General Conclusions: From Crisis to a Global Political Economy of Freedom

If anything, the world economy at the start of the twenty-first century – even more so than during the interwar period – shows the kind of complexity captured in Keynes’s words above. Fortunately, complex systems theory and international economics theory have both made some progress since those dark days. Although we are still far from having a genuinely complete theory of complex economic systems, efforts are underway that have already borne some interesting fruit in several, albeit limited areas. The present endeavour can be seen as a modest step towards understanding some facets of complex open economies with financial systems. I have tried to orient my study methodologically in such a way that both the possibilities of inductive logic and deductions from principles can be fully utilized. It is important to stress the ‘realist’ methodology implicit in this effort. The concrete ‘facts’ are understood to be theory-laden. However, correct theoretical terms are taken to be precisely those that approximate to the real structure and dynamics of the global economy. In causal terms, complex causal structures can be inferred to the best of our ability by using the conceptual, modelling and econometric techniques available to us at present. Given advances in theory and techniques in the future, our knowledge of the underlying causal relations is likely to improve.