The (Geo)Politics of Economic Integration

Abstract This chapter focuses on how the concept of geopolitics has evolved in the study of international economic cooperation, focusing on trade and investment policies. In light of international relations and international political economy perspectives, it discusses the twentieth-century origins of the concepts. It describes its marginalization by mainstream theories during the Cold War period, albeit implicitly taken up by theorists in the tradition of offensive realism, and then maps the liberal turn of the 1990s in political economy and how power politics were relegated to the background with increasing market integration, only making a slow return in the 2000s. Academia and politics have witnessed a surprising renaissance of geopolitics over the past ten years. The chapter maps out the contours of this new variant of geopolitics, a mix of superpower rivalry and economic nationalism, offering some reflections regarding the danger of deterministic scenarios and future ways to temper geopolitics.