This work advances geopolitical economy as a new approach to understanding the evolution of the capitalist world order and its 21st century form of multipolarity. Neither can be explained by recently dominant approaches such as U.S. hegemony or globalization: they treat the world economy as a seamless whole in which either no state matters or only one does. Today's BRICs and emerging economies are only the latest instances of state-led or combined development. Such development has a long history of repeatedly challenging the unevenness of capitalism and the international division of labour it...