Conceptualising state financialisation: from the core to the periphery

ABSTRACT

This article puts forward a narrow definition of state financialisation as a mode of governance whereby the state engineers and re-purposes financial tools and markets as instruments of statecraft in such a way that they bestow the financial sector increased infrastructural power. This is taken as a unifying and operational definition that seeks to bring together extant work and motivate more focused research on the transformations occurring within the state at various scales and policy domains. And it is informed by the differentiated positions countries occupy within the world economy that determine the particular subordinate forms that governance through financial markets takes.

KEYWORDS:

• Financialisation
• infrastructural power
• periphery
• state
• subordination

Acknowledgements

Grateful thanks are due to João Rodrigues and Renato Miguel do Carmo for comments on an earlier version of this paper, and to the journal's anonymous referees for their constructive criticisms that contributed to improve it. All remaining errors or omissions are my own responsibility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For a review of recent developments see Mader et al. (2020).

Additional information

Funding

This work was financed by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) through national funds within the framework of the project ‘EMPLOYALL – The employment crisis and the Welfare State in Portugal: deterring drivers of social vulnerability and inequality’ (Ref. PTDC/SOC-SOC/30543/2017).

Notes on contributors

Ana Cordeiro Santos

Ana Cordeiro Santos is a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES) at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. Her research interests include the topics of semi-peripheral financialisation, housing and social reproduction. She is the author of various national and international scientific publications on these topics.