Strange Power Over Credit; or the Enduring Strength of US Structural-Power
Schwartz, Herman Mark. “Strange Power Over Credit; or the Enduring Strength of US Structural-Power.” In Susan Strange and the Future of Global Political Economy: Power, Control and Transformation, edited by Randall Germain, 87-110. London: Routledge, 2016.
This chapter provides some retrospective comments on what Strange says on the nexus of money and power; and second, in the light of what she had to say, to assess her vision of where the monetary system is heading. Strange was certainly right that the dynamics of power and governance in global finance today are changing. A leaderless diffusion of power is generating greater uncertainty about the underlying rules of the game. The linkage between money and power was one of the most enduring themes in Strange’s work. The US political scientists, Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz, had pointed out that the direct action represented just one face of power, and perhaps not even the most important. The causal mechanism works along the lines of the sequential Stackelberg leadership model of game theory. The United States acts unilaterally, as it typically does, exploiting what is often described as its exorbitant privilege.
Keywords: Money and Finance; Hegemony; Structural Power, Power; General Framework