Search

Begin New Search Political Geography Europe Publishing Institution Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)

31. The German Undervaluation Regime under Bretton Woods How Germany Became the Nightmare of the World Economy

Author:
Martin Höpner
Publication Date:
02-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
Germany is an undervaluation regime, a regime that steers economic behavior towards deterioration of the real exchange rate and thereby towards export surpluses. This regime has brought the eurozone to the brink of collapse. But it is much older than the euro. It was established during the Bretton Woods years and has survived all subsequent European currency orders. The regime operates in two steps: competitive disinflation against trading partners; and resistance against correcting revaluations. The Bretton Woods order provided perfect conditions for the establishment and perpetuation of the regime: it was flexible enough for sufficient macroeconomic policy autonomy to bring about differential inflation rates, and sticky enough to delay and minimize revaluations.
Topic:
Political Economy, Capitalism, Exchange Rate Policy, Inflation, and Undervaluation
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

32. Economic Discourse and the European Integration of Financial Infrastructures and Financial Markets

Author:
Troels Krarup
Publication Date:
06-2016
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
European integration of financial markets appears to repeatedly encounter specific kinds of problems about the substance and limits of the notion of “the market” undergoing integration, and about the status and role of money, market infrastructures, and government within it. Moreover, these problems and the controversies around them parallel classical discussions in economic theory such as that between conceptions of the market as a frictionless space and as a process of competition. A “competitive conception of the market” is identified as producing these parallel problems and controversies in European market integration and economic theory because it implies a contradictory “integration of fragmentation.” These themes and parallels can be specifically identified in a recent major project to integrate financial market infrastructures: a pan-European settlement platform – “Target2-Securities (T2S)” – to overcome existing fragmentation between the systems that perform the actual delivery of money and securities from financial transactions. Moreover, a close analysis of T2S answers a question that existing sociological and political economy approaches to European integration – focusing primarily on the interests and ideas of powerful players – struggle with: why T2S will become de facto a monopoly for the European Central Bank when early on in the integration process EU institutions emphasized an industry-led integration. Foucault’s notion of “discursive formation” is employed to conceptualize these arguments.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, Finance, Financial Markets, Economic Theory, and Michel Foucault
Political Geography:
Europe

33. A Relationship and a Practice: On the French Sociology of Credit

Author:
Laure Lacan and Jeanne Lazarus
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
This paper aims to describe the social studies of credit developed in France over the past dozen years. We argue that this French sociology of credit, mostly centered on France, can be useful for researchers analyzing other countries, with other institutional particularities, because it proposes a specific method and a specific way to raise questions: credit is mostly understood as a result of social interactions embedded in organizational and legal structures. French researchers also deeply analyze the consequences of the organization of the credit market for inequalities, social stratification, and people’s life experiences. The first part of the paper focuses on works that have examined credit as a social test, looking at the institutional, technical, and social frameworks of money lending. Then, credit is understood as a sociological experiment: how is it integrated into household economies? How do people use forms of credit? Finally, the third part concentrates on credit failure, when a bank loan becomes a debt. This aspect is mostly framed in French sociology as “over-indebtedness,” which is an administrative and a social category. Throughout the paper, we address credit as both a relationship and a practice. This approach is heuristic, as we seek to demonstrate, because it enables us to show that credit is a social and political issue.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, Sociology, Inequality, and Credit
Political Geography:
Europe and France

34. Politics in the Interest of Capital: A Not-So-Organized Combat

Author:
Cornelia Woll
Publication Date:
07-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
The rise in inequality has been explained with reference to organized groups and the lobbying of the financial sector. This article argues that the image of politics as organized combat is contradicted by empirical evidence on lobbying in the United States, and does not travel well to Europe. The power of finance does not operate through organized political influence. Rather, politics in the interest of capital unfolds as a structural feature of advanced economies over time. Tellingly, at the height of the financial crisis, one of the most promising strategies of institutions seeking government support was not organizing for combat, but collective inaction. Our challenge, then, is to explain how the power of finance has built up and is playing out in creating inequality. A more structural, less agency-focused perspective highlights how the rise of finance has been supported by actors that few would accuse of being finance-friendly, such as the European center-left parties and consumers. Reconceptualizing the power of finance has important implications for political solutions to rising inequality.
Topic:
Economics, Politics, Inequality, Finance, and Capital
Political Geography:
Europe

35. Governance by Labels

Author:
Henri Bergeron, Patrick Castel, and Dubuisson-Quellier
Publication Date:
08-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
Many of today’s public policies aimed directly or indirectly at regulating the behaviors of individuals and organizations provide for the implementation of a certain type of instrument which can be qualified as a label. They share some features with what the literature tends to identify as proper standards (e.g., they aim at defining the best practices, they may represent – at least – a symbolic resource for those who adopt them), but they also have some peculiarities, which we will present here. In this paper, we propose to analyze the characteristics and dynamics underpinning this mode of governance as part of a study of two particular public policy domains chosen for their complementarity as well as their contrasts: the fight against obesity, and sustainable consumption. In both of these fields, labels have become a preferred mode of governance – and even, we might say, a kind of standard. Based on Foucault (2004), we emphasize the fact that the logics of distinction, which regulate utilities and sanctions in a particular social field, are instrumentalized by public policy as an incentive to the actors to deliberately take action whose value is endorsed by a label. Hence, the aim and outcome of this mode of governance are not the uniformity of a field, but the ongoing creation of increasingly demanding labels that only some of the participants can hope to obtain.
Topic:
Governance, Regulation, Public Policy, Public Health, and Consumption
Political Geography:
Europe and France

36. Moral Categories in the Financial Crisis

Author:
Marion Fourcade, Philippe Steiner, Wolfgang Streeck, and Cornelia Woll
Publication Date:
06-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
Karl Marx observed long ago that all economic struggles invite moral struggles, or masquerade as such. The reverse may be true as well: deep moral-political conflicts may be waged through the manipulation of economic resources. Using the recent financial and Eurozone crises as empirical backgrounds, the four papers gathered here propose four different perspectives on the play of moral judgments in the economy, and call for broader and more systematic scholarly engagement with this issue. Focusing on executive compensation, bank bailouts, and the sovereign debt crisis, the symposium builds on a roundtable discussion held at the opening of the Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo) in Paris on November 29, 2012.
Topic:
Economics, Financial Crisis, Banking, and Sovereign Debt
Political Geography:
Europe

37. Transnational Civil Society and the Consumer-friendly Turn in Financial Regulation

Author:
Lisa Kastner
Publication Date:
08-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
Abstract:
The literature on financial regulation has typically emphasized the role of the powerful financial industry in shaping regulatory outcomes. However, capture theories cannot explain the prominence of financial consumer protection in post-crisis reform agendas. By contrast, this paper argues that, despite their collective action disadvantage, a polymorphous network of civil society organizations was able to gain momentum after the financial crisis and to influence the financial reform process. In this policy window, where decision-makers were looking out for an alternative source of expertise, a transnationally connected civil society network successfully raised the issue of consumer protection on reform agendas in tandem with public entrepreneurs and on the back of a popular backlash against big finance. This argument will be explored through a comparative study of the impact of transnational pressures on policy-makers in Europe and the US in the immediate aftermath of the crisis. In the conclusion, the paper discusses the substance of the financial reforms that have been undertaken.
Topic:
Civil Society, Economics, Regulation, and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe and United States of America