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Central Bank Independence
... Clear definition of the competencies needed for a particular type of work in the industry and that particular time will provide high benefits to three parties, namely: 1) for companies, especially for the benefit of human resource development, 2) individuals who currently in the company, to recognize competency gaps that must be pursued, and 3) job seekers or prospective employees, to adjust to the competencies demanded of them [28]. ...
... Research conducted by Kuglin [29], to determine whether a company really has the competencies as needed, there are at least three criteria, namely: 1) the competencies possessed are able to gain access in various types of existing markets, 2) have a significant contribution to the benefit of the customer and the product or service produced, and 3) it is difficult to imitate even the closest competitor [30]. [28]believes that the competencies needed by someone can be obtained either through formal education or experience. Competence can even be used as a reference for a certain individual's behavior, namely how they carry out activities and make a response within the company, especially in the scope of work that is their responsibility [28].. ...
... [28]believes that the competencies needed by someone can be obtained either through formal education or experience. Competence can even be used as a reference for a certain individual's behavior, namely how they carry out activities and make a response within the company, especially in the scope of work that is their responsibility [28].. Even strengthening the company's strategy by using competencies is believed to be able to increase the company's flexibility in responding quickly to various business opportunities in the future [31]. ...
: The purpose of this study is to reveal employee competencies and compensation received by employees, as well as their implications for employee performance. This study was analyzed descriptively and verificatively through a survey method of 329 marketing managers in retail companies in Indonesia. The technique of data collection is done by indirect communication, through instruments in the form of questionnaires. Data were analyzed by weighted means score (WMS) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results showed that employee competency was good, but not optimal, indicated by the indicator of the employee's need for the company and the employee's priority scale in the work was still weak. Furthermore, the compensation strategy is relatively good, indicated by indicators of salary/wages, incentives and cooperative facilities that are still weak. On the other hand, competencies and compensation strategies partially and simultaneously have positive and significant impact for employee performance which requires serious handling.
... As observers from different fields have remarked, from the ashes of the war and the repressed inflation, the D-mark and the German economy, against all predictions at the time, rose to international renown and the currency became a source of pride in a country where political nationalism was still unacceptable (see, e.g., Tognato 2012;Marsh 1992;Habermas 1991). The D-mark and its guardian became symbols of the societal break with the past. ...
... It was Erhard's model and it was intended to ensure close, often informal coordination and cooperation between the central bank and the government. However, in situations of insurmountable disagreements, the debate would have to be resolved in the public sphere (see, e.g., Bundesbank 1972; see alsoMee 2016;Berger and de Haan 1999;Bibow 2009;Tognato 2012). The BundesbankLaw cemented the practice of turning to the public in cases of conflict and created a dynamic in "which West Germans felt it only natural to embrace lessons from the interwar past to make their points"(Mee 2016: 400). ...
... the ECB's institutional form in several ways. The myth of the German hyperinflation is, for one, never far from the surface (seeLeaman 2001;Tognato 2012;Mee 2013Mee , 2017Schieritz 2013; Economist 2013). The work of this mythical narrative, as discussed in chapter 2, is to posit price stability as a fundamental condition for civilised societal life.Without it, all other values evaporate with it and something akin to a Hobbesian state of nature emerges in which there is no common yardstick of value, no settled notion of the Good. ...
This thesis analyses the idea of central bank independence, how it shaped the creation of the European Central Bank (ECB) and its management of the Euro Crisis. Based on a genealogical analysis, the thesis identifies the central normative commitments undergirding the insulation of monetary policy from ordinary democratic politics. It argues that central bank independence is an institutional response to the ‘problem of politics’ in relation to money: the problem that money is simultaneously founded on political authority and fundamentally threatened by the ordinary exercise of this authority. Central bank independence, then, constitutes a way of grounding the value of money politically while at the same time depoliticising its government. The form that central bank independence takes in practice, however, differs substantially, reflecting different ways of wedding the idea to broader constitutional imaginaries. Drawing comparisons to other major central banks, the thesis details the ECB’s form of independence and argues that the creation of the ECB not as a government agency (as the Fed) or a societal power on a par with the government (as the Bundesbank), but as a sovereign representative on a par with the Member States altered the constitutional make-up of the Eurozone. As the existential crisis of the euro shows, general tensions within central bank independence become irresolvable contradictions in this constitutional construct. Without institutional mechanisms for resolving them through ordinary politics, the emergency politics of the Euro Crisis placed the ECB centre-stage, engaged in the ‘higher lawmaking’ of changing the Eurozone’s constitution in order to save it. In doing so, however, the ECB redefined the meaning of its independence and reignited ‘the problem of politics’ by undermining its underlying social contract.
... Clear definition of the competencies needed for a particular type of work in the industry and that particular time will provide high benefits to three parties, namely: 1) for companies, especially for the benefit of human resource development, 2) individuals who currently in the company, to recognize competency gaps that must be pursued, and 3) job seekers or prospective employees, to adjust to the competencies demanded of them [28]. ...
... Research conducted by Kuglin [29], to determine whether a company really has the competencies as needed, there are at least three criteria, namely: 1) the competencies possessed are able to gain access in various types of existing markets, 2) have a significant contribution to the benefit of the customer and the product or service produced, and 3) it is difficult to imitate even the closest competitor [30]. [28]believes that the competencies needed by someone can be obtained either through formal education or experience. Competence can even be used as a reference for a certain individual's behavior, namely how they carry out activities and make a response within the company, especially in the scope of work that is their responsibility [28].. ...
... [28]believes that the competencies needed by someone can be obtained either through formal education or experience. Competence can even be used as a reference for a certain individual's behavior, namely how they carry out activities and make a response within the company, especially in the scope of work that is their responsibility [28].. Even strengthening the company's strategy by using competencies is believed to be able to increase the company's flexibility in responding quickly to various business opportunities in the future [31]. ...
The purpose of this study is to reveal employee competencies and compensation received by employees, as well as their implications for employee performance. This study was analyzed descriptively and verificatively through a survey method of 329 marketing managers in retail companies in Indonesia. The technique of data collection is done by indirect communication, through instruments in the form of questionnaires. Data were analyzed by weighted means score (WMS) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results showed that employee competency was good, but not optimal, indicated by The indicator of the employee's need for the company and the employee's priority scale in the work was still weak. Furthermore, the compensation strategy is relatively good, indicated by indicators of salary/wages, incentives and cooperative facilities that are still weak. On the other hand, competencies and compensation strategies partially and simultaneously have a positive and significant impact on employee performance which requires serious handling.
... As I hope to have demonstrated in this essay, if theories about theatrical and social dramas are mutually reflective, they are also substantively intertwined. The techniques and tools of aesthetic artifice enter deeply into the institutions and lifeworlds of contemporary society, into struggles for power and its vertical operation (Alexander, 2010) and into efforts to cut power down to size (Mast, 2012;Tognato, 2012). Democratic movements to control power cannot afford to be postdramatic. ...
... 3. For empirical cultural-sociological studies demonstrating the social dramatic in modern contexts, see Wagner-Pacifici (1986), Berezin (1997), Edles (1998), Cottle (2004), Reed (2007), Smith (2008), McCormick (2009), Goodman (2010, Eyerman (2011), Norton (2011, Gao (2011), Mast (2012, Tognato (2012), and Ringmar (2013). 4. In commenting upon Sophocles' Oedipus trilogy, Freud articulated the same fusion of textual figuration with audience in psychological terms: 'The poet is at the same time compelling us to recognize our inner minds, in which these same impulses though suppressed are to be found' (in Bennett, 1997: 36). 5. David Lodge (2004) ...
Avant-garde theatre is often invoked as the bellwether for a society that has become postdramatic - fragmented, alienated, and critical of efforts to create collectively shared meanings. A theatre whose sequenced actions have no narrative (so the story goes) mirrors a social world where the most conflictual situations no longer appear as drama but merely as spectacle: a society where audiences look on without any feeling or connection. Because only half right, these theses about postdramatic theatre and society are fundamentally wrong. As modern societies have expanded and differentiated, the elements that compose performances have become separated and often fragmented in both theatre and society. If they can be brought back together again, performances are viewed as authentic and meaningful. If (re)fusion cannot be achieved, performances fail to communicate meaning. The aim of this essay is to demonstrate that a shared ambition to (re)fuse fragmented performative elements has defined the most important strain of avant-garde theatre over the last two centuries. Most radical theatrical innovation has sought to open live drama back up to the telos of myth and ritual. Neither in theatre nor social life can the world transcend dramaturgy; it is fundamental to the search for meaning in a world beyond cosmological religion.
... Then, from the late 1980s onwards budget discipline emerged as the decisive policy proposal semantically connected to hyperinflation in the debates on European monetary integration. Alike the German press and the Bundesbank (Löffler 2010;Tognato 2012), the government leading CDU/CSU and the FDP repeatedly invoked not only the notion of stability culture but the memory and experience of hyperinflation to argue for stability-oriented monetary policy and like-minded fiscal policy. According to the prevalent line of argument, the monetary history of two hyperinflations engrained an overarching, nation-wide "sensitivity towards issues of inflation and currency", 89 a nation-wide culture of stability (cf. ...
The notion of a nation-specific inflation trauma among the German population is ubiquitous in the public debate in Germany and beyond. According to a widespread reading of history because of its experience with hyperinflation in 1923, the Germans not only fear rising prices but favor a stability-oriented monetary and fiscal policy. The historical origins of this contemporary understanding of the German inflation trauma are controversial. The majority of the literature presumes that a specific traumatic disposition persists since 1923, and as communicative memory has been transposed intergenerationally ( persistence thesis ). Others, however, point to a post-hoc reconstruction of past experiences, explaining it as a distinctly cultural memory that is largely detached from the first-hand experiences of 1923 ( reconstruction thesis ). By drawing on both methods of history and political sciences, we provide new insights on the question of origin. Specifically, we examine the remembrance of hyperinflation in personal memoirs and German Bundestag debates. Doing so, we find plausible support for the logic of reconstruction . We show that individual memories of hyperinflation were ambiguous and hardly ever provided explanations or specific policy lessons. Thus, personal memoirs do not provide any manifest testament for a communicative memory of the German inflation as understood by the persistence thesis. Furthermore, Bundestag speeches in the first decades of the Federal Republic indicate a contested communicative memory of 1923 with conflicting political lessons drawn from the historical experience. As only the Weimar memory transcended into the cultural realm from the 1980s onwards, a process of discursive alignment occurred resulting in the contemporary understanding of the inflation trauma. These findings rebut the persistence thesis and underscore the logic of reconstruction .
... Such a cultural theory of society would require substantial cultural sociological work on other (non-civil) spheres, which civil sphere theory only mentions in passing, such as the "state" or the "market", including theoretical models of their discourses and institutions. Steps towards a cultural sociological theory of the economy were made by Alexander (2011) andTognato (2012), who highlighted the cultural aspects of economic life and its institutions employing concepts such as "code", "narrative" and "performance". Recently, Klíma (2022) outlined the conception of a "gaming sphere", not only vis-à-vis the civil sphere, but also as an independent domain with its own cultural structures and social institutions. ...
While not particularly popular or well-known in anglophone sociology or even cultural sociology, there seems to be a renaissance of Luhmann’s work. This essay discusses three recent books on and from Luhmann, which cover the famous Habermas–Luhmann debate, give us a taste of what can been called Luhmann’s empirical cultural sociology and, finally, discuss his theory of society. I will place these books in the context of contemporary cultural sociology, with a focus on the strong program and civil sphere theory. There are a few things that cultural sociologists can learn from Luhmann’s work as well as from works on Luhmann—without having to become disciples ourselves. This includes also more general lessons about theorizing and how we should incorporate insights from other theoretical frameworks. I advocate a pragmatic and eclectic approach to Luhmann’s work, which needs to be rescued from the hands of his most orthodox followers. Finally, I urge my fellow cultural sociologists to follow Luhmann in his ambition to develop a fully-fledged theory of society. The last years have shown that a truly cultural sociology is possible—maybe the next years will show that a cultural sociological theory of society is possible too.
... There is no lack of evidence that cultural factors directly affect people's monetary habits, even within one country (Jost (2018), Henchoz et al (2019)). Cultural factors also influence the design of monetary policy institutions (Tognato (2012)). For example, a tendency towards individualism, a lower tendency towards hierarchies and uncertainty leads to a more likely choice in favour of a more independent central bank and lower inflation (de Jong (2002)). ...
Evolution of digital money demonstrates that CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency means a digital form of traditional fiat currencies) design is really challenging. While technically possible CBDC solutions are visible, much of institutional aspects are rest to be unsolved. One of the issues is a degree of privacy and anonymity. All historical forms of money had intrinsic property of non-traceability of transactions and only now this feature of non-digital money is recognized as strong institutional advance. At the same time, privacy and anonymity preferences could relate to cultural attitudes. However, money may distort expected logical relations between such patterns like “less hierarchies more privacy-anonymity” or “more egalitarianism less privacy-anonymity”. This potentially means that money may posit extra propensity to privacy-anonymity that is going beyond the cultural attitudes. Basing on the survey, we demonstrate some contradictions in how respondents perceive the preference of functional usability over anonymity of transactions. The same is relevant when cultural patterns are taken into account. It is more likely to find cultural closeness across respondents from different regions than strong determinacy of privacy-anonymity preferences by propensity to hierarchies or egalitarianism. Additionally, we checked hierarchies or egalitarianism attitudes by additional questions and found some mixed results. Also, we found some conformism culture (meaning unstable preferences) and rely it with lack of trust in public institutions. When centralized money are less trusted people faster agree to sacrifice anonymity in the benefits of functionality. The main take away is that it is unlikely to expect the unity of optimal CBDC design across countries. Aside of behavioural distortions, culture still matter and it is likely to expect future variety of digital money from functional usability privacy-anonymity trade-off.
... Similarly, cultural and intergovernmental approaches tend to ignore the roles played by central bankers. They see them constrained by the societies within which they are embedded(Tognato 2012;Howarth & Rommerskirchen 2013;Hayo 1998), or assume that the preferences of the Eurozone's major economies define ECB policies(Talani 2004; Puetter 2001: 12). ...
For all its powers, we know little about how the European Central Bank (ECB) makes its decisions and why. In light of its ever-increasing importance in European governance and the criticism this has attracted, this is particularly regrettable. Often a welcome scapegoat, the ECB has been accused of doing first too little, then too late. Compared to other major central banks, the ECB has indeed long been a laggard – regarding both conventional interest rate policies and unconventional balance sheet operations. Why? I argue that central bankers’ policy experiments after the financial crisis are a prime example of policymaking under conditions of Knightian uncertainty. Faced with an unprecedented situation, central bankers were unable to draw on historical experience and had to resort to their beliefs about how the economy works instead. Based on a survey among 422 central bank economists, I quantify these different ways of thinking. My survey data shows a) that certain beliefs matter for policy preferences and b) that both are unevenly distributed among central banks. In particular, the ECB leans more towards orthodox beliefs and hawkish inflation preferences than the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England. It is considerably more conservative. Within the Eurosystem, different national central banks are clustered regarding both beliefs and preferences, revealing a dividing line in economic philosophy between core and periphery. This suggests that the frequently surfacing conflicts inside the ECB’s Governing Council reflect a battle of ideas rather than a conflict of interests between creditor and debtor states. Proponents of activist monetary policy at the ECB had to overcome enormous resistance from within before they could follow the examples set by others. I argue that this is why the ECB first did too little to support the economy, and only changed its orthodox stance very late.
... Crucially, however, central bank legitimacy has a fourth, orthogonal dimension, which is both a precondition and a consequence of the other three -public trust in money. Since it tends to become visible only when it suddenly evaporates, trust in money has mostly been studied in the context of episodes of monetary disruption and contestation -the United States after the Civil War (Carruthers and Babb, 1996), the 'Rentenmark' and 'Poincar e miracles' (Orl ean, 2014: 166-70), postwar Germany (Tognato, 2012: 41-72), or Argentina in 2001(Muir, 2015. It is unsurprising that after decades of benign monetary conditions in advanced industrial economies -the so-called 'Great Moderation'scholars and policymakers had grown used to seeing central bank legitimacy as merely a matter of low inflation -i.e., output legitimacy -taking public trust in money for granted. ...
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 article shows that under inflationary macroeconomic 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.
... Independence is the most important element because transparency, accountability, and the communication channels become crucial only after granting independence to the central banks [21]. "Independent central banks, as a result, find it easier to keep inflation under control because their societies more willingly accept the sacrifices that come along with a tight monetary policy" [22]. The first attempt to evaluate central bank independence, the index was based on two pillars: political independence and financial independence measured only in 12 industrial countries which covered nine variables: final authority, the presence of the government representative in the central bank board, the degree in which the government appoints the board members, board members' number, board members' tenure, central bank governor's tenure, financial and fiscal independence, the authority which stipulates the check and balances of the board members, and the authority which determines the profit distribution Bade and Parkin [23]. ...
The very purpose of this study is to review the credibility of the Somali central bank: its independence, transparency, and accountability. The reason why, this study was conducted is that there was no previous study in its kind regarding the credibility of the central bank of Somalia by looking at its independence, transparency and accountability. The first objective of this study is to find out if central bank of Somalia is credible in terms of political, financial, and monetary policy independence. The second objective is to examine the types and degree of transparency and to settle ways to measure the transparency of the Somali central bank. The third objective is to find out if there are clear and well defined financial accountability structures in the central bank (CB) of Somalia. In this study, central bank independence (CBI), transparency, and accountability was measured to find out whether these elements can influence or possibly could have some positive effects on central bank credibility. The questionnaire used in this research is a self-administered dichotomous scale. Data was analyzed by using Statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) in descriptive statistics. The target population of this study was 32 respondents from the banking industry in Mogadishu. The result of this study became 55.78 mean averages with a Std. Dev. 5.235. The overall mean averages for a total of 30 questions became 1.859 and overall Std. Dev. 0.1745 which meant the result showed greater abnormality and data distribution positively skewed to the right. The central bank of Somalia has no independence.
... Another very insightful study regarding the important nature of central bank independence represents the studies of Carlo Tognato. Tognato (2012) highlights the symbolical performances of the cultural impact of central bank independence: " in the light of such challenges, understanding the link between legitimacy, public support and central bank independence may turn out to be a valuable asset. So far, scholars and practitioners have intuitively perceived that culture may have something to do with it and have even coined a concept – that of stability culture – to refer to that link….Stability cultures, in other words, are simply described as cultures conducive to macroeconomic stability…Independent central banks, as a result, find it easier to keep inflation under check, because their societies more willingly accept the sacrifices that come along with a tight monetary policy " (Tognato, 2012, p. 3). ...
Central bank independence represents the core element of assessing the complex relationship between government and central bank, having at background the fundamental issue of a free monetary policy decision-making process from the hands of the political circle. However, central bank independence is a multilevel concept within some social, economic and behavioral implications both for the central banks and for the society at whole. Central bank independence is needed in order to establish an autonomous central bank with a high degree of freedom in choosing its’ instruments, objectives, techniques and tactics. Moreover, a high degree of transparency for the public disclosure and monitoring of central bank operation and transaction is needed for the social barometer of the central bank. Consequently the central bank must have a high degree of accountability and responsibility vis - á - vis of the most democratic institution, i.e. Parliament. In this article it is presented a comprehensive study regarding the complex relationship between central bank independence and inflation by modeling these two monetary policy panacea, in order to make a fine tuning regarding the causal relationship established in a heterodox manner.
Social scientists have recently shown how markets are discursively constructed and have documented the role of central banks in these constructions. Although framed as a critique of the neoclassical economic view, this approach still operates within a narrow vision of the world as divided into distinct political, social and economic spheres. Our goal in this paper is to replace this view with an exchange-based understanding of agency and relationality. The puzzle of our paper is one that has captivated academics and practitioners alike: Why did the market respond so powerfully to the Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s quantitative easing in 2013? Our focus is on the proliferation within the market and wider society of ‘expectations’. A multiplicity of expectations, of different orders, different kinds, different scales, and different targets folded together to generate the efficacy of this event in central bank politics.
Nos adentramos en la historia de banco Central, para ver su evolución a nivel internacional. Luego esquematizaremos en términos generales la historia normativa del Banco Central de Chile y su configuración normativa actual. Con esto, intentaremos analizar el fundamento jurídico del Banco central, considerado la historia y práctica del Banco. Además, analizaremos críticamente la discusión de su diseño institucional, en especial su autonomía, como agencia administrativa para mostrar que esta ha dejado de lado el análisis de su funcionamiento interno y varios aspectos importantes del Banco, en especial como órgano limitador y su papel en la consecución política de sus objetivos. Por último, concluiremos con algunos desafíos que deja el análisis.
National Bank of Romania’s public communication changed, after 2008, mainly due to the intensification of nonmonetary communication, which eclipsed the communication of monetary policy objectives. The NBR was at the forefront of important public debates, that were not related to monetary policy objectives, but which attracted the attention of large audiences. These public debates such as the giving in payment law, the crisis of the Greek capital banks, and the Swiss francs credit crisis required more active public communication on behalf of the NBR, which was on an upward trend in transparency, but, at the same time, on a downward trend in terms of public confidence.This work paves the way for the entire research project, and defines the roles of all actors with an impact on NBR’s communication considered during qualitative and quantitative analysis—specialized public, general public, mass media, and the Parliament. The research model adapts the frames according to the “cascading network activation” model (Entman, Political Communication, 20(4):415–432, 2003), following the flow from the messages sent by the main actors—in this case, the NBR, but also the Parliament, the messages taken over by the elites, then by journalists, the framing of the news as it reaches the general public and then the reverse flow, in the defined post-crisis context.KeywordsCentral bankCommunicationResearch designFrameFinancial crisisNational Bank of Romania
Extreme market events cannot be understood without reference to the complex aspects of money and credit. National and international government and banking policies and politics and attitudes in response to economic conditions greatly affect business and personal balance sheets and income statements and incentives to save, spend, or invest. This chapter surveys ties between interest rates and market movements and focuses on the roles played by central banks and the effects of their policies.
The European Central Bank (ECB), like all European institutions, poses basic problems of definition and comparability. Mobilizing Bourdieusian field theory (BFT) to resolve them, we map out the ECB's deep investments in scientific prestige and scholarly productivity – that is, its hyper-scientization – and the ambiguities therein, and then set out to explain them. Mobilizing diverse sources that include official documents, on-site interviews, and comparative data, we argue that hyper-scientization is a field effect expressing the ECB's origins and cross-location in three worlds: financial institutions, professional economics, and European politics. We then trace out the signs and symptoms of cross-location. First, we trace the origins of the ECB's directorate for research, DGR, which differentiated the ECB from most other European central banks at the time of its founding. Thus invested, the ECB accelerated its scholarly activities in step with the internationalization and scientization of economics. But this also expressed the ECB's stake in European authority struggles: research exchanges are a means of building relationships with national central banks, which was especially crucial in the lead-up to the European Union's (EU) 2004 enlargement. We thus argue that there is more to the ECB than its independence and policy operations, and that some of its most striking features are best explained as effects of its multiple field locations.
During the global financial crisis, the Federal Reserve issued billions of dollars in liquidity swap agreements with foreign central banks, serving as a global lender of last resorts. Most studies of this event have analyzed the distribution of these swap lines using materially rational frameworks, which is logical under normal lending conditions. However, this approach does not account for the extensive evidence on social influences over decisions made under uncertainty. Meeting minutes from the Federal Reserve exhibit significant flexibility in recipient selection, and the content of these discussions suggest that social dynamics were important in members’ decision-making. This paper tests the effect of social similarity between foreign central banks and the Federal Reserve on the likelihood of receiving a swap line during the crisis. I introduce new measures of social similarity among central banks with data on employees’ professional ties and public speeches in the years preceding the global financial crisis. Statistical results show a positive, significant effect for social similarity on swap line receipt, even when tested alongside material predictors, and this social rationality appears to have been a deciding feature in some cases of swap distribution. I conclude with implications for future crises, and potential regulatory consequences.
Over the past decade, a community of strong program cultural sociologists has developed from Latin America against the background of local traditions in the study of culture that mostly have been influenced by Gramsci and Bourdieu. Here, we will provide an overview of this community—its members, sites of production, and recent publications which mark the leading edges of iconic power theory, cultural trauma theory, social performance theory, and civil sphere theory. In particular, we will try to flesh out how the members of this emerging community have gone about extending the horizon of strong program cultural sociology while seeking to maintain their tune with local intellectual sensibilities in the study of culture across the region.
Central banks’ commitment to public interest goes beyond monetary policy. A wide range of areas are under the control of central banks (price and financial stability, services for the economy, e.g., economic analysis, payments, financial education, customer protection); central banks also have specific responsibilities regarding external and internal stakeholders. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and stakeholder management (SM) should be under the care of management in central banks. The academic literature about central banking ignores these topics; some theoretical thoughts about this absence are presented. The chapter, following an initial explorative approach, tries to assess the attention paid to CSR in communication practices of central banks in the Eurosystem (ECB and NCBs) by applying text analysis tools to annual reports for the period 2006–2016. Our findings could make the degree of development of CSR communication practices visible and could generate some useful initial insights for designing CSR communication tools in central banks.
This symposium homes in on an area of public administration that has been through a period of significant change in the last ten years. Since the Global Financial Crisis, central banks have expanded their operations in financial markets, buying up vast quantities of assets as part of expansive monetary policy strategies. They have also played a leading role in the reform of financial regulations and been entrusted with enhanced authority to supervise financial institutions. This activity has taken place amid heightened political contestation, with central banks increasingly viewed as the quintessence of a technocratic mode of governance that eschews traditional democratic control. The purpose of this symposium is to consider how central banks' reputation, accountability and regulatory roles have changed since the financial crisis, and what those changes tell us about the balance of power between independent regulatory agencies and elected policymakers.
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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.
William McChesney Martin Jr., Fed Chairman from 1951 to 1970, famously said that “Our purpose is to lean against the winds of deflation or inflation, whichever way they are blowing, but we do not make those winds.” The statement is by now a hoary part of central banking’s conventional wisdom but it is inaccurate and misleading. As this chapter illustrates, central banks are not inherently independent of politics, they tend to be more reactive than proactive in their policies, they aren’t always clear and transparent in signaling intentions, strategies, and goals, and they have a proclivity toward blowing bubbles and a reluctance to restrain them. They don’t like to play the villain. There’s no way to understand extreme market events without understanding central bank’s histories, motivations, and procedures.
Zusammenfassung
Ziel des Beitrags ist eine systematisch-kritische Auswertung der einschlägigen sozialwissenschaftlichen Studien über Zentralbanken und Geldpolitik. Ausgangspunkt sind maßgebliche Entwicklungen moderner Geldpolitik in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Zentralbanken und die Makroökonomik zeichnen sie mit Stichworten wie politische Unabhängigkeit, Preisniveaustabilisierung und Transparenz aus und werten sie als Erfolg. Die sozialwissenschaftliche Erforschung dieser Phänomene, die diesem Fortschrittsnarrativ oftmals konfligiert, lässt sich in drei Perspektiven untergliedern: institutionalistische, kommunikationsanalytische und performativitätstheoretische Ansätze. Den Zusammenhang zwischen makroökonomischem Wissen und geldpolitischem Steuerungswissen verhandeln wir als tendenziellen Fluchtpunkt dieser Arbeiten. Als Desiderat der Forschung benennen wir eine präzisere Analyse der Transformation spezifischer Elemente akademisch-makroökonomischen Wissens zur Zentralbankpraxis.
Der Sammelband fragt nach den Konjunktionen von Finanzmarkt und den Krisen der modernen Gesellschaft, und zwar unter dem Aspekt von Öffentlichkeit beziehungsweise unterschiedlicher Finanzmarktpublika. Denn es sind insbesondere Öffentlichkeit und Publikumsstrukturen, in deren Wandel sich das Paradigmatische von Finanzmärkten für allgemeine Mechanismen der Integration, Kohäsion und Imagination moderner Gesellschaften zeigt. Finanzmarktpublika sind Szenerien der Konstitution der (Un-)Moralität der Finanzmärkte, Austragungsorte gesellschaftlicher und finanzökonomischer Krisen und zugleich Projektionsflächen nicht nur ökonomischer, sondern gesellschaftlicher Teilhabe. Solche Momente finanzmarktlicher Paradigmatizität werden auf der Grundlage konzeptioneller Überlegungen und empirischer Befunde zu Verhältnissen zwischen Operationsweisen von Finanzmärkten, der Konstitution von Öffentlichkeiten und der Strukturierung moderner Gesellschaften freigelegt und zur Diskussion gestellt.
Der Inhalt
• Finanzmarktpublika und Moralität
• Finanzmarkt-, Gesellschafts- und Repräsentationskrisen
• Finanzmarktpublika und imaginierte Teilhabe
Die Zielgruppen
Wirtschafts- und FinanzsoziologInnen
Die Herausgeber
Dr. Andreas Langenohl ist Professor für Soziologie mit Schwerpunkt Allgemeiner Gesellschaftsvergleich an der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen.
Dr. Dietmar J. Wetzel ist Seniorfellow am DFG Forschungskolleg „Postwachstumsgesellschaften“ und Privatdozent an der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität in Jena.
The sweeping diffusion of central bank independence (CBI) as an institutional norm in many countries over the course of the 1990s has attracted a lot of interest within the discipline of international political economy. Important strands within the literature have emphasised the role of ideas and of central bank institutions in the diffusion process, although not placing ultimate explanatory weight on central bankers’ actions and activities in order to explain differences in patterns of diffusion between countries. Norway represents an outlier in the diffusion process, not reforming its central bank legislation until 2003 – six years later than the United Kingdom. The article explores this late shift to CBI by building on an ideational approach, investigating whether Norwegian central bankers’ translation strategies and actions adds more explanatory value than the mainly structural arguments dominating the existing diffusion literature. The article finds that central bank action and changing strategies actually helps us a great deal explaining why Norwegian authorities chose to alter central bank legislation when they did.
Lifestyle migration is a complex phenomenon. There is no clear and precise theoretical model that is going to produce the sort of explanatory power that will help us understand all the facets of this modern-day movement. If we attempt to do so, such is the folly of macro social theory perhaps, we risk losing sight of the ‘other parts’ which O’Reilly (2012: 33) reminds us exist in most migration stories. As Favell (2008: 3) contests in his work on ‘Eurostars’, even concepts like freedom have distinct empirical flavours which different groups experience along the fractured social lines of norms, classes, statuses and other characteristics. In lifestyle migration, broad considerations of the movement usually couched as a middle-class quest for the better life, need to be mindful of the other end of the spectrum including gentrification of new areas (Moss 2006), consumer ethics and the visual appropriation of place (Van Auken 2010) and migration patterns of those low-paid ‘service’ workers who follow the wealthier for material and not lifestyle purposes (Nelson and Nelson 2011). Many of these faces of the movement are large enough to warrant not only their own research agendas but also their own theoretical footings.
Seit dem Ausbruch der europäischen Schuldenkrise hat die Öffentlichkeit in vielen Ländern der Eurozone, die unter den Druck der Finanzmärkte geraten sind, von der Existenz eines wichtigen Indikators ökonomischer Konvergenz innerhalb der Europäischen Währungsunion erfahren, mit dem bis dahin nur ein relativ kleiner Kreis von Experten vertraut gewesen war. Es handelt sich um den spread, das heißt die Zinsdifferenz, zwischen deutschen Bundesanleihen und langfristigen Staatsanleihen anderer Mitgliedsstaaten der Euro-Zone. Hatten Experten die Konvulsionen dieser Zinsdifferenz traditioneller Weise zum Gegenstand kühler ökonomischer Analyse gemacht, veränderte sich die Natur des spread in dem Moment, da er die Öffentlichkeit erreichte. Er ist zu einem Fokus emotional aufgeladener Debatten geworden, deren binäre Logik einen agonalen Kampf zwischen Ordnung und Chaos, zwischen Gut und Böse auf den Plan ruft und nicht einen abgeklärten Austausch zwischen Experten über ökonomische Angelegenheiten.
Der vorliegende Sammelband fragt nach den Konjunktionen von Finanzmarkt und den Krisen der modernen Gesellschaft, und zwar unter dem Aspekt von Öffentlichkeit beziehungsweise unterschiedlicher Finanzmarktpublika. Dahinter steht die Vermutung, dass es insbesondere Öffentlichkeit und Publikumsstrukturen sind, in deren Wandel sich das Paradigmatische von Finanzmärkten für allgemeine Mechanismen der Integration, Kohäsion und Imagination moderner Gesellschaften zeigt. Solche Momente finanzmarktlicher Paradigmatizität sollen auf der Grundlage konzeptioneller Überlegungen und empirischer Befunde zu Verhältnissen zwischen Operationsweisen von Finanzmärkten, der Konstitution von Öffentlichkeiten und der Strukturierung moderner Gesellschaften freigelegt und zur Diskussion gestellt werden. Wie Jürgen Habermas, Richard Sennett und andere gezeigt haben, existieren verschiedene Gegenbegriffe von Öffentlichkeit: zeremonielle versus bürgerliche Öffentlichkeit, öffentlich versus geheim, öffentlich versus privat. In der vorliegenden Einleitung wird die Frage aufgeworfen, inwieweit in diesen Öffentlichkeitsmodellen Marktlogiken impliziert sind.
This article develops a detailed overview of literature on the relationship between monetary organization, understood as currencies and central banks, and issues of national identity and nationalism. It demonstrates how the literature on this subject for the past 20 years has developed into a distinct research field and the article sketches a set of different methodological approaches as well as geographical and thematical variations within the field. In particular, the overview points to a recent shift in focus from a preoccupation with the identity-cultivating qualities of monetary organization to an emphasis on how collective identities legitimize monetary organization. Based on the literature review, the article points to two underdeveloped themes for future research to investigate: (1) further studies on the interrelation between the legitimacy of monetary organization and national identity, (2) an increased focus on central banks and monetary authorities, as well as the historical development in which monetary organization evolved in concert with ideas of the national identity and nationalism.
In this article, I analyse the narratives of four Danish central bank governors from the late nineteenth century until the mid-1990s. By conducting a historical analysis informed by neo-institutional theory, I show how these central bank governors were continuously involved in public debates over the appropriateness and desirability of their decisions and policies. In these debates, interpretations and reproductions of Danish national identity were central to the governors’ claims to legitimacy. I argue that past narratives of the Danish central bank and its governors enabled and framed future legitimacy claims and that the central bank and its governors gradually became embedded in national identity. Thus, the article highlights the historical development of the co-configuring relationship between Danish national identity and the legitimacy of monetary organization.
Recently, the remarkable trend upon central bank independence and the efficient monetary policy were seriously highlighted in the monetary economics field. Starting from 1990s’ central bank independence was at the core of policy making and central banking problems, because of the widespread economical, political, personal and budgetary autonomy of the central bank. Nowadays, we can observe an increasing trend upon central bank transparency, for evaluating more accurate the central bank’s performances by the wide public, mass-media and financial markets. Consequently, a central bank must encompass a high degree of accountability and responsibility, because of the final liability in case of failure. In this paper we present, analyze and assess the construction of the most important indices regarding central bank independence, transparency and accountability in a chronological manner, presenting also the advantages and disadvantages of these indices related to actual practices of central banks. Moreover, we analyze the analytical results of the empirical testing of these indices with a considerable impact upon the developed and developing country group. In regard with the empirical results of different authors, we suggest the importance and the necessity for constructing an aggregate index for measuring central bank independence, transparency and accountability, based on de jure stipulations and the actual practices of the central banks.
The rise of culture in economic studies has resulted in systematic investigations of the shared meanings that shape markets, economic decisions, and outcomes. A number of social scientists have a) privileged the heterogeneity of meanings within organizations and groups over monolithic accounts, b) used thick description and single or comparative case studies to investigate the incessant contestations over meanings and the corresponding actions facilitated, and c) have developed empirically testable propositions without insisting on the reduction of meanings to simple principles embedded in structures. This line of work does not deny that relatively stable cultural meanings exist or that parsimony is possible. Instead, it offers a parallel track privileging three modes of analysis: 1) the identification of discursive inflection points as leading indicators of market takeoffs, privileging thick minimalism over parsimony; 2) breached sequence analyses of transactions, highlighting experimental methods; and 3) relational analyses of networks and contested circuits, tying situated negotiations to overarching cultural structures. The article concludes with a plea to keep cultural analyses interpretive, historically grounded, and intuitively attuned to the meanings of social life.
In this article I argue that questions of banknote design are closely related to ideas of the national collective. Using the Danish banknote design competitions from 1947 to 2007 as an exemplary case I show how the Danish central bank, Nationalbanken, continuously sought to balance banknote iconography between different and evolving perceptions of the national community in an attempt to underpin the legitimacy and authority of Danish banknotes. I suggest that concepts from institutional theory can explain this equipoise relationship and I argue that banknote designers need to somehow reconcile conflicting ideas about the national community. As such, this article contributes to a more detailed understanding of the considerations and challenges facing banknote-issuing authorities.
This article explores a key facet of the ideational dynamic underlying the politics of the global financial crisis, examining the interpretative and communicative practices through which the two most powerful central banks in the world—the Fed and the ECB—made sense of the events. Drawing on a constructivist neoinstitutional perspective, the study traces and analyzes the diagnoses and causal accounts of the global financial crisis formulated and voiced by these two actors, mapping and examining their evolution from the beginning of the events in the American subprime market in mid-2007 through the peak of the crisis in global financial markets in mid-2009. The analysis assesses the extent to which the two central banks diagnosed and explained the crisis in ways that challenged dominant notions and conceptual assumptions regarding the economic field, particularly the financial realm, or rather in ways that served to ratify them. While in the first stages of the crisis the diagnoses and causal accounts tended to ratify dominant notions and understandings of the financial field, they later evolved as involving a partial, but still significant, reassessment of established truths. These coherent and detailed sense-making plots touched upon some of the most basic attributes of global financial capitalism, carrying with them the potential for helping to open up the political space for a reevaluation of some of its ideational underpinnings.
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