![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The 2008 financial crisis exposed the fragility of advanced economies to financial caprice and the centrality of the United States in the global monetary order. Understanding the power structures behind global monetary orders, their distributional effects, as well as the systemic consequences associated with practices within domestic financial systems, particularly within financial centres, remains a priority. In a recent commentary, Cohen argues that the field is fragmented and that excessive attention to social scientific method is to blame. I agree with Cohen that the field of international political economy (IPE) of money is fragmented but I disagree that social scientific method is the cause. The fragmentation, and slow progress in the IPE of money, to which Cohen refers, is rather attributable to a lack of social scientific method, resulting in conceptual and empirical ambiguity, and unclear standards. Finally, I outline how social science methods could produce the kind of systemic analysis Cohen is calling for, ‘macro-money theories’, the flip side of the ‘micro-money theories’ embodied by open economy politics.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank Stephen Chaudoin, Benjamin J. Cohen, Helen V. Milner, Herman Schwartz, David A. Welch and the anonymous reviewers for constructive comments.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Cohen calls the power to delay and deflect adjustment costs, the ‘two hands of power’.
2. For a full discussion, see CitationCarla Norrlof. (2014) Dollar Hegemony: A Power Analysis. Review of International Political Economy 21, 1055–1056.
3. According to Otero-Iglesias and Steinberg (2013: 192), “to sum up … the euro has increased its share of near 30 percent on average.” But in their Table 1, the share is nearly 25% (not nearly 30%), a big difference in this context.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Carla Norrlof
Carla Norrlof is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Her research interests are international political economy and great power politics. She is currently working at the intersection of economics and security.