Legitimising and expanding financial accumulation: a critical political economy of financial reform in the UK in response to the climate crisis

如果不采取紧急行动，气候变化将引发经济增长收缩、通货膨胀上升和金融不稳定（Crona et al., 2020）。然而，资本主义国家仍然没有采取果断行动，将资金流向转向绿色转型（Paterson 2021）。金融结构权力的概念为国家优先考虑短期金融利润（Paterson 2012）而不是地球的长期福利提供了一个解释。然而，尽管这种解释解释了金融通过经济金融化而积累的权力，但它模糊了金融通过治国方略金融化而获得的同样重要的权力（Karwowski 2019）。正如布劳恩（2020）所言，利用金融市场作为治国之道赋予了金融基础设施权力，也就是说，它给政策制定者带来了压力，要求他们保持证券市场的活力。为了分析金融基础设施力量对绿色金融改革政治的重要性，我将调查公共和私人利益相关者合作和努力产生英国绿色金融框架的政治过程。然后，我将研究这些改革如何在英国脱碳的政治经济学中重新绘制公共和私人权力之间的关系。本研究将调查绿色金融工作组（GFT）（2018）成立后，《清洁增长战略》（2017）发布后，英国开始的金融改革过程中，利益相关者之间的政治动态是如何发挥作用的。GFT召集了金融领域强大的利益相关者，包括财政部、英格兰银行和伦敦金融城，以及BEIS和DEFRA，以及其他私营部门和民间社会利益相关者（GFT 2018）。这些改革避免了严格处罚肮脏资产的法规，信任企业披露气候风险和改变资金流动的净零计划，并限制财政干预，因此它们主要关注主要在资本市场融资的去风险资产（HM GOV 2021）。专家评论员已经对这一策略的有效性提出了担忧，呼吁加强监管，使肮脏资产贬值，并加大公共投资（Gabor et al., 2019）。通过调查这一结果的政治产生，本研究将更深入地分析英国国家气候政策与金融市场的深刻纠缠所带来的限制。英国政府已经开始依赖金融市场来提供多种公共服务，并实施货币和财政政策（Berry 2021; Dutta 2018; Walter, Wansleben 2020）。为了将金融基础权力的作用理论化，我将把这一理论与新葛兰西的权力理论（Cox 1981）结合起来。这种方法引起了人们对物质压力、观念规范和制度等级的关注，这些压力对于通过金融市场创造依赖路径的治理压力至关重要。这个框架将用于解决两个问题：1。金融的基础设施力量如何塑造英国绿色金融改革的政治？2. 这些金融改革如何塑造了英国脱碳的政治经济？

Without urgent action, climate change will trigger a contraction in economic growth, rising inflation and financial instability (Crona et al., 2020). However, capitalist states are still not acting decisively to redirect financial flows towards the green transition (Paterson 2021). The concept of the structural power of finance provides one explanation for why states are prioritising short-term financial profits (Paterson 2012) over the long-term welfare of the planet. However, whilst this explanation accounts for the power that finance accrues through the financialisation of the economy, it obscures the equally crucial power that finance has acquired through the financialisation of statecraft (Karwowski 2019). As Braun (2020) argues, the use of financial markets as conduits for statecraft gives finance infrastructural power, that is it creates pressure for policy makers to preserve the vitality of securities markets. To analyse the importance of the infrastructural power of finance for the politics of green financial reform, I will investigate the political process through which public and private stakeholders cooperated and struggled to produce the UK's green finance framework. I will then investigate how these reforms have redrawn relations between public and private power in the political economy of decarbonisation in the UK.This research will investigate how the political dynamics played out between stakeholders in the financial reform process that began in the UK following the publication of the Clean Growth Strategy (2017), when the Green Finance Taskforce (GFT) (2018) was founded. The GFT called together powerful stakeholders in finance, including the Treasury, the Bank of England, and the City, as well as BEIS and DEFRA, alongside other private sector and civil society stakeholders (GFT 2018). These reforms avoid regulations to stringently penalise dirty assets, place faith in corporate disclosure of climate risks and net zero plans to alter financial flows, and restrict fiscal interventions so they are principally focused on de-risking assets to be funded predominantly on capital markets (HM GOV 2021). Expert commentators have already raised concerns about the efficacy of this strategy, calling for stronger regulations to devalue dirty assets, and greater public investment (Gabor et al., 2019). By investigating the political production of this outcome, This research will provide a deeper analysis of the constraints placed upon the British state's climate policy by its deep entanglement with financial markets. The British state has come to rely on financial markets to provide multiple public services and to deliver monetary and fiscal policy (Berry 2021; Dutta 2018; Walter, Wansleben 2020). To theorise the role of the infrastructural power of finance, I will combine this theory with neo-Gramscian theories of power (Cox 1981). This approach draws attention to the material pressures, ideational norms, and institutional hierarchies that are central to creating path-dependent pressure for governance to work through financial markets. This framework will be used to address two questions:1. How did the infrastructural power of finance shape the politics of green financial reform in the UK? 2. How have these financial reforms shaped the political economy of decarbonisation in the UK?