Abstract
The historical perspective has always been integral to critical International Political Economy (IPE). The critical IPE scholars utilised it not only to trace the origins of transnational socioeconomic inequalities, but also to expose the ahistoricist assumptions of mainstream IPE about these inequalities as a normal part of global capitalism.
Applying such a critical perspective, this paper re-examines the role of European Union (EU) cohesion agenda in the two integrations of South and East European peripheries into the continent's neoliberal order since the 1980s. First, this allows comparing the two varieties of dependent integration in order to demonstrate that the IPE turn to (inter-)temporal perspective must be always informed by the equally important turn to (inter-)spatial analysis, otherwise it is impossible to understand how particular (geo-)historical conjunctures become embedded in the general (dis)continuity of international political economy.
Second, such a historicizing approach enables to construct an IPE approach to the EU cohesion agenda and thus expand the IPE field's theoretical reach by also engaging it in discussion with the EU Studies scholarship which has dominated research on the EU cohesion agenda in an ahistorical and aspatial manner. Hence, the paper departs initially from theoretical discussion between the critical IPE and mainstream EU Studies literatures in order to facilitate a spatio-temporarily aware approach which then allows to re-examine the two contrasting varieties of dependent integrations through an empirical analysis of historical documents including, e.g., the so-called Cohesion Reports.
At this intersection, the critical analysis meets the historical perspective in IPE scholarship.