Owen Worth is delivering a paper entitled ‘(Re)building the basics of Critical IPE at the  “Critical” in “Critical Political Economy”’ Conference, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, Thursday 20 – Friday 21 September 2012.  Stemming from the work of Robert Cox and his ground-breaking distinction between problem-solving and critical theory, ‘critical’ International Political economy (IPE) has made huge strides into enquiring about the nature of power and production within the global economy. Yet, in recent years the application of ‘critical’ has been compromised by a call for a wider, more general set of methods intended to break down the so-called ‘trans-Atlantic divide’ that exists within IPE (Cohen, 2008). This paper argues that now is the time to restate the importance and the commitments of critical IPE. Following on from recent work and collections (Bruff and Tepe, 2011; Shield, Bruff and MacCarthy, 2011) this paper argues that critical IPE must try and maintain two principles. Firstly, it must ground itself in its main commitments – that is toward the necessity of critique and the principle of emancipation or transformation – that have been argued elsewhere (Farrands and Worth, 2005). Secondly, it must seek to broaden its range of studies and create a thriving plurality that appeals more to the wider social science tradition as a whole. By doing this, the foundations of critical IPE can be reinvented so that it both upholds its commitments and invites greater innovation.