The Emperor’s New Suit: The New International Financial Architecture as a Reinvention of the Washington Consensus
Author(s)
Soederberg, Susanne
Abstract
Many analysts have studied the New International Financial Architecture (NIFA) as a reaction to the growing financial instability in emerging market economies. The NIFA, like its predecessor the Washington Consensus, is an emerging conjuncture of institutions, practices, and discourses that aim to provide a managing infrastructure for the movement of global capital flows. I attempt to complement investigations into the nature of the NIFA by asking the question, who benefits? In order to tackle this question it is necessary to transcend the usual institutional focus of regime theory by looking at the relations of power that underscore the NIFA. To this end, I situate the NIFA within two features of the global political economy: the recent debates over capital controls; and the structural power of the United States. I suggest that while the NIFA is often presented as a shift toward a compromise between financial stability and deregulation (the Third Way), it remains oriented toward preserving the imperative of free capital mobility rather than implementing profound political changes in the functioning and regulation of global financial flows.
