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萎缩、通货膨胀上升和金融不稳定(Crona等人，2020年)。然而，资本主义国家仍未果断采取行动，将资金流转向绿色转型(帕特森2021)。金融结构性力量的概念为各国为何将短期金融利润置于地球长期福利之上提供了一种解释(帕特森2012)。然而，尽管这种解释解释了金融通过经济金融化积累的权力，但它掩盖了金融通过治国方式金融化获得的同样关键的权力(Karwowski 2019)。正如布劳恩(2020)所主张的那样，利用金融市场作为治国之道赋予了金融基础设施力量，也就是说，它给政策制定者带来了保持证券市场活力的压力。为了分析金融的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制定英国绿色金融框架的政治过程。然后，我将调查这些改革如何在英国脱碳的政治经济中重新划分公共和私人权力之间的关系。这项研究将调查在英国《清洁增长战略》(2017)发布后开始的金融改革进程中，利益相关者之间的政治动态是如何发挥的，当时绿色金融特别工作组(GFT)(2018)成立了。GFT召集了金融界强大的利益相关者，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攸关方(GFT 2018)。这些改革避免了严厉惩罚不良资产的监管，相信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，使其主要专注于降低主要在资本市场融资的资产的风险(英国政府2021年)。专家评论员已经对这一战略的有效性提出了担忧，他们呼吁加强监管，让脏资产贬值，并增加公共投资(Gabor等人，2019年)。通过调查这一结果的政治成果，这项研究将对英国政府与金融市场的深度纠葛对其气候政策施加的制约进行更深入的分析。英国政府已开始依赖金融市场提供多种公共服务，并提供货币和财政政策(Berry 2021；duta 2018；Walter，Wansleben 2020)。为了对金融基础设施力量的作用进行理论化，我将把这一理论与新葛兰西学派的权力理论结合起来(考克斯，1981)。这种方法引起了人们对物质压力、概念规范和制度等级的关注，这些压力是通过金融市场为治理工作创造路径依赖压力的核心。这一框架将被用来解决两个问题：1.金融的基础设施力量如何影响英国绿色金融改革的政治？2.这些金融改革如何影响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?