just as liberalism was a response to realism, economic structuralism is in many respects a response to liberalism. Economic structuralism is more consciously normative than realism or liberalism, although it also makes important analytical contributions. Like liberalism,economic structuralism first arose as a theory of domestic politics and only later was applied to questions of international politics. Economic structuralism has its roots in the critique of liberal capitalism leveled by Karl Marx, but the label "economic structuralism" is used both because it more clearly describes the theory itself and because there are other, equally Marxist theories that will not be covered here.