The Global Political Economy Network Annual Conference
The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
July 13 – July 15, 2027
The Global Political Economy Network (GPEN) is pleased to announce that the annual Global Political Economy Conference is taking place July 13-15, 2027. This year’s theme is A World in Crisis: Causes, Consequences, and Alternative Futures, and we invite empirical paper submissions that address this theme from various methodological, geographical, and theoretical approaches. The conference is being hosted and financially supported by The Pennsylvania State University.
Conference Topics
We welcome original research on all substantive topics that are examined within a Global Political Economy framework including the causes and consequences of the many interconnected crises facing regions around the world, as well as how to address these crises and build more equitable and sustainable futures, grounded in evidence.
Proposal Submissions
Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words to the chair of the conference organizing committee (rthombs@psu.edu) no later than December 1, 2026. We will send out acceptance notifications by December 22, 2026.
Conference Housing
Free lodging will be available on campus at the Nittany Lion Inn for up to thirty presenters. If you are interested in this option, please indicate so in your submission.
Publication Opportunities
The organizers anticipate editing one or multiple special issues of the journal Sociology of Development consisting of papers from the conference.
What is Global Political Economy?
Political Economy (PE) is the study of interrelationships between the economy and polity. International Political Economy (IPE) shifts the focus to the interrelations between national economies and polities. Global Political Economy (GPE) encompasses both. Like PE, it concerns itself with both economic and political outcomes and assumes these are mutually constitutive and interact in space and time. Like IPE, it frequently shifts its focus to macro-level phenomenon. What makes GPE distinctive is that its unit of analysis is, first and foremost, the global economy and polity as it varies structurally and historically. That is, if citizen’s economic and political preferences are functions of their position in an economic system (PE) and if states aggregate these interests (IPE), then historically and structurally varying characteristics of the global economy and polity impact these lower-level processes. Theoretically, GPE scholars are agnostic, or at least heterogeneous, and draw flexibly from theories that originated in industrial transformations in Europe and the Global South. Methodologically, GPE scholars are committed to the scientific method and draw broadly from both quantitative and qualitative approaches that encompass various units of observation, periods of time, and bases of comparison. Because almost any social phenomenon is shaped at least in part by the global economy and polity, GPE scholars are substantively diverse but converge around common questions regarding such topics as development, inequality, the climate crisis, population health, labor, migration, and governance.
