The Democratic Politics of Central Banking

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

The Democratic Politics of Central Banking
APSA 2019, Washington D.C.


Since the Financial Crisis of 2008, the politics of money has become once more ubiquitous. Critique, outrage, and confusion about the sublime powers of monetary policy attract attention across the political spectrum. Worries about the lopsided distributive effects of unconventional monetary policy, such as quantitative easing, now crop up frequently in public discourse, political campaigns, and social movements. But political debates continue to oscillate simplistically between calls for the “repoliticization” of monetary policy and the mantra of central bank independence. Finding themselves in the political limelight against their will, central bankers around the world have meanwhile largely withdrawn from these debates, insisting on their neutral status above and beyond politics or appealing to the guiding role of financial markets. Both responses remain unsatisfactory.

This roundtable brings together recent empirical work on the politics of central banking with new normative perspectives on the political theory of money. By approaching the politics of distribution, delegation, and legitimacy in central banking from a diverse set of perspectives that combines normative, empirical, and historical dimensions the roundtable hopes to set a research agenda for future work across subfields on the democratic politics of central banking. Some of the underlying questions will include: What is the role of expertise wielded by central banks? How should we assess the self-referential epistemic dominance of central banks in studying their own field of expertise? How does partisan politics interact with the new era of powerful central banking since the Financial Crisis? Can existing institutional modes of delegation be rendered compatible with normative demands for democratic legitimacy? What accounts of distributive justice can be used to assess the performance of central banks? Can central bank delegation contain distributive demands in addition to price stability? In asking these questions the roundtable will seek to bridge the gap between empirical work on the political economy of monetary policy and the urgent need for a political theory of central banking.

The fragile democratic politics of central banking is a particularly apt topic for the 2019 APSA theme of “Populism and Privilege.” Like other political institutions, money is suspended between violence and trust. The politics of central banking consequently requires a careful disentangling of questions of legitimacy and expertise that must itself combine empirical tools and normative judgment. In focusing on the democratic politics of central banking in an age of populism, the roundtable will bear down on central banking as one particularly illuminating site for the larger thematic questions of the conference: what grounds the privilege to make policy on behalf of a democratic society? How can we distinguish between a populist claim on state power and a call for democratic control? Ultimately, the roundtable will aim to foster a conversation between political economists and political theorists aimed at developing a frame of analysis that can cope with both the technical and the normative demands of contemporary central banking.




Prospective Participants:
Leah Downey (Harvard University) [confirmed]
Stefan Eich (Princeton Society of Fellows; Georgetown University) [confirmed]
Clément Fontan (UC Louvain) [confirmed]
Christopher Adolph (University of Washington) [confirmed]
Larry Jacobs (University of Minnesota) [confirmed]
Jens van 't Klooster (European University Institute) [tbc]
Jacqueline Best (University of Ottawa) [tbc]
Sarah A. Binder (George Washington University) [tbc]

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 6: Political Economy

Chair

• Stefan Eich Georgetown University

Presenters

• Leah Downey Harvard University

• Christopher Adolph

• Lawrence R. Jacobs University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

• Clément Fontan UCLouvain