Monies that Matter, on the Discursive Power of the Bank for International Settlements

Abstract

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and its committees perform an increasingly important systemic regulatory role on the global financial markets, as well as for national monetary policies. In this article I argue that the cooperation and coordination among central banks makes this community vital for global discourse formation around monetary policies and financial interaction. The self-image displayed in speeches and evaluations of BIS representatives indicate that the community influences national economies. Using the concept of performativity for analysing the power dynamics of the BIS community, the article argues that cooperating central banks have considerable influence on economic interaction both nationally and globally. The nature of this political influence is not conspiratory or intentional, but embedded in the economistic interaction within and around the BIS.

Keywords:

• central bank cooperation
• performativity
• financial regulation
• monetary policy
• Bank for International Settlements

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Åsa Wettergren, Hans Abrahamsson, Fredrik Söderbaum, Åsa Boholm and participants in the research seminar at School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, as well as two anonymous reviewers, for comments on previous versions of this text. While this help has been invaluable, the responsibility for the text and its argument is entirely with the author.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For a discussion of soft law as a political science concept, see Alan Boyle and Christine Chinkin, The making of international law (2007) Oxford University Press. It is not clear if the concept is used with its full academic connotations among BIS members and staff.

2 The distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary performativity is a duality that Butler borrows from Austin and adjusts for her purposes. The dichotomy is less elaborate than MacKenzie's (200 6, p. 17f) model for performativity, which is designed to disentangle how (theory behind) financial instruments gives markets for the same instruments specific forms. Had this text been, for instance, on changes in financial markets resulting from Basel III regulation, MacKenzie's model for performativity would perhaps have been appropriate, but as this text deals with more elusive power dynamics, the Austinian duality of Butler's performativity concept is more suitable and productive.

3 Ngaire Woods (2000), points to the political bias of the FSF resulting from its majority of rich states and global institutions in the forum, and only minimal representation from the South.

4 Full members are central banks and institutions with voting rights and representation at Annual General Meetings of the BIS.

5 As part of the BIS's efforts to become more transparent, this hub also has its internet manifestation on http://www.bis.org/cbhub/index.htm on which much BIS research is posted.

6 Jacques de Larosière has been Managing Director of the IMF, Governor of the Bank of France and president of the EBRD. Larosière speech is available at the BIS homepage http://www.bis.org/events/conf0506/delarosiere.pdf (20 September 2012). More material from the same conference is available at http://www.bis.org/events/conf050628.htm (14 December 2012).

7 The whole speech ‘Policymaking in an interconnected world’ can be downloaded at http://www.kansascityfed.org/publicat/sympos/2012/jaime-caruana.pdf (14 September 2012).

8 Andrew Gavin Marshall portrays central bank cooperation as a conspiratory activity with the BIS collaboration as the smoking gun, but even though he makes a compelling who-knows/meets-who argument it is hard to conclude from it that the BIS wields direct hidden power from behind the scenes of transnational diplomacy.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

E. Andersson

Erik Andersson, PhD, Senior Lecturer at the School of Global Studies at University of Gothenburg. He has written Swedish textbooks in International Political Economy and published in international journals such as International Negotiation and Journal of Artistic Research. Current research concerns financial performativity and the global political economy of financial everyday life.