Robert Warburton CoxCM (1926 – October 9, 2018) was aCanadian scholar ofInternational Political Economy and a formerUnited Nations officer. He was cited as one of the intellectual leaders, along withSusan Strange, of theBritish School International Political Economy^[1] and was still active as a scholar after his formal retirement, writing and giving occasional lectures. He wasprofessor emeritus of political science and social and political thought atYork University.

He started work at theInternational Labour Organization inGeneva,Switzerland in 1947, eventually serving as director of their then independent International Institute for Labour Studies (1965–71). During his directorship he was appointed Professor at the University of Geneva'sGraduate Institute of International Studies which allowed him to hold seminars there and supervise Ph.D. students. Following his departure from the ILO he taught atColumbia University. From 1977 to 1992 he was professor of political science at York University in Toronto, Canada. He was made a member of theOrder of Canada in 2014.

Born inMontreal,Quebec, Cox graduated in 1946 fromMcGill University inMontreal, where he received a Master's degree in history. Following his graduation, he worked for theInternational Labour Organization (ILO), where he would remain for a quarter century, helping to set up and design the International Institute for Labor Studies.

In his academic career, Cox is known for his fierce independence and unwavering challenge of orthodoxy, as well as for his historical approach. While his initial scholarly contributions during his time atColumbia University were quite conventional and focused on international organizations, following from his experience in the ILO, he soon adopted a more radical perspective. During his time atYork University, he began to reassert himself in a historical manner, reflective of his previous training atMcGill University, which enabled him to take on more ambitious themes. Cox describes his academic interests as no less than understanding "the structures that underlie the world".^[2] Cox died on October 9, 2018.^[3]

• Universal Foreigner: The Individual and the World (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2014).
• Production, Power and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987).
• The Anatomy of Influence: Decision Making in International Organization (London: Yale University Press, 1973), with Harold K. Jacobson.

• Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations: An Essay in Method (1983)Millennium 12, no. 2.
• Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory (1981)Millennium 10, no. 2.

• The Political Economy of a Plural World: Critical Reflections on Power, Morals, and Civilization (London: Routledge, 2002), with Michael G. Schechter.
• Approaches to World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), withTimothy J. Sinclair.

• Interview with Robert Cox byTheory Talks
• Tributes to Robert W. Cox by Shannon Brincat

• 1926 births
• 2018 deaths
• Anglophone Quebec people
• Columbia University faculty
• McGill University alumni
• Members of the Order of Canada
• People from Montreal
• Academic staff of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata