Still an Extraordinary Power After All These Years: The US and the Global Financial Crisis of 2008
Helleiner, Eric. “Still an Extraordinary Power After All These Years: The US and the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.” In Susan Strange and the Future of Global Political Economy: Power, Control and Transformation, edited by Randall Germain, 111-126. London: Routledge, 2016.
This chapter explores Strange’s analysis of the centrality of dominant knowledge and financial structures in the constitution of the contours of the global political economy and of financial capitalism. It draws upon critical political economy, focusing on the how of power and its mobilization through dominant knowledge and financial structures to establish central bank independence and financial liberalization as grundnorms of the global financial system. In seeking to develop a sociological understanding of the construction of dominant power structures, the chapter draws upon critical political economy traditions inspired by the works of Michel Foucault and Antonio Gramsci. Strange identified the central problematique as a problem of governance and the absence of the leadership required to address the economic malaise of the 1980s. This chapter examines Strange’s analysis of problems in global financial leadership and it reveals her significant contribution to the understanding of the material dimensions of financial governance.
Keywords: Hegemony; Money and Finance; Structural Power, Power; General Framework