Suchergebnisse

This cumulative dissertation deals with different aspects of the political economy of financialization processes, which have been largely neglected by political science so far. It first considers the centrality of sovereign debt for financialization and analyses corresponding changes in public debt management across OECD countries under the umbrella of an increasing alignment along global financial markets. Secondly, the dissertation uncovers a trend of a common, but geographically unevenly spread trend of financialization throughout European regions as a development marked by the fundamental role of private debt. Lastly, it aims at making a contribution to the growing literatur on changes in banking by bringing forward an argument about the financialization of German savings banks as monetary financial institutions that are normally regarded as risk-averse.

This paper investigates the financialization of regions in the European Union. It zooms in on the regional level and provides and systemic and macrostructural analysis of the factors that account an increase in finance and insurance activities. Theoretically, the argument highlights the crucial importance of various forms of indebtedness as the social, economic and political relationship that constitutes financialization processes. Empirically, the paper stresses the subnational dimension and thus contributes to fill an important, yet largely underappreciated gap in the political economy of finance. In order to fully grasp the extent to which financialization has transformed capitalism throughout the last three decades, it seems indispensable to include regions into the analysis. By injecting geography into the political economic debate, the paper might animate future research and a renewed discussion on regional specificities.

Financial markets play an indispensable role in the management of sovereign debt, that is, the mechanics of how and from whom governments borrow. This paper suggests a novel, two-dimensional concept to measure the financialisation of sovereign debt management (SDM): (1) the reliance on financial markets as a governance mechanism and (2) the adoption of a sense-making framework grounded in financial economics. We split this concept into nine indicators and apply it to data from 23 OECD countries between 1980 and 2010. Our analysis illustrates the predominant commonalities across countries, but at the same time, country-specific differences. We interpret them as two sides of the same coin in the light of an overarching trend of increasing alignment to financial markets. This article is not only one of the first cross-national as well as longitudinal studies of the dynamics in SDM; it also reveals that the relationship between finance and governments in the SDM is by no means one-sided.