Robert W. Cox.

Biography

Cox was a Canadian historian and theorist of international relations, a professor at York University and a former official of the International Labour Organization. His thinking profoundly reshaped international political economy through a historical perspective influenced by Antonio Gramsci.

In Social Forces, States and World Orders (1981), he formulated a fundamental distinction between theories aimed at solving problems within the existing order and critical theory, which questions the historical formation of that order. His book Production, Power, and World Order (1987) articulates the relationships between production, social forces, forms of state and world order.