International Organisation Credit: States and Global Finance in the World-Economy (Cambridge Studies in International Relations)
Cambridge University Press, 1/12/2008
EAN 9780521598514, ISBN10: 0521598516
Paperback, 224 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm
Language: English
In this book, Randall Germain explores the international organization of credit in a changing world economy. At the centre of his analysis is the construction of successive international organisations of credit, built around principal financial centres (PFCs) and constituted by overlapping networks of credit institutions, mainly investment, commercial, and central banks. A critical historical approach to international political economy (IPE) allows Germain to stress both the multiple roles of finance within the world economy, and the centrality of financial practices and networks for the construction of monetary order. He argues that the private global credit system which replaced Bretton Woods is anchored unevenly across the world's three principal financial centres: New York, London, and Tokyo. This balance of power is irrevocably fragmented with respect to relations between states, and highly ambiguous in terms of how power is exercised between public authorities and private financial institutions.
List of figures and tables
Preface
Note on figures and tables
Glossary
1. Routes to international political economy
accounting for international monetary order
Part I. The International Organization of Credit in Historical Perspective
2. The power of cities and their limits
principal financial centres and international monetary order
3. Between change and continuity
reconstructing 'Bretton Woods'
Part II. The Contemporary International Organization of Credit
4. The era of decentralized globalization
5. Decentralized globalization and the exercise of public authority
6. Finance, power and the world-economy approach
towards an historical-institutional international political economy
Appendix
top merchant/investment banks, by city and era
References
Index.