MONEY AND THE NATION-STATE: CONTESTED BOUNDARIES OF MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY IN GEOPOLITICS

Abstract

Has international monetary integration undermined monetary sovereignty? In this paper, a sociological approach is taken towards two of the major conditions which are reputed to have contributed to the erosion of monetary sovereignty: financial deregulation and the growth of offshore markets. In the first section, the reconstruction of international monetary and financial networks is examined with particular reference to Japan, Germany and Britain. The concept of deregulation is questioned as a description of the regulatory changes which took place in these financial centres during the 1980s. In the second section, this argument is extended in an examination of the development of offshore markets during the past thirty years. These markets have relied upon substantial government encouragement, in addition to a high proportion of sovereign funds, in order to expand at the rate that they have: any perceived threat to monetary sovereignty posed by such markets must therefore be treated with caution. In the concluding section, the implications of monetary integration for two `contested boundaries' within contemporary sociology - between geopolitics and international markets, on the one hand, and economy and society, on the other - are outlined, both in the context of debates over monetary sovereignty and in the light of arguments about the `embeddedness' of economic action in recent sociological approaches to economic life.

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