Randall Germain

Reflection I

Germain, Randall. In Information, Technology and Control in a Changing World: Understanding Power Structures in the 21st Century, edited by Blayne Haggart, Kathryn Henne, Natasha Tusikov, 81-89. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Randall Germain reflects on the chapters by Blayne Haggart, and Sara Bannerman and Angela Orasch.

Keywords: Knowledge

Contributor(s): Randall Germain, Editor: Blayne Haggart, Editor: Kathryn Henne and Editor: Natasha Tusikov
Keywords: Knowledge, Strange-Influenced Works, 2010's
Source and Medium: Book Chapter

Year of Publication: 2019

The Political Economy of Currency Internationalisation: The Case of the RMB

Germain, Randall, Herman Mark Schwartz. Review of International Studies 43, no. 3 (2017): 765-787.

The rise of China has sparked a debate about the economic and political consequences for the global economy of the internationalisation of the renminbi. We argue that the dominant focus of this literature – primarily the external conditions and requirements for a national currency to become an international currency – misspecifies the connections between the international and domestic requirements for currency internationalisation, as well as the potential to become the dominant international reserve currency. We correct this oversight by developing an integrated theoretical framework that highlights the domestic adjustment costs which a state must accommodate before its currency can carry the weight of internationalisation. These costs constitute a critical element of an international currency’s ‘political economy’, and they force states to negotiate contentious social trade-offs among competing domestic claims on finite public resources in a sustainable manner. Our analysis suggests that the likelihood of China being able to successfully negotiate the social costs associated with running a fully internationalised currency is currently very low, precisely because this will place unacceptable pressure on groups benefiting from the economic and political status quo. This further suggests that the American dollar will remain unchallenged as the global economy’s pre-eminent international currency for the foreseeable future.

Keywords: Money and Finance; Economic Competition

Contributor(s): Randall Germain and Herman Mark Schwartz
Keywords: Money and Finance, Strange-Influenced Works, 2010's
Source and Medium: Journal Article

Year of Publication: 2017

Susan Strange and the Future of IPE

Germain, Randall. In Susan Strange and the Future of Global Political Economy: Power, Control and Transformation, edited by Randall Germain, 19-36. London: Routledge, 2016.

This chapter explains how contributors use Susan Strange's rich conceptual framework to explore the financial crisis and its aftermath, and reflect critically on broader contributions which her work has made to the discipline of international political economy (IPE). Susan Strange's life and times spanned the most tumultuous decades of the twentieth century. Susan Strange spent much of her academic career lamenting and cataloguing the serial failure of scholarship in political science, international relations and international economics to understand how the world and its political economy had changed or was in the process of changing. The global demand for American credit during the financial crisis both fed off and reinforced the pre-existing American capacity to generate and deploy the financial resources. The Strange was an inveterate optimist that things on the ground could be improved upon, if only analysis was sound and the determination to act was both robustly held and appropriately grounded in sustainable values that were widely shared.

Keywords: Political Economy; Theory; Structural Power, Power; General Framework

Contributor(s): Randall Germain and Editor: Randall Germain
Keywords: Political Economy, Theory, Structural Power, Power, Strange-Influenced Works, 2010's
Source and Medium: Book Chapter

Year of Publication: 2016

The Political Economy of Global Transformation: Susan Strange, E.H. Carr and the Dynamics of Structural Change

Germain, Randall. In Susan Strange and the Future of Global Political Economy: Power, Control and Transformation, edited by Randall Germain, 183-200. London: Routledge 2016.

Do international relations precede or follow (logically) fundamental social relations? There can be no doubt that they follow. Any organic innovation in the social structure, through its technical–military expressions, modifies organically absolute and relative relations in the international field too.

Keywords: Hegemony; Authority; Markets; Structural Power, Power

Contributor(s): Randall Germain and Editor: Randall Germain
Keywords: Hegemony, Authority, Markets, Structural Power, Power, Strange-Influenced Works, 2010's
Source and Medium: Book Chapter

Year of Publication: 2016