Capital Mobility and Distributional Conflict in Chile, South Korea, and Turkey

Removal of capital controls has led to boom-bust patterns in many countries, driven by distributional struggles prior to their enactment. Gemici argues that conflictual distributional relations increase the likelihood of capital account liberalization, and that countries which liberalize in the most comprehensive manner tend to be those characterized by a high degree of distributional conflict.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 232 pages
Publication date: 13 June 2022
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Why did numerous emerging nations pursue risky financial opening policies in a haphazard manner, even after the painful example of the Latin American debt crisis? Unlike trade liberalization, which has mostly been beneficial in emerging countries, the removal of capital controls has led to boom-bust patterns in many countries. It is not simply driven by class or sectoral interests, nor is it just a result of ideational changes in policy-making circles, or international pressure. Gemici argues that to fully understand the motivation for these policies, we need to take into account distributional struggles prior to their enactment.

In this book, Gemici shows that conflictual distributional relations significantly increase the likelihood of capital account liberalization. Through in-depth comparative case studies, he also demonstrates that countries which liberalize in the most comprehensive manner tend to be the countries characterized by a high degree of distributional conflict. The case studies – Argentina, Chile, South Korea, and Turkey – have been chosen to maximize variation in distributional relations and to escape regional clustering, showing quite different trajectories of capital account liberalization.

This will be of great interest to readers in sociology, international political economy, and heterodox economics, as well as specialists in the countries examined.

Weight: 430g
Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032336244