Abstract
This article evaluates the impact of the market regulatory internationalisation of finance on domestic financial services sector policy-making in Canada and France. It is argued that internationalisation has had three main effects on the way policy in the financial services sector is elaborated. Firstly, the policy discourse is adjusted to take account of new international considerations. Secondly, policy options increasingly reflect the desire by decision-makers to render their national sector more competitive. Thirdly, the scope and influence of policy networks has increased in recent years leading to greater consultation between public and private sector actors in policy development. The article concludes that while new institutional parameters are influencing domestic policy-making processes, medium sized powers like Canada and France whose financial service sectors are closely associated with the United States and Europe respectively, are not constrained by internationalisation. Rather financial service policies are janus-faced reflecting both international and domestic considerations.
Notes
1. This research is the result of extensive interviewing in the Canadian and French financial services sector. I wish to thank all of those that have collaborated with this project. I also wish to acknowledge funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
2. All statistics drawn from Scholte, Jan Aart. (Citation2002) Governing Global Finance, Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalism, CSGR Working Paper No. 88\02, Warwick University, pp. 5–8.
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5. The new organisations in the network include, among others: Association française des entreprises d'investissements, Association française des établissements de crédits et des entreprises d'investissements, Association française des entreprises privés, Banque d'investissements de marchés, Chambre de commerce et de l'industrie de Paris, Compagnie nationale des commissaires aux comptes, Conseil supérieur de l'ordre des experts comptables, Fédération bancaire française, Fédération française des sociétés d'assurance, and Mouvement des entreprises de France .