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The power of finance vis-à-vis the nonfinancial sector is changing. Macroeconomic developments and financial innovations have reduced financial actors' exit options, thus diminishing exit-based structural power. At the same time, shareholdings have become more concentrated in the hands of large asset managers, thus increasing control-based power. This article documents these trends, before examining whether asset managers wield their power and why, despite being universal shareholders, they have not steered corporate behavior toward decarbonization. Rather than assuming orderly, good-faith interactions between shareholders and managers, this article argues that in the United States today, political considerations govern the use of control-based power. Asset managers' corporate governance policies are subservient to the—increasingly inconsistent—goals of maximizing assets under management while avoiding regulatory backlash. Unlike exit-based power, control-based power is constrained by being highly visible and, therefore, easily politicized.

Financial upheaval and unconventional monetary policies have made money a salient political issue. This provides a rare opportunity to study the under-appreciated role of monetary trust in the politics of central bank legitimacy which, for the first time in decades, appears fragile. While research on central bank communication with "the markets" abounds, little is known about if and how central bankers speak to "the people." A closer look at the issue immediately reveals a paradox: while a central bank's legitimacy hinges on it being perceived as acting in line with the dominant folk theory of money, this theory accords poorly with how money actually works. How central banks cope with this ambiguity depends on the monetary situation. Using the Bundesbank and the European Central Bank as examples, this paper shows that under inflationary macro-economic conditions, central bankers willingly nourished the folk-theoretical notion of money as a quantity under the direct control of the central bank. By contrast, the Bank of England's recent refutation of the folk theory of money suggests that deflationary pressures and rapid monetary expansion have fundamentally altered the politics of monetary trust and central bank legitimacy. ; Die durch die Finanzkrise und die unkonventionellen Maßnahmen der Zentralbanken bewirkte Politisierung des Geldes erlaubt einen seltenen Einblick in den Zusammenhang zwischen Geldvertrauen und Zentralbanklegitimität. Die Kommunikation von Zentralbanken mit der breiten Öffentlichkeit - im Gegensatz zur gut erforschten Kommunikation mit Finanzmärkten bisher weitgehend vernachlässigt - sieht sich mit einem Dilemma konfrontiert. Einerseits hängt die Legitimität der Zentralbank davon ab, ob ihr Handeln den Maximen entspricht, die sich aus der in der Öffentlichkeit vorherrschenden Theorie des Geldes ableiten. Andererseits weicht diese Theorie in wichtigen Punkten von der tatsächlichen Funktionsweise des Geldsystems ab. Wie Zentralbanken mit diesem Dilemma umgehen, hängt von der allgemeinen geldpolitischen Situation ab. Anhand der Beispiele der Deutschen Bundesbank und der Europäischen Zentralbank wird argumentiert, dass Zentralbanker unter inflationären Bedingungen die Öffentlichkeit gerne in dem Glauben lassen, die Geldmenge sei vollständig von der Zentralbank kontrolliert. Die außergewöhnliche Initiative der Bank of England, die Öffentlichkeit von der Irrtümlichkeit dieser Vorstellung zu überzeugen, zeigt hingegen, dass deflationärer Druck und rapide geldpolitische Expansion das diskursive Verhältnis zwischen Geldvertrauen und Zentralbanklegitimität grundlegend verändert haben.

Heike Buchter: BlackRock: Eine heimliche Weltmacht greift nach unserem Geld. Frankfurt am Main: Campus 2015. 9783593504582

Research Highlights and Abstract This article contributes to the literature on ideational and institutional change at critical junctures more generally, and in the context of economic crises in particular. In the context of explosive economic crises critical junctures should be conceptualised as consisting of two distinct phases—a phase of emergency crisis management and a subsequent phase of purposeful institution building. The analytical significance of the crisis management phase lies in its tendency to create path dependencies for subsequent ideational entrepreneurs and institution building efforts. Crisis management is always 'bricolage'. However, in order to understand why certain tools are 'at hand' during a crisis, one needs to take into account the variable of crisis preparedness. Contingency planning for non-normal times is a constitutive aspect of any economic policy paradigm. The empirical analysis shows that the euro area's lack of preparedness caused the ECB to assume a dominant position during the emergency phase of the crisis. This windfall gain in power for the ECB has already begun to shape the future institutional architecture of the EMU. Focusing on the experience of the euro area in general, and the ECB in particular, this article argues that in the context of explosive financial crises a phase of emergency crisis management precedes the phase of purposeful institution building. Importantly for our understanding of policy change, crisis management measures create their own path dependencies. However, albeit often improvised, crisis management decisions are not entirely contingent. The article therefore introduces the notion of preparedness, which measures the extent to which the pre-crisis policy paradigm was prepared for the joint occurrence of, in this case, a systemic banking crisis and a sovereign debt crisis. The analysis shows that the Euro area's lack of preparedness caused the ECB to assume a dominant position in the euro area during the emergency phase of the crisis. This windfall gain in power for the ECB has already begun to shape the future institutional architecture of the EMU.

"Capital Claims: Power and Global Finance analyzes how global financialized capitalism operates and reproduces itself, exploring the remarkable ability of the financial sector to maintain its dominance through even the most severe economic crises. The book defines international financialization as a process by which the number and value, the tradability, and the enforceability of cross-border financial claims increases and is successfully defended against competing social or political agendas. By focusing on financial claims, the volume develops a conceptual toolkit for the study of the political economy of global finance and the inequalities it sustains. The book brings together leading researchers whose work is geared towards opening the black box of cross-border finance. The authors suggest shifting the analytical focus from capital flows to capital claims - credit-debt relations between identifiable actors, embedded in social and political institutions, and infused with power and hierarchy. They show how financial actors wield leverage power, infrastructural power, and enforcement power, both vis-à-vis other private actors and vis-à-vis the state. This book will be of great interest to students, teachers, and researchers of international political economy, critical political economy, and international relations, as well as those in the fields of finance, capitalism studies, activism, policymaking, and advocacy"--

"Capital Claims: Power and Global Finance analyzes how global financialized capitalism operates and reproduces itself, exploring the remarkable ability of the financial sector to maintain its dominance through even the most severe economic crises. The book defines international financialization as a process by which the number and value, the tradability, and the enforceability of cross-border financial claims increases and is successfully defended against competing social or political agendas. By focusing on financial claims, the volume develops a conceptual toolkit for the study of the political economy of global finance and the inequalities it sustains. The book brings together leading researchers whose work is geared towards opening the black box of cross-border finance. The authors suggest shifting the analytical focus from capital flows to capital claims - credit-debt relations between identifiable actors, embedded in social and political institutions, and infused with power and hierarchy. They show how financial actors wield leverage power, infrastructural power, and enforcement power, both vis-à-vis other private actors and vis-à-vis the state. This book will be of great interest to students, teachers, and researchers of international political economy, critical political economy, and international relations, as well as those in the fields of finance, capitalism studies, activism, policymaking, and advocacy"--

This paper argues that Capital Markets Union - the EU's attempt to establish a more marketbased financial system - is a result less of financial policymaking than of macroeconomic governance in a politically fractured polity. The current governance structure of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) severely limits the capacity of both national and supranational actors to provide a core public good, macroeconomic stabilization. While member states have institutionalized fiscal austerity and abandoned other macroeconomic levers, the European polity lacks the fiscal resources necessary to achieve stable macroeconomic conditions: smoothing the business cycle, ensuring growth and job creation, and mitigating the impact of asymmetric output shocks on consumption. Capital Markets Union, we argue, is an attempt by European policymakers to devise a financial fix for this structural capacity gap. Using its regulatory powers, the European Commission, supported by the European Central Bank (ECB), seeks to harness private financial markets and instruments to provide the public policy good of macroeconomic stabilization. We trace how technocrats, think tanks, and financial-sector lobbyists, through the strategic use of knowledge and expertise, established securitization and market-based finance as solutions to EMU's governance problems. ; Woher rührt das politische Streben in Brüssel nach einer Kapitalmarktunion und damit nach einem stärker marktbasierten europäischen Finanzsystem? Dieser Aufsatz legt dar, dass es sich nicht in erster Linie um ein finanzmarktpolitisches Projekt handelt, sondern um ein Projekt makroökonomischer Steuerungspolitik innerhalb eines fragmentierten Mehrebenensystems. Die Struktur der Europäischen Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion (EWU) beschneidet Steuerungskapazitäten auf der nationalen Ebene, ohne sie auf der supranationalen Ebene zu stärken. National verordnete fiskalische Austerität in Kombination mit dem Verlust anderer Steuerungshebel haben in der Eurozone ein institutionelles Umfeld geschaffen, in dem die notwendigen fiskalischen Ressourcen zur Gewährleistung stabiler makroökonomischer Bedingungen fehlen - allen voran Konjunkturglättung und Wachstumsförderung. Das Projekt Kapitalmarktunion, so unser zentrales Argument, ist der Versuch europäischer Entscheidungsträger, diese strukturelle Kapazitätslücke mit den zur Verfügung stehenden regulativen Mitteln zu füllen. Konkret versucht die Europäische Kommission, unterstützt durch die Europäische Zentralbank, das öffentliche Gut makroökonomischer Stabilität über den Umweg privater Finanzmärkte und Finanzinstrumente zu erreichen. Im Rahmen einer detaillierten Prozessanalyse zeichnen wir nach, wie Technokraten, Think Tanks und Finanzlobbyisten Wissen und Expertise mobilisierten, um Kreditverbriefung und marktbasierte Finanzierung als Lösungen für die Steuerungsdefizite der EWU zu etablieren.