New directions in the international political economy of energy (original) (raw)
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Setting the field of International Political Economy of Energy
Contexto Internacional
Predominantly since the 2000s, energy-related policy initiatives steadily grew across several scales, from local to national and international arenas, devoted to the transition to a sustainable low-carbon economy. Such policies, stemming from renewable sources, would be meant to curb our civilization's carbon lock-in. At the same time, policies continued to pursue old tasks, like promoting energy security and access. Consistently, one observes the rise of a massive corpus of grey literature, including national policy plans, corporate and institutional reports. How does academic literature examine this raw material? How are those emerging themes and initiatives valued? Editors Thijs Van de Graaf (Ghent Institute for International Studies, Belgium), Benjamin K. Sovacool and Florian Kern (University of Sussex, UK), Arunabha Ghosh (Council on Energy, Environment and Water) and Michael Klare (University of Massachusetts in Amherst, USA) take the challenge. They convene expertise and competences on energy studies with respect to states, markets and institutions of dozens of scholars from top universities, research institutions, scientific academies, and multilateral organizations, from a variety of academic backgrounds, in the fields of Geography, Political Sciences, Law,
Bringing energy into International Political Economy
Europe and Russia provides substantial explanations and analyses of transitions, change and uncertainty in energy issues in the broad region of Europe and Russia. The book focuses on questions of energy governance and approaches this topic from an international political economy (IPE) perspective. As such, this represents an attempt to bring energy back into the mainstream of IPE.
Introduction: Bringing Energy into International Political Economy
Dynamics of Energy Governance in Europe and Russia, 2012
Underhill 1994; see also Oatley 2006: 176-77). Contemporary research also tends to ignore the intertwined nature of policy fields and exhibits a strong tendency to think within disciplinary boundaries. Discussion of environmental issues or economic development therefore remain somewhat disconnected from more practical, policy-oriented, and in fact crucial questions of energy (
2016
In the new collection Energy, Capitalism and World Order: Towards a New Agenda in International Political Economy, editors Tim Di Muzio and Jesse Salah Ovadia bring together contributors to examine the relationship between energy, capitalism and the world order in light of pressing and emergent issues such as fracking, biofuels and climate change. While more attention on the diverse challenges faced by different political economies would have been welcome, this collection presents lucid analyses and grounded case studies that will be of use to scholars, students and policymakers, finds Donn David P. Ramos.
Fact and Fiction in Global Energy Policy: Fifteen Contentious Questions
2016
Energy policy is a jargon-laden field that grapples with complex systems and wicked problems. Analyzing energy policy through a single dimension typically yields incorrect and misleading results. Fact and Fiction in Global Energy Policy seeks to cut through this incomprehensibility by presenting 15 dilemmas in the field of energy policy through a point, counterpoint format followed by a synthesis. The book covers four themes: energy and society (i.e., the role for the state versus the market, energy efficiency), energy resources and technology (i.e., peak oil, shale gas, electric cars, and biofuels), climate change, and energy security and energy transitions. Fact and Fiction in Global Energy Policy was written as an accessible undergraduate textbook. It succeeds in being free of jargon and understandable to students or interested laypeople without a background in energy. While energy policy experts will find little new information, the breadth of the book and the research underpinning it is nevertheless impressive. It reflects a substantial effort to compile reams of information in a fair and balanced way. Fact and Fiction in Global Energy Policy fills an important gap by providing an accessible undergraduate energy policy textbook. There are a small handful of energy policy textbooks, but all have limitations. For example, Goldthau and Witte's Global Energy Governance is broad in scope and makes an important contribution to the scholarly literature, but as a textbook, it focuses unduly on the single paradigm of International Relations liberalism (Goldthau & Witte, 2010). Yergin's The Prize is the authoritative history on oil, but it focuses only on hydrocarbons instead of covering important contemporary issues, such as climate change and renewable energy transitions (Yergin, 2011). A course instructor in an International Relations department may find Energy and the Transformation of International Relations (Wenger, Orttung, & Perovic, 2009) somewhat more advantageous, as it is more focused on global case studies and concepts than Sovacool and others' book. However, it lacks the systematic coverage of a variety of viewpoints on energy policy issues that Fact and Fiction in Global Energy Policy provides; moreover, the book is $90 in hard copy. Additionally, there are several available handbooks on energy security, including Sovacool's own Routledge Handbook of Energy Security (Sovacool, 2011) and Trombetta and Dryer's International Handbook of Energy Security (Trombetta & Dryer, 2013). These two texts work well for courses specifically focused on energy security, but as many departments add broader survey courses on energy policy, Fact and Fiction in Global Energy Policy is more comprehensive in scope and more accessible.
International Political Economy: A Field Born of the OPEC Crisis Returns to Its Energy Roots
Energy Research & Social Science, 2014
International Political Economy is a multidisciplinary field which officially falls under the political science discipline. IPE of energy is a nascent field to which scholars have only recently started to identify. IPE scholarship generally focuses on issues where politics and economics intersect, and looks at a variety of actors, including individuals, states, and international organizations. Since IPE’s official founding in the 1970’s, following the energy crises and the end of the gold standard, most energy research has focused on issues related to oil, such as OPEC, the “resource curse,” oil companies, and domestic policies related to oil. We suggest a number of promising areas for research: on the theoretical side, making politics explicit and incorporating international organizations, regionalism, community interests, international structure, ideas and identity and environmental studies into IPE scholarship. We also suggest three issue areas–renewable and other energy sources, electricity, and sovereign wealth funds.
Governing global energy: existing approaches and discourses
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 2011
Soaring demand for fossil fuels, stemming from new consumer heavyweights coincides with an urgent need to decarbonize global energy systems. At the same time, providing the 'bottom billion' with access to modern forms of energy is a humanitarian imperative as much as it is making energy systems sustainable. Managing these intertwined challenges requires effective governance on a global scale. This article lays out the main challenges that need to be addressed during the looming energy transition process; based on that, it reviews the existing literature in the fields of international relations, global (public) policy and global governance dealing with these challenges. It argues that the subject of global energy governance remains understudied; that existing scholarly works are characterized by a lopsided attention to the selected aspects of global energy instead of accounting for the intertwined challenges of security, climate change and energy access; and that, as a consequence, further and more holistic research is urgently needed.
Differentiation, materiality, and power: Towards a political economy of fossil fuels
Energy Research & Social Science, 2018
Current Political Science approaches to the role of energy and fossil fuels in international relations are overwhelmingly based on two widely disseminated, but unhelpful practices: the artificial subsuming of other fossil fuels to oil, and the perception of energy power as state-centered influence. The issue of the differences between various fossil fuels has not been dealt with explicitly, yet it has key implications for the way in which energy is translated into power. On the basis of a structured comparison between the three most commonly used fossil fuelsoil, natural gas and coalthis article compares their key physical characteristics in order to understand how these affect secondary features (such as those having to do with and transportability, obstructability, size and location of typical markets, type of processing required, cartel possibilities, and substitutability), all of which affect relationships between actors and the ability to use energy as means of constitutive and relational power.