Everyday Legitimacy and International Financial Orders: The Social Sources of Imperialism and Hegemony in Global Finance
2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 12; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/13563460601068453
ISSN1469-9923
Autores Tópico(s)Global Financial Crisis and Policies
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size My thanks go to three NPE reviewers for their detailed and insightful criticisms. Thanks also go to Mark Blyth, John M. Hobson and Peter Katzenstein for conversations about the material in this article, and to Arthur Mühlen-Schulte and Shogo Suzuki for their feedback on drafts. My special thanks go to André Broome for his extensive feedback on earlier drafts. Notes 1. Some of the leading works here are: Layna Mosley, Global Capital and National Governments (Cambridge University Press, 2003); Daniel Verdier, Moving Money: Banking and Finance in the Industrialized World (Cambridge University Press, 2002); Adam Harmes, Unseen Power: How Mutual Funds Threaten the Political and Economic Wealth of Nations (Stoddart, 2001). 2. Randall D. Germain, The International Organization of Credit: States and Global Finance in the World Economy (Cambridge University Press, 1997); Paul Langley, World Financial Orders: An Historical International Political Economy (Routledge, 2002). 3. Leonard Seabrooke, The Social Sources of Financial Power: Domestic Legitimacy and International Financial Orders (Cornell University Press, 2006). See also Paul Langley, 'Everyday Investor Subjects and Global Financial Change: The Rise of Anglo-American Mass Investment', in John M. Hobson & Leonard Seabrooke (eds), Everyday Politics of the World Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2007, forthcoming). 4. Kenneth A. Schultz & Barry R. Weingast, 'The Democratic Advantage: Institutional Foundations of Financial Power in International Competition', International Organization, Vol. 57, No. 1 (2003), pp. 3–42. 5. Famously, Stephen Gill, American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission (Cambridge University Press, 1990); and, more recently, Adam David Morton, Unravelling Gramsci (Pluto Press, 2007, forthcoming). 6. See also Mlada Bukovansky, Legitimacy and Power Politics: The American and French Revolutions in International Political Culture (Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 48–9. 7. A review of this literature can be found in Leonard Seabrooke, 'Varieties of Economic Constructivism in Political Economy: Uncertain Times Call for Disparate Measures', Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 14, No. 2 (2007, forth coming). 8. See John M. Hobson & Leonard Seabrooke, 'Everyday IPE: Decentring the Discipline – Revitalising the Margins', in Hobson & Seabrooke (eds), Everyday Politics of the World Economy. Also Wesley W. Widmaier, Mark Blyth & Leonard Seabrooke, 'The Social Construction of Wars and Crises as Openings for Change', International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 4 (2007, forthcoming). 9. The literature on 'everyday' perspectives is expanding rapidly. A notable early contribution to the literature is Louise Amoore, Globalisation Contested: An International Political Economy of Work (Manchester University Press, 2002). See, recently, Hobson & Seabrooke (eds), Everyday Politics of the World Economy. 10. This view of legitimacy is informed to a large extent by David Beetham, The Legitimation of Power (Macmillan, 1991). For a study of how the concept of legitimacy is treated in political economy see Seabrooke, The Social Sources, ch. 2. 11. Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (Beacon Press, 1973). See also Christian Reus-Smit, 'International Crises of Legitimacy', International Politics, Vol. 44, No. 2 (2007, forthcoming). On 'legitimacy gaps' in crisis, see Leonard Seabrooke, 'Legitimacy Gaps in the World Economy: Explaining the Sources of the IMF's Legitimacy Crisis', International Politics, Vol. 44, No. 2 (2007, forthcoming). 12. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, Vol. I (University of California Press, 1978), p. 253. 13. Richard E. Baldwin & Phillipe Martin, Two Waves of Globalisation: Superficial Similarities, Fundamental Differences, NBER Working Paper No. 6904, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, 1999. 14. Although 'LIGs' is a sterile term, it is more appropriate than 'middle classes' or 'lower-middle classes' given how those terms are interpreted (contrast how they are used, for example, in the USA and the UK). While admittedly a tad clinical, 'LIGs' allows us to place a stronger focus on the construction of views and conventions on how the economy should work rather than using an established term with which we have clearly formed associations. 15. While some would argue that 'British' is more appropriate, the actors I investigate here, along with the character of the influence on the international financial order, are more appropriately described as English. 16. Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Vol. II: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1760–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 292. 17. James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in South East Asia (Yale University Press, 1976); James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (Yale University Press, 1985); Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet, The Power of Everyday Politics: How Vietnamese Peasants Transformed National Policy (Cornell University Press, 2005). While much of this literature is focused on peasantry, its key insights may be applied to other areas of inquiry, as demonstrated by Ted Hopf, Social Construction of International Politics: Identities and Foreign Policies, Moscow 1955 and 1999 (Cornell University Press, 2002). 18. Elsewhere I apply this notion to work, leisure, and housing conventions in 1920s Britain. See Leonard Seabrooke, 'The Everyday Social Sources of Economic Crises: From "Great Frustrations" to "Great Revelations" in Interwar Britain', International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 4 (2007, forthcoming). 19. For example, Barker argues that non-payment of the poll tax cut across socioeconomic boundaries and involved 'passive resistance by nearly a quarter of the population'. See Rodney Barker, 'Legitimacy in the United Kingdom: Scotland and the Poll Tax', British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 22, No. 4 (1992), pp. 521–33. 20. Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet, Everyday Politics in the Philippines: Class and Status Relations in a Central Luzon Village (University of California Press, 1990), p. 247. Such a view of everyday practices of legitimation provides a clear contrast with Gramscian views that highlight the construction of consent by elites through everyday activities. See for example, Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (International Publishers, 1971), p. 266, and Vicki Birchfield, 'Contesting the Hegemony of Market Ideology: Gramsci's "Good Sense" and Polanyi's "Double Movement"', Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1999), p. 42. 21. For more on this see Seabrooke, The Social Sources, pp. 44–7, and also Leonard Seabrooke & Ole Jacob Sending, Norms as Doing Things vs. Norms as Things to Do: Reason and Strategic Action in World Politics, mimeo, International Center for Business and Politics, Copenhagen Business School, August 2006. 22. Seabrooke, The Social Sources, ch. 8; see also Ole Jacob Sending, 'Constitution, Choice and Change: Some Problems with the "Logic of Appropriateness" and its Use in Constructivist Theory', European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 8, No. 4 (2002), pp. 443–70. 23. On mechanisms, see John L. Campbell, Institutional Change and Globalization (Princeton University Press, 2004), ch. 3. 24. Seabrooke, The Social Sources, pp. 14–5. 25. Max Weber, Staatssoziologie (Duncker & Humblot, 1956), p. 26. 26. Adolf Weber, Depositenbanken und Spekulationsbanken: Ein Vergleich deutschen und englischen Bankwesens (Duncker & Humblot, 1902), pp. 36–7. 27. Stanley Chapman, 'Characteristics of English Joint-stock Banking, 1826–1913', in Franz Bobasch & Hans Pohl (eds), Das Kreditwesen in der Neuzeit: Ein deutsch–britischer Vergleich (K. G. Saur, 1997), p. 59. 28. Avner Offer, Property and Politics, 1870–1914: Landownership, Law, Ideology and Urban Development in England (Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 141. 29. For the figures, see Seabrooke, The Social Sources, p. 59. 30. Michael Collins, 'Long Term Growth of the English Banking Sector and the Money Stock', Economic History Review, Vol. 36, No. 3 (1983), p. 376. 31. Edgar Jaffé, 'Die Konzentration des Bankwesens in England', Bank-Archiv: Zeitschrift für Bank- und Bank Börsenwesen, Vol. 4, No. 7 (1905), p. 104. 32. Seabrooke, The Social Sources, pp. 57n, 62–4. 33. Philip L. Cottrell, 'The Domestic Commercial Banks and the City of London, 1870–1939', in Youssef Cassis (ed.), Finance and Financiers in European History, 1880–1939 (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 43; Jaffé, 'Die Konzentration', p. 105. 34. Forrest H. Capie & Michael Collins, 'Industrial Lending by English Commercial Banks: Why Did Banks Refuse Loans?', Business History, Vol. 38, No. 1 (1996), p. 35. 35. Lance E. Davis & Robert E. Gallman, Evolving Financial Markets and International Capital Flows: Britain, the Americas, and Australia, 1865–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 134. 36. Seabrooke, The Social Sources, p. 79. 37. John M. Hobson, The Wealth of States: A Comparative Sociology of International Economic and Political Change (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 125. 38. Youssef Cassis, 'English Finance: Success and Controversy', in Jean J. Van Helten & Youssef Cassis (eds), Capitalism in a Mature Economy: Financial Institutions, Capital Exports and English Industry, 1870–1939 (Edward Elgar, 1990), p. 13. 39. See, more generally, Leonard Seabrooke, 'John A. Hobson as an Economic Sociologist', Economic Sociology, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2005), pp. 26–35. 40. See Bruce Murray, The People's Budget 1909–10: Lloyd George and Liberal Politics (Oxford University Press, 1980). 41. Theo Balderston, 'War Finance and Inflation in Britain and Germany, 1914–18', Economic History Review, Vol. 42, No. 2 (1989), p. 236. 42. George L. Bernstein, Liberalism and Liberal Politics in Edwardian England (Allen and Unwin, 1986), ch. 7. 43. As Lloyd George stated when addressing the Cabinet in 1919: 'We had promised them [the people] reforms, time and time again, but little has been done. We must give them now the conviction that this time we mean it, and we must give them the conviction quickly'. 44. The Times, 22 May 1908. 45. John Maynard Keynes considered housing as one area, 'obviously, beyond controversy', where the government could justify sustained public expenditure to satisfy a long unfulfilled social need and to boost aggregate demand. 46. Bernstein, Liberalism and Liberal Politics, p. 143. 47. Avner Offer, 'Ricardo's Paradox and the Movement of Rents in England, c. 1870–1910', Economic History Review, Vol. 33, No. 2 (1980), p. 243. 48. Financial Reform Association (Liverpool), 'How the Landlords Threw Their Burden on the People', Financial Reformer (1908), p. 6. 49. Offer, Property and Politics, p. 114. 50. Tom Nicholas, 'Businessmen and Land Ownership in the Late Nineteenth Century', Economic History Review, Vol. 52, No. 1 (1999), pp. 41–3. 51. John H. Clapham, The Bank of England: A History, Vols I & II (Cambridge University Press, 1944), pp. 400–1. 52. Although rejections to it did spark calls from other powers for international financial regulation that would prevent the use of force. Seabrooke, The Social Sources, pp. 183–5. 53. Michael D. Bordo, Barry Eichengreen & Jongwoo Ki, Was There Really an Earlier Period of International Financial Integration Comparable to Today?, NBER Working Paper No. 6738, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1998, p. 17. On blacklisting in the modern period, see Jason Sharman, Havens in a Storm: The Struggle for Global Tax Regulation (Cornell University Press, 2006). 54. Mann, The Sources of Social Power, pp. 292, 583. 55. Most famously, Robert Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton University Press, 1987), and Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton University Press, 1984). 56. Susan Strange, 'The Persistent Myth of Lost Hegemony', International Organization, Vol. 41, No. 4 (1987), pp. 551–74. Also Eric Helleiner, States and the Reemergence of Global Finance (Cornell University Press, 1995). My own belated attempt here was Leonard Seabrooke, U.S. Power in International Finance: The Victory of Dividends (Palgrave, 2001). 57. Susan Strange, Casino Capitalism (Basil Blackwell, 1986). 58. For example, Linda Weiss, 'State Power and the Asian Crisis', New Political Economy, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1999), p. 331. 59. See, in particular, Jacob S. Hacker, The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States (Cambridge University Press, 2002). 60. For example, Andrew Glyn, Capitalism Unleashed: Finance, Globalization, and Welfare (Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 168. 61. See Monica Prasad, The Politics of Free Markets: The Rise of Neoliberal Economic Policies in Britain, France, Germany and the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 45–6. See also Mark Blyth, Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 167–70. 62. Gerard Epstein, 'The Triple Debt Crisis', World Policy Journal, Vol. 2, No. 4 (1985), p. 633. 63. The Garn–St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982. 64. Seabrooke, U.S. Power, pp. 119–20. 65. Benjamin J. Cohen, In Whose Interest? International Banking and American Foreign Policy (Yale University Press, 1986), p. 40. 66. See, more generally, Paul Langley, 'Securitising Suburbia: The Transformation of Anglo-American Mortgage Finance', Competition & Change, Vol. 10, No. 3 (2006), pp. 283–99. 67. Campbell, Institutional Change, p. 161. 68. Martin Lowy, High Rollers: Inside the Savings and Loans Debacle (Praeger, 1991), pp. 132–3. 69. Seabrooke, The Social Sources, p. 121. 70. Eugene Steuerle, 'Tax Policy from 1990 to 2001', paper presented at Conference on American Economic Policy in the 1990s, Center for Business and Government, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, June 2001, pp. 6–7. 71. Ann Meyerson, 'The Changing Structure of Housing Finance in the United States', in Sarah Rosenberry & Chester Hartman (eds), Housing Issues of the 1990s (Praeger, 1989), pp. 164–5. 72. Seth Borgos, 'Low-income Home Ownership and the ACORN Squatters Campaign', in Rachel G. Bratt, Chester Hartman & Ann Meyerson (eds), Critical Perspectives on Housing (Temple University Press, 1986), pp. 428–9, 445; Mara S. Sidney, Unfair Housing: How National Policy Shapes Community Action (University Press of Kansas, 2003), pp. 84, 116. 73. The Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989. 74. Seabrooke, The Social Sources, p. 119. 75. The status of these agencies can be referred to as quasi-public or public. Ginnie Mae is owned by the US government, and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are sponsored by the US government, although publicly traded companies. The key distinction between them is that Fannie and Freddie also buy mortgages from financial institutions in addition to providing a 'pass through' securitisation service. While these agencies, along with the 'wholesale' Federal Home Loan Banks, go by the anodyne name 'government sponsored enterprises', 'Federal Mortgage Agency' provides a much clearer understanding of their role and purpose. 76. Patric H. Hendershott, 'Housing Finance in the United States', in Yukio Noguchi & James M. Poterba (eds), Housing Markets in the United States and Japan (University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 70. 77. The Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1991. 78. Seabrooke, The Social Sources, p. 133. 79. Ibid., p. 138. 80. Ibid., pp. 123–4. 81. Nearly a third of investment in FMAs in 1999 was from foreign investors, mainly Japanese and Chinese. 82. Of course some caution is required here. I explore why in Leonard Seabrooke, 'The Political Cost of Property Booms', Comparative European Politics, Vol. 5 (2007, forthcoming). 83. See, related to this, Nancy C. Jurik, Bootstrap Dreams: U.S. Microenterprise Development in an Era of Welfare Reform (Cornell University Press, 2005). 84. Seabrooke, The Social Sources, pp. 129–31. This did not, however, address the broader serious problem of sub-prime lending from pawnbrokers and 'cash loans' businesses frequently used by the poor in the USA. 85. Jeffrey M. Lacker, 'Neighborhoods and Banking', Economic Quarterly, Vol. 81, No. 2 (1995), p. 24. 86. Martin D. Abravanel & Mary K. Cunningham, How Much Do We Know? Public Awareness of the Nation's Fair Housing Laws (The Urban Institute, 2002). 87. 'NCRC Reiterates Support for Presidential Veto of Banking Bill', U.S. Newswire, November 1999. 88. Bill Bassett & Tom Brady, What Drives the Persistent Competitiveness of Small Banks, unpublished study, U.S. Federal Reserve, Washington, DC, May 2002, pp. 32–35, Charts 2–6. 89. Donald MacKenzie, 'Opening the Black Boxes of Global Finance', Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 12, No. 4 (2005), pp. 555–76. 90. G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars (Princeton University Press, 2001). 91. Stephen R. Gill & David Law, 'Global Hegemony and the Structural Power of Capital', International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 4 (1989), pp. 475–99. 92. Thomas Oatley & Robert Nabors, 'Redistributive Cooperation: Market Failures, Wealth Transfers and the Basle Accord', International Organization, Vol. 52, No. 1 (1998), pp. 37–41. See also Leonard Seabrooke, 'Global Monitor: The Bank for International Settlements', New Political Economy, Vol. 11, No. 1 (2006), pp. 141–9. 93. This is not to suggest, however, that the international financial order of the late twentieth century was 'better' or 'kinder', but merely to identify how its characteristics differed from the previous period of financial globalisation. 94. See, for example, Andrew Baker, 'American Power and the Dollar: The Constraints of Technical Authority and Declaratory Policy in the 1990s', New Political Economy, Vol. 11, No. 1 (2006), pp. 23–46. 95. Louis W. Pauly, Who Elected the Bankers? Surveillance and Control in the World Economy (Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 41, 129. 96. J. Lawrence Broz & Michael Brewster Hawes, 'Congressional Politics of Financing the International Monetary Fund', International Organization, Vol. 60, No. 2 (2006), pp. 367–99. 97. Randall D. Germain, 'Global Financial Governance and the Problem of Inclusion', Global Governance, Vol. 7, No. 4 (2001), pp. 411–26. 98. Jacqueline Best, The Limits of Transparency: Ambiguity and Reason in International Finance (Cornell University Press, 2005). 99. Timothy J. Sinclair, The New Masters of Capital: American Bond Rating Agencies and the Politics of Creditworthiness (Cornell University Press, 2005), p. 147. 100. Mosley, Global Capital, p. 108. 101. Leonard Seabrooke, 'Civilizing Global Capital Markets: Room to Groove?', in Brett Bowden & Leonard Seabrooke (eds), Global Standards of Market Civilization (Routledge, 2006), pp. 146–60. 102. Prasad, Politics of Free Markets, p. 280. 103. See Merové Gijsberts, 'The Legitimation of Income Inequality in State-Socialist and Market Societies', Acta Sociologica, Vol. 45, No. 4 (2002), pp. 269–85. Also Glyn, Capitalism Unleashed, p. 177. 104. Seabrooke, The Social Sources, pp. 206–13. 105. See Leonard Seabrooke, 'The Economic Taproot of US Imperialism: The Bush Rentier Shift', International Politics, Vol. 41, No. 3 (2004), pp. 293–318.
Referência(s)