How you stand depends on how we see: International capital mobility as social fact

Abstract

A rich literature has emerged on the causes and consequences of international capital mobility (ICM). Yet much of this literature typically depicts ICM as a brute fact – one which possesses an unproblematic logic to which actors respond automatically across time and space. We challenge this depiction and argue that in large part, how you stand on ICM depends on how it is collectively seen as a consequence of empirically and contextually variable intersubjectively shared beliefs, or social facts. We therefore argue that researchers that fail to take social facts seriously run the risk of making unwarranted causal inferences and less effective policy recommendations. We advance the literature by specifying how the ontological novelty of a social facts perspective generates unique insights into key political economy questions concerning the causes and consequences of ICM. We develop an agent-centered perspective that stresses ideational contestation as a key area of analysis for those that take social facts seriously. We push forward this agent-centered perspective by outlining a set of features that winning ideas are likely to display. We then conclude by specifying an agenda for future research and opportunities for bridge-building among various perspectives on ICM.

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