Governance and the Hegemony of Financial Stability

Governance and the Hegemony of Financial Stability: From Financial Crisis to Climate Emergency explains how the handling of the Global Financial Crisis has redefined the relations of politics and financial markets and how the then established hegemony of financial stability still dominates today's responses to today's challenges, particularly climate change. The book argues that within the years of crisis management a hegemony of financial governance evolved that accepts the financial system as being intrinsically crisis-laden and potentially disastrous for broader notions of welfare and social security. The book traces how this framework redefined state-market relations, expanded technocratic authority, and extended into new domains, including climate policy, where climate risks are reframed as threats to financial stability. By analysing the work of a transnational epistemic community of central bankers, regulators, and financial stability experts, it analyses how post-crisis governance operates through risk management, surveillance, and resilience-building. It captures how political and financial rationalities co-evolved towards a hegemony that seeks to contain crises without addressing their root causes and thus prevents more transformative changes The book will appeal to scholars of political science, economic sociology, international relations, international political economy, as well as security, finance, and economics.