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The time-travelling political scientist stepping out of her time machine today, having started her journey even five years earlier, would be amazed and, no doubt, shocked by the world in which she found herself. What sense, if any, might she make of British politics after the vote for Brexit – and, indeed, of the politics which gave rise to it? And what does the answer to that question tell us about how the vote for Brexit happened, how it was allowed to happen, its wider implications (both political and economic), and the seismic changes in and through which British politics is currently being remade? In an inevitably prospective and necessarily provisional way I seek to reflect on the paradoxes of populism and neoliberal globalism that Brexit reveals as a way of drawing out a few of its implications for the conduct of British political analysis in a world in which Brexit could happen yet was essentially unforeseen.

That capitalisms vary and that these capitalisms neatly resolve themselves into distinct and discrete 'varieties of capitalism' is an almost foundational claim of contemporary comparative political economy. Yet it is far from evident that it is true. In this article, I return to the varieties conjecture, assessing the degree to which the claim might be warranted. In the process, I argue for the importance of differentiating clearly between ideal types and real types and for the value of heeding Weber's advice about the dangers of confusing one for the other. I suggest that although capitalisms do not really come in varieties it is sometimes useful to proceed on the basis that they do, particularly if we think of such varieties as potentially dystopic. I suggest that such an acknowledgement is crucial in sensitizing us to the potential biases of varietal thinking, drawing out the implications for the positing of capitalist varieties in the period after the global financial crisis.

THE AUTHOR COMMENTS ON THE BOOK, "THE STATE WE'RE IN," BY WILL HUTTON. HE OFFERS A CONSIDERATION OF HUTTON'S INTERPRETATION OF THE BRITISH STATE'S ARCANE INSTITUTIONAL AND CULTURAL INHERITANCE, THE DISTINCTIVE PATHOLOGIES OF THE THATCHERITE PROJECT, AND THE COMPETING NATIONAL MODELS OF CAPITALISM AGAINST WHICH BRITAIN'S STRUCTURAL COMPETITIVENESS MUST BE ASSESSED. IT CONCENTRATES ON HUTTON'S PROJECTION OF AN ALTERNATIVE FUTURE AND HIS STRATEGY FOR EFFECTING THE TRANSITION FROM HERE TO THERE.

A state-of-the-art assessment of welfare provision, policy and reform at national and at EU level which spans the whole of Europe - East, West and Central. Uniquely broad-ranging in scope, and covering the latest research findings and theoretical debates, it provides a genuinely comparative overview text for students of twenty-first-century Europe.

Globalization, within academic, political and business circles alike, conjures an ever growing diversity of associations, connotations and attendant mythologies. In this volume a distinguished array of international academics assess the contribution of the globalization thesis, in its various guises, to our understanding of social, political and economic change in contemporary societies. They expose, challenge and demystify many of the exaggerated and overgeneralized claims made about globalization, whilst developing a distinctive 'third wave' perspective on the world we inhabit and the processes currently reconfiguring it.

THE LABOR PARTY'S RECENT LANDSLIDE ELECTORAL VICTORY PRESENTS THE PARTY IN POWER WITH A RARE OPPORTUNITY TO REVITALIZE AND MODERNIZE BRITAIN'S AILING AND ANTIQUATED MANUFACTURING ECONOMY. THE AUTHORS CONCENTRATE ON POLICY PRIORITIES FOR THE EXPANSION OF MANUFACTURING CAPACITY AND THE REJUVENATION OF THE PRODUCTIVE ECONOMY THROUGH THE RESTORATION OF AN INDIGENOUS INVESTMENT ETHIC TO BRITISH CAPITALISM.

Taking stock of the numerous crises that have confronted Europe in the last decade, this special issue investigates the relationship between crisis and the politicisation of the process of European integration. It draws attention in so doing to the epistemic construction of crises. In this conceptual overview, we discuss first, how crises are framed and reframed in relation to the constitutive elements of a political community. Second, we explore the extent to which, and how, the emergence of different understandings of crisis and the ensuing frame competition between them contribute to such politicisation. By elucidating the link between the politics of a now seemingly permanent crisis in Europe and the politicisation of European integration, this introduction sets the framework informing all of the articles in this special issue.

Which blind spots shape scholarship in International Political Economy (IPE)? That question animates the contributions to a double special issue—one in the Review of International Political Economy, and a companion one in New Political Economy. The global financial crisis had seemed to vindicate broad-ranging IPE perspectives at the expense of narrow economics theories. Yet the tumultuous decade since then has confronted IPE scholars with rapidly-shifting global dynamics, many of which had remained underappreciated. We use the Blind Spots moniker in an attempt to push the topics covered here higher up the scholarly agenda—issues that range from institutionalized racism and misogyny to the rise of big tech, intensifying corporate power, expertise-dynamics in global governance, assetization, and climate change. Gendered and racial inequalities as blind spots have a particular charge. There has been a self-reinforcing correspondence between topics that have counted as important, people to whom they matter personally, and the latter's ability to build careers on them. In that sense, our mission is not only to highlight collective blind spots that may dull IPE's capacity to theorize the current moment. It is also a normative one—a form of disciplinary housekeeping to help correct both intellectual and professional entrenched biases.

Contemporary political economy is predicated on widely shared ideas and assumptions, some explicit but many implicit, about the past. Our aim in this Special Issue is to draw attention to, and to assess critically, these historical assumptions. In doing so, we hope to contribute to a political economy that is more attentive to the analytic assumptions on which it is premised, more aware of the potential oversights, biases, and omissions they contain, and more reflexive about the potential costs of these blind spots. This is an Introduction to one of two Special Issues that are being published simultaneously by New Political Economy and Review of International Political Economy reflecting on blind spots in international political economy. Together, these Special Issues seek to identify the key blind spots in the field and to make sense of how many scholars missed or misconstrued important dynamics that define contemporary capitalism and the other systems and sources of social inequality that characterise our present. This particular Special Issue pursues this goal by looking backwards, to the history of political economy and at the ways in which we have come to tell that history, in order to understand how we got to the present moment.