All at sea in a barbed wire canoe: Professor Cohen's transatlantic voyage in IPE

The following article is written as a sympathetic critique of Benjamin Cohen's recent identification in RIPE of incommensurable traditions of American and British IPE. It is also designed to engender further debate within the subject field on this most central of issues. Our argument is that scholars should beware the rigid terms in which Cohen identifies IPE's transatlantic divide, because simply by naming his two camps as polar opposites the invitation is open to others to entrench such an opposition in their own work. This would be regrettable enough had IPE already lapsed into the geographical division that Cohen describes. It is made more regrettable still by the fact that this is in any case an inaccurate account of the field which serves to marginalise much of the work that is currently at its cutting edge.