Between radical ideas and business as usual? An examination of macroprudential policy in Europe.

This PhD is aims to explain the relatively large gap between the expectations of many supporters and observers of macroprudential ideas, and the much more muted actual policies based on this now seemingly universally accepted set of ideas. Using Europe as its main case study, the central research question of this PhD is:
What explains the extremely slow and incremental dynamics in the development of a macroprudential approach?

Despite its prominence in expert and policy circles, macroprudential policy remains an under-researched issue in IPE.
Those papers on macroprudential policy that do exist are rather speculative in nature, focus mainly on big ideational issues, or are concerned with the broader division of powers and responsibilities, and the influence that central bankers have had in this regard. While this PhD will build on these studies to some extent, it also aims to go beyond them by looking at the substantial issues that have arisen at a more fine grained level, examining what has given the macroprudential regime in Europe its specific shape, and looking at what has determined its pace and direction over the past few years. As such, it would constitute the first in depth case study of the development of a localised macroprudential regime.

On a theoretical level, I build on the scholarship on the role of "ideas" circulating within expert networks, in shaping the global governance of finance. Such a focus on the ideas of experts seems only appropriate, given the fact that all previous IPE studies of macroprudential policy have pointed towards the pivotal role played by central bankers. At the same time I want to add something new to this scholarship by examining the potential of the "epistemic community" concept in explaining the dynamics within those expert circles. This concept has been relatively neglected within the literature on the "politics of expertise" in financial governance, despite the potential it has for improving our understanding of ideational dynamics by highlighting the role of norms, principled beliefs, shared causal beliefs, and shared notions of validity, in influencing ideational selection and the production of knowledge and policy agendas within these networks.

I am particularly interested in examining the contention of some recent scholarship, that existing frameworks might have put too much emphasis on the agenda setting function of experts, thus neglecting more continuous and gradual forms of influence. Macroprudential policy appears to be a most likely case in this regard, given the fact that even ten years after its rapid diffusion, key concepts, measurements and goals remain unclear and subject to significant debate, while those experts most closely involved in the debates occupy key institutional positions within central banks and international institutions. This makes it an ideal case for examining whether, how, and by which mechanisms experts can have continued influence over policy, holding the promise of generating novel theoretical insights.

For this, process tracing, and in particular the recent advances on the process tracing of "ideas", are particularly useful. At the same time, I will conduct an extensive analysis of policy documents, blueprints, speeches, opinion pieces, and transcripts from meetings, to examine the internal logic of different ideas and arguments, and to establish the extent to which the outcome of a struggle over ideas can indeed explain my central research question. In particular, I am interested in establishing whether a politics of defining and measuring the "costs and benefits" of intervention in financial markets, a normative preference for automatic stabilisers and against discretion, as well as an attempt at depoliticising central banks in charge of macroprudential policy, can explain the lack of radical reform and intervention.