Transnational class formation and concepts of control: notes towards a genealogy of the Amsterdam Project in International Political Economy

International political economy (IPE) has been enriched, since the late 1970s, by flourishing numbers of critical approaches. The contributions during the 1980s and 1990s to this literature by some members of the Department of International Relations at the University of Amsterdam occupy a distinct position. This article presents an attempt to construct a genealogy (or perhaps an intellectual autobiography) of what is called in this issue the Amsterdam Project (AP) in IPE. It traces the thinking in the group from the early critique on functionalist, federalist and Marxist explanations of European integration, through the development of the theory of capital fractions and transnational class formation, to the reception of Gramscian approaches. Finally, the article sketches the contours of the AP's distinctive theory of global neo-liberalism and its implicit research agenda for the coming years. © 2004 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.