Why International Cooperation Is Failing: How the Clash of Capitalisms Undermines the Regulation of Finance

The global financial crisis of 2008/09 has raised doubts about the ability to control volatile financial markets and achieve true international cooperation. This book offers an alternative view that recent lapses in international cooperation are due to the competing models of capitalism operating across the globe. It suggests that understanding the diverse dynamics of these models on a domestic level is essential for regulating international finance and that institutional change on a national and regional level is crucial for achieving greater cooperation.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 13 October 2022
Publisher: Oxford University Press

Ten years after the global financial crisis of 2008/09, skepticism persists about the ability to curb volatile financial markets and achieve true international cooperation. The changes in the global rules of finance discussed in the G20 during the past decade have remained limited, and it remains uncertain whether they will be sufficient to mitigate and manage future crises. This book presents an alternative perspective to the prevailing notion that this failure is attributed to the nature of international relations, the clash of national egoisms, or ineffective national leadership. Instead, it offers an understanding of recent lapses in international cooperation by revealing their deeper structural origins in the competing models of capitalism operating across the globe.

US finance-led, EU integration-led, and East Asian state-led capitalism complement each other globally, but they have conflicting preferences on how to complement their distinct domestic regulations at the international level. This interdependence of capitalist models is relatively stable but also prone to crises caused by volatile financial flows, global economic imbalances, and currency wars. To comprehend international economic cooperation, we must understand the diverse dynamics of the different models of capitalism on a domestic level, not only in financial markets but also in areas such as corporate structure, labor markets, and welfare regimes. By establishing a deeper integration of approaches from International Political Economy and Comparative Capitalism, this book demonstrates that regulating international finance is not a technocratic exercise of fine-tuning the machinery of international institutions but rather a political process dependent on the dynamic of institutional change at the national and regional levels.

Weight: 446g
Dimension: 232 x 152 x 16 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780192871442