What is it about?
Macroprudential regimes, introduced by G20 governments after the financial crisis of 2008, are supposed to govern and regulate financial systems as a whole. However this regime building process has had little in the way of an accompanying vision of the form desirable financial systems should take. A variety of professional, institutional and political barriers explain the failure to build and communicate a sense of social purpose macroprudential regimes should serve and promote.
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Why is it important?
The question of what macroprudential policy is supposed to do and what kinds of financial systems it is supposed to produce and the purpose they should serve has been neglected. Macroprudential regime building is beset by a lack of clarity in relation to its objectives and purpose. This paper provides an explanation of why policy actors in this new policy field have found this task so difficult. It revisits and rehabilitates the concept of social purpose in the study of International Political Economy and explains the modest nature of financial reform after the crisis in terms of the neglect of questions of social purpose.
Perspectives
This article is a study of how expert policy actors use economic ideas and frames to make sense of the financial world, but also how those ideas have implications for what is morally and ethically desirable . The connection between the two is often overlooked or not made. When policy makers being to think in terms of systems, rather than individuals, it brings within reach a vision of the collective good. The problem is that articulating a vision of the collective good is an intellectually and politically demanding task, that many contemporary policy actors are reluctant to undertake. It is this process that has impeded and constrained financial reform since the financial crisis, and has meant those reform processes have lacked any systemic vision of the desirable or good financial system.
Andrew Baker
University of Sheffield
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Macroprudential regimes and the politics of social purpose, Review of International Political Economy, May 2018, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2018.1459780.
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