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Financial ideas, political constraints : the IPE of sovereign wealth funds
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Fini, Michael (2010) Financial ideas, political constraints : the IPE of sovereign wealth funds. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b2606829~S1
Abstract
Rather than ponder sovereign wealth funds' (SWFs ') significance for global capital
markets, this thesis takes a step back and asks the following: why do SWFs exist in
such numbers across the global political economy? The SWF literature, dominated by
fmancial economists and neoliberal commentators, has yet to adequately address this
puzzle. This is significant given the funds embed systematically significant amounts
of national wealth throughout speculative capital markets, thereby increasing their
state's vulnerability to recurrent asset bubbles and crises. The thesis consequently
examines the interest-based politics behind SWFs' domestic origins. It begins its
analysis with the argument that SWFs are first and foremost domestic strategies of
governance created to achieve specific short and medium term goals of the
administrative state. This is despite their international and long-term investment
orientations. In short, the funds serve to immediately stabilize state actors'
governance function by reconceptualising problems of uncertainty in the quantitative
and manageable terms of fmancial risk. This account of SWFs' origins thus contests
that currently dominating mainstream commentary, which portrays the funds as
evolutionary features of modem fmance capitalism. The domestic political interests
SWFs were initially created to serve consequently remain critically unexamined.
Drawing from the constructivist institutionalism literature, the thesis also seeks to
demonstrate that SWFs are the institutional embodiment of a specific array of
prescriptive fmancial ideas. It will be shown this framework offmancial 'knowledge'
problematically constrains political actors to defer their interests to the demands of
the speculative fmancial realm. In the face of recurrent crises, such constraint
highlights how SWFs' immediate impact on domestic socioeconomic spheres
outweighs their imagined fmancial benefits. The funds' rapid expansion since 2000
therefore poses significant implications for the nature and exercise of sovereign
authority in SWF-states. These theoretical arguments are developed in Part I of the
thesis, and then tested against three case studies in Part II: Norway's Government
Pension Fund-Global; Alberta's Heritage Savings Trust Fund; and Ireland's National
Pension Reserve Fund.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HJ Public Finance |
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Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Globalization -- Political aspects , Sovereign wealth funds , Investment of public funds , Finance, Public , Investments | ||||
Official Date: | November 2010 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of Politics and International Studies | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Sinclair, Timothy J. ; Pirie, Iain | ||||
Sponsors: | University of Warwick | ||||
Extent: | 344 leaves : illustrations | ||||
Language: | eng |
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