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An essay is presented on the economic thought of British political philosopher, economist, and member of Parliament Edmund Burke. It examines what Burke meant by the term political economy and the differences between Burke's interpretation and that of standard schools of economic thought in the 18th century. The author also discusses Burke's thoughts on the moral nature of political economy and what the author asserts as Burke's distance from laissez-faire economic theory.

The article focuses on the differences between the American and British International Political Economy (IPE). The author stated that IPE is about the complex linkages between economic and political activity at the level of international affairs. The dominant version of IPE is developed in the U.S., where most scholarship tends to hew close to the norms of conventional social science. In Great Britain, IPE is less wedded to scientific method and more ambitious in its agenda.

Aggregate-level models of party support patterns increasingly seek to evaluate both “economic” and “political” explanations of election outcomes. This paper explores the evolution of support for Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats between 1997 and 2004. A number of politico-economic models are developed and tested against monthly timeseries data for the 1997–2004 period. A variety of different assumptions are then made about likely movements in the key independent variables in these models in the run-up to the next general election. Finally, these assumptions are used to inform a series of forecasting models in order to produce forecasts of likely party support levels in the early summer of 2005, the presumed time of the next general election. The analysis suggests, on balance, that the best performing statistical model is one that takes account of Blair’s leadership ratings, voters’ personal economic expectations, the “costs of ruling” and the continuing effects of the Iraq war. The central forecast from this model, for an assumed election in June 2005, produces vote shares of 39% for Labour, 31% for the Conservatives and 22% for the Liberal Democrats. Although a wide range of forecast election outcomes can legitimately be derived from the existing data, most of the forecasts reported suggest that a Labour victory is the most likely outcome of the next UK general election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses issues raised in this edition of the journal. The central focus of the article is the examination of questions arising from differences between the British school of international political economy and the the American school of thought on the discipline. Among other issues the author notes that this debate has been fueled by the 2008 publication of the book "International Political Economy: An Intellectual History," by Benjamin J. Cohen, a book that sought to delineate the two schools of geopolitics.