Markwell's contributions to international relations are in the tradition of the so-called English school of international relations theory, and specifically of Hedley Bull, but with an added emphasis on economic determinants of order in the international society of states. His study of "Keynes and Australia" traces the links between Keynes and Australia, from Keynes's opposition to the approach of William Morris Hughes to reparations after World War I, through the early impact in Australia of Keynesian ideas in the 1930s and 1940s, to the role of Australia in the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank at Bretton Woods in 1944.