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Through the analysis of ECB Executive Board member speeches, we have identified three main narratives about the consequences of the environmental crisis in the monetary authority's spheres of influence: The first emphasises environmental phenomena as financial risks; the second highlights the green investment or financing gap; and the third focuses on the impacts of climate change on price stability. These narratives lead to different forms of legitimisation in terms of why and how the central bank should intervene to tackle climate change. We show that the third narrative is displacing the first as the dominant discourse around ECB climate policy. The shift in focus from the central bank's duties to maintain financial stability to its responsibilities regarding price stability under the primary mandate could lead to far-reaching green monetary policies. However, based on the concept of layered structures, we argue that this change does not signal a departure from market liberal central banking but rather a shift within the prevailing system. What we are witnessing is a new form of market liberalism adapted to climate change, or market liberalism in climate crisis mode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the first time in the history of central banks, the Federal Reserve has been pursuing monetary policies which allow shadow banks to access its reserves. The paper examines these policies in an analysis based on the concept of security structure. The aim is to facilitate a better understanding of complex institutional arrangements which convert credit claims into money or enable them to simulate the money-form. As the financial crisis reached its peak in September 2008, the Fed was not able to contain the impact precisely because the security structure existing between banks and the Fed did not extend to the shadow banking system, which had meanwhile become thebackbone of the global financial system. To address this situation, the Fed initiated new security structures that were designed to also give players in the shadow banking system access to liquidity and collateral. The concept 'security structure' serves as an analytical tool to explore dynamic forms of safety and liquidity generation and to distinguish between credit expansion and money creation. It also helps to differentiate between three qualitatively different stages of security: central bank money, quasi-money and shadow money. In this way, it foregrounds the politics of (shadow) money creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article proposes a discourse–theoretical approach to policy analysis that explores how political relations are changed through and within a strategic and interest-led process with a focus on conflictual struggles that attempt to establish, change, or consolidate specific interests and meanings as universalities. It suggests a conceptualization of hegemonic projects and discusses their relation to the common good. After elaborating on the term discourse formation as a middle-range concept and a more concrete approach to hegemony, the article suggests various clusters of (discursive) strategies to facilitate the evaluation of hegemonic processes within a policy field. Lastly, it introduces vectors of hegemony, proposing an analytical grid as a framework to facilitate reflection on hegemony. European austerity policies are examined to illustrate how some logics and strategies work to strengthen a specific governance approach to the eurozone crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, a comprehensive debate has been taking place over the ontological, epistemological and methodological roots underlying the discipline of International Political Economy. A fundamental and sometimes fierce discussion arose over the questions of which research strategies should prevail, which methods should be applied and what kind of knowledge counts as scientific. The debate has tended to reduce the different positions and International Political Economy approaches to American International Political Economy on the one side and British International Political Economy on the other. Framing the perspectives in this way, however, is misleading. This article argues that the issue at the core of the methodological debate is not the American versus the British school, but rather theoretical monism versus theoretical pluralism. Hence, the core of the debate addresses the question whether scientific work in International Political Economy should ultimately subscribe to one methodology or one fundamental principle or whether the field should make use of a wide variety of theories and methods so as to enable scholars to adapt their research strategy depending on the case under study. A short analysis of existing approaches to the global financial crisis shows the importance of the existence of multiple perspectives, concepts and theoretical approaches. The paper concludes that the 2008 financial crisis in particular has shown how dangerous it is to reduce intellectual endeavour to a narrow mindset. Only pluralism conveys the ability to respond in an adequate manner to the old and new challenges of our times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]