ancona
• Steve Keen, Associate Professor of Economics and Finance, University of Western Sydney
• Andrew Kliman, Professor of Economics, Pace University
• Paul Plummer, Professor of Geography, University of Calgary
• David Rigby, Professor of Geography, UCLA
• Michael Webber, Professor of Geography, University of Melbrourne
• Victor Yakovenko, Professor of Physics, University of Maryland

Organising committee
=================

• Julian Wells, Senior Lecturer in Economics at Kingston University, UK
• Eric Sheppard, Professor of Economic Geography, University of Minnesota, USA
• Ian Wright, Research Student, Department of Economics, Open University, UK

++++++++++++++++++++

Dr Julian Wells
Faculty web-page
Personal web-site

Senior lecturer
School of Economics
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Kingston University
Penrhyn Road
Kingston-upon-Thames
KT1 2EE

Public Debate on the Future of IPE

The Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick announces a public debate on the future of IPE, involving Professor Benjamin Cohen of the University of California, Santa Barbara, who will be talking about and promoting his new book, International Political Economy: An Intellectual History (Princeton University Press, 2008). The event originates in the publication in the Review of International Political Economy of Professor Cohen's recent article on the Transatlantic Divide in IPE. It will take the form of a roundtable, to be chaired by Mark Blyth of Johns Hopkins University and one of the current editors of RIPE, and in addition to Professor Cohen it will also involve Richard Higgott and Matthew Watson from the University of Warwick, who have published a response in RIPE to Professor Cohen's original piece.

There is no entrance charge for attending the debate, so this message constitutes an open invitation for all to attend. It will take place on Monday 12th May between 4.00 p.m. and 5.30 p.m. in Lecture Theatre MS.03 in the Zeeman (Maths) Building. The location of this building can be found on the University of Warwick campus map and it is building number 35 in zone F4. Information about how to get to the University of Warwick is also included in links from that web page. The University Bookshop, in collaboration with Princeton University Press, will create a stall in the lecture theatre in order to sell copies of Professor Cohen's new book throughout the afternoon.

We look forward to seeing as many people as possible at the event.

Call for papers - European Political Economy and Society in the World

This workshop, organised by the European Sociological Association's Critical Political Economy Research Network, takes place in Oxford on 12-14 September. Click here for the call for papers.

Join us

Wecome to the weblog of the brand new PSA specialist group on Political Economy. If you would like to join the group (there is at present no membership fee), then please go here to download the membership form.

This group will operate with a broad and inclusive understanding of political economy. The basic premise of any work labelled political economy is that the political and the economic are not discrete domains, but part of an interconnected whole. Politics and economics are thus inseparable analytically. Within this overarching definition, there is of course considerable space for theoretical debate and empirical specialisation. This diversity means that political economy work may be theoretical or empirical, historical or contemporary, international or comparative. Work conducted under the political economy banner is undertaken from a variety of theoretical perspectives and proceeds from a variety of methodological premises. Indeed, while some of the world’s primary political economists work under the banner of political science, many do not. As such political economy has the potential to act as an important interdisciplinary hosting metaphor.