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

这篇博士论文的目的是解释宏观审慎理念的许多支持者和观察者的期望与基于这一似乎被普遍接受的理念的更为温和的实际政策之间相对较大的差距。以欧洲为主要案例研究，本博士的中心研究问题是：如何解释宏观审慎方法发展过程中极其缓慢和渐进的动态？尽管宏观审慎政策在专家和政策圈中占有重要地位，但宏观审慎政策在国际政治经济学中仍然是一个研究不足的问题。那些确实存在的关于宏观审慎政策的论文在本质上是相当投机的，主要关注重大的观念问题，或者关注更广泛的权力和责任划分，以及中央银行家在这方面的影响。虽然本博士课程将在一定程度上以这些研究为基础，但它也旨在超越这些研究，在更细致的层面上研究已经出现的实质性问题，研究是什么赋予了欧洲宏观审慎制度特定的形态，并研究在过去几年中是什么决定了其步伐和方向。因此，它将构成对地方宏观审慎制度发展的第一个深入案例研究。在理论层面上，我以专家网络中流传的“思想”在塑造全球金融治理中的作用为基础。鉴于国际政治经济学中心之前所有关于宏观审慎政策的研究都指向央行银行家所发挥的关键作用，这种对专家观点的关注似乎是恰当的。与此同时，我想通过研究“认知共同体”概念在解释这些专家圈子内的动态方面的潜力，为这一学术研究增加一些新的东西。这一概念在金融治理中的“专业政治”文献中相对被忽视，尽管它有潜力通过强调规范、原则信念、共同因果信念和共同有效性概念在影响这些网络中的观念选择和知识和政策议程的产生方面的作用，来提高我们对观念动态的理解。我特别感兴趣的是研究最近一些学者的争论，即现有框架可能过于强调专家的议程设定功能，从而忽视了更持续和渐进的影响形式。宏观审慎政策似乎是这方面最有可能的一个例子，因为即使在其迅速传播十年之后，关键概念、衡量标准和目标仍然不明确，并受到重大辩论，而那些最密切参与辩论的专家在中央银行和国际机构中占据关键机构职位。这使得它成为检验专家是否、如何以及通过何种机制对政策产生持续影响的理想案例，有望产生新的理论见解。为此，过程跟踪，特别是最近关于“想法”过程跟踪的进展，是特别有用的。与此同时，我将对政策文件、蓝图、演讲、观点文章和会议记录进行广泛的分析，以检查不同观点和论点的内在逻辑，并确定思想斗争的结果在多大程度上确实可以解释我的中心研究问题。我特别感兴趣的是，确定界定和衡量干预金融市场的“成本和收益”的政治、对自动稳定器和反对自由裁量权的规范性偏好，以及试图将负责宏观审慎政策的央行去政治化，是否可以解释缺乏激进改革和干预的原因。

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.