How expectations became governable: institutional change and the performative power of central banks

Wansleben, Leon (2018) How expectations became governable: institutional change and the performative power of central banks. Theory and Society. ISSN 0304-2421

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Abstract

Central banks have accumulated unparalleled power over the conduct of macroeconomic policy. Key for this development was the articulation and differentiation of monetary policy as a distinct policy domain. While political economists emphasize the foundational institutional changes that enabled this development, recent performativity-studies focus on central bankers’ invention of expectation management techniques. In line with a few other works, this article aims to bring these two aspects together. The key argument is that, over the last few decades, central banks have identified different strategies to assume authority over “expectational politics” and reinforced dominant institutional forces within them. I introduce a comparative scheme to distinguish two different expectational governance regimes. My own empirical investigation focuses on a monetarist regime that emerged from corporatist contexts, where central banks enjoyed “embedded autonomy” and where commercial banks maintained conservative reserve management routines. I further argue that innovations towards inflation targeting took place in countries with non-existent or disintegrating corporatist structures and where central banks turned to finance to establish a different version of expectation coordination. A widespread adoption of this “financialized” expectational governance has been made possible by broader processes of institutional convergence that were supported by central bankers themselves.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://link.springer.com/journal/11186
Additional Information:	© 2018 The Author
Divisions:	Sociology
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HF Commerce H Social Sciences > HG Finance
JEL classification:	E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E5 - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E5 - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit > E58 - Central Banks and Their Policies
Date Deposited:	18 Dec 2018 12:37
Last Modified:	11 Dec 2024 21:46
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/91316

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