International Political Economy Working Group 2025 book prize winner announced
The IPEG Book Prize Committee is delighted to announce that the 2025 prize has been given to Ilias Alami and Adam D Dixon's The Spectre of State Capitalism (Oxford University Press).
The committee felt that this is an agenda-setting book across a number of fields, including the rise of China, development and the future of the developmental state, the evolution of neoliberalism and beyond. It weaves together numerous strands of research around industrial policy, the role of the state in the economy, changes to the financial system and more, to provide a degree of clarity to the often invoked but ambiguously articulated claims of a 'new state capitalism' having emerged globally. And yet, despite setting out these emerging frontiers and changes within IPE, Alami and Dixon do not fall into the trap of over-claiming, emphasising instead the continued ambiguities about the direction of how, and the extent to which, state capitalism will shape the future and what it means for neoliberalism as the dominant economic imaginary going forward.
The committee members also want to share how much they enjoyed reading the other shortlisted books, all of which were excellent. These were:
- Gareth Bryant and Sophie Webber, Climate Finance: Taking a Position on Climate Futures
- Shirin Rai, Depletion: The Human Costs of Caring.
- Maria Tanyag, The Global Politics of Sexual and Reproductive Rights.
Finally, as Chair I would like to thank the work of the other committee members, Maha Rafi Atal, Matthew Bishop, Phil Cerny and Melissa Johnston, for the considerable time they put in to reading and commenting on the books.
James Scott, King's College London
IPEG Convenor and Book Prize Chair
Photo by Jason Dent on Unsplash