Political Economy - Related Disciplines

Related Disciplines

Because political economy is not a unified discipline, there are studies using the term that overlap in subject matter, but have radically different perspectives:

• Sociology studies the effects of persons' involvement in society as members of groups, and how that changes their ability to function. Many sociologists start from a perspective of production-determining relation from Karl Marx. Marx's theories on the subject of political economy are contained in his book, Das Kapital.
• Political science focuses on the interaction between institutions and human behavior, the way in which the former shapes choices and how the latter change institutional frameworks. Along with economics, it has made the best works in the field by authors like Shepsle, Ostrom, Ordeshook, among others.
• Anthropology studies political economy by investigating regimes of political and economic value that condition tacit aspects of sociocultural practices (for example, the pejorative use of pseudo-Spanish expressions in the US-American entertainment media) by means of broader historical, political, and sociological processes; analyses of structural features of transnational processes focus on the interactions between the world capitalist system and local cultures.
• Psychology is the fulcrum on which political economy exerts its force in studying decision-making (not only in prices), but as the field of study whose assumptions model political economy.
• History documents change, using it to argue political economy; historical works have political economy as the narrative's frame.
• Economics focuses on markets by leaving the political—governments, states, legal frameworks—as givens. Economics dropped the adjective political in the 19th century, but works backwards, by describing "The Ideal Market", urging governments to formulate policy and law to approach said ideal. Economists and political economists often disagree on what is preeminent in developing production, market, and political structure theories.
• Law concerns the creation of policy and its mediation via political actions that have specific results, it deals with political economy as political capital and as social infrastructure—and the sociological results of one society upon another.
• Human Geography is concerned with politico-economic processes, emphasizing space and environment.
• Ecology deals with political economy, because human activity has the greatest effect upon the environment, its central concern being the environment's suitability for human activity. The ecological effects of economic activity spur research upon changing market economy incentives.
• International Relations often uses political economy to study political and economic development.
• Cultural Studies studies social class, production, labor, race, gender, and sex.
• Communications examines the institutional aspects of media and telecommuncation systems. Communication, the area of study which focuses on aspects of human communication, pays particular attention to the relationships between owners, labor, consumers, advertisers, structures of production, the state, and power relationships embedded in these relationships.