Postcoloniality and International Political Economy: Translating the Colonial Divide.

The recent experience of postcolonial states poses some intriguing questions for the field of international political economy (IPE). Long conceptualized as exceptions to the norm, the study of many of these states (e.g. India, China) was confined to the field of development studies, a field defined by various inadequacies in relation to the normative horizons of IPE. But, in recent years, it is precisely these postcolonial states that have come to be representative of many of the features of a rapidly globalizing economy. How does IPE resolve the resultant divide between development studies and the studies of globalization? What narratives does it produce to explain the abrupt and sudden change in the economies of postcolonial states? This paper proposes that IPE’s attempts to account for the new identity of postcolonial states reveals a variety of colonial strategies. These are strategies that, in seeking to seamlessly bridge the divides between development studies, IPE and the studies of the global economy, are aimed predominantly at shoring up its increasingly problematic normativity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]