Paudyn, Bartholomew 
ORCID: 0000-0001-8587-3799
(2013)
Credit rating agencies and the sovereign debt crisis: performing the politics of creditworthiness through risk and uncertainty.
Review of International Political Economy, 20 (4).
pp. 788-818.
ISSN 0969-2290
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Abstract
As member states struggle to retain the investment grades necessary to allow them to finance their governmental operations at a reasonable cost, credit rating agencies (CRAs) have been blamed for exacerbating a procyclical bias which only makes this task more difficult. How CRAs contribute to the constitution of the politics of limits underpinning the European sovereign debt crisis is at the core of this article. As a socio-technical device of control, sovereign ratings are an ‘illocutionary' statement about budgetary health, which promotes an artificial fiscal normality. Subsequently, these austere politics of creditworthiness have ‘perlocutionary' effects, which seek to censure political discretion through normalizing risk techniques aligned with the self-systemic, and thereby self-regulating, logic of Anglo-American versions of capitalism. The ensuing antagonistic relationship between the programmatic/expertise and operational/politics dimensions of fiscal governance leaves Europe vulnerable to crisis and the renegotiation of how the ‘political' is established in the economy. New regulatory technical standards (RTS) can exacerbated the performative effects on CRAs, investors and member states.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Official URL: | http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rrip20/current |
| Additional Information: | © 2013 Taylor and Francis |
| Divisions: | International Relations |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory J Political Science > JA Political science (General) J Political Science > JZ International relations |
| Date Deposited: | 07 Oct 2014 09:18 |
| Last Modified: | 04 Apr 2024 21:57 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/59626 |
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