Finance and World Politics

Money has always been at the heart of international relations. United States monetary domination was the cornerstone of American hegemony in the post-war international political economy and a key factor in generating the long boom from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. The breakdown of that system, however, has opened the way for the revival of international 'high finance', based on floating exchange rates, financial market deregulation and information technology that can shift money around the world with a tap of a button. Focusing on the crucial role of finance in the international political economy from an international relations and political science perspective, Finance and World Politics analyses the economic and political reasons why financial markets have so rapidly become transnational. The book examines the breakdown of the old system, but chiefly concentrates on the problems of the new. Who will control international money in this new environment? Is domestic economic policy condemned to an 'embedded financial orthodoxy' of long term austerity punctuated by financial bubbles and panics? The contributors argue that as a result of these changes the possibility of any state exercising overall dominance and control, or hegemony, in the future has become negligible.

Finance and World Politics is one of the first books to address international finance directly from a political economy perspective, making it an invaluable tool for students and lecturers, as well as a significant contribution to policy debates taking place in both the public and private sectors.