Masters of the Universe but Slaves of the Market: Bankers and the Great Financial Meltdown

IF 2.1 2区社会学 Q2 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

British Journal of Politics & International Relations Pub Date : 2014-05-20 DOI:10.1111/1467-856X.12044

Stephen Bell, Andrew Hindmoor

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引用次数: 31

Abstract

This article focuses on the banking crisis in the US and UK.
It is essential to understand banker agency and the institutional and structural contexts which shaped such agency.
Bankers experienced variegated patters of constraint and opportunity. At one level institutional theories that emphasise institutional constraint cannot easily account for the authority and agency enjoyed by key bankers.
On the other hand, bankers were heavily influenced by institutional change in the shape of market ‘liberalisation’, which produced intense levels of competition and pressures to achieve higher profit returns: an exacting form of market discipline.

Bankers and financiers in the US and UK modified institutions and revolutionised the banking industry prior to the 2007-8 crisis. These agents were however heavily constrained and eventually overwhelmed by institutional pressures and wider structural forces that encouraged high-risk leveraged trading and which generated systemic risk. To account for this, institutional theory needs to incorporate a broader canvas of conditioning contexts, particularly the impact of structural or systemic forces on agents and the way in which these are actualised as a form of ‘ecosystem power’.

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宇宙的主人，市场的奴隶:银行家与金融大崩溃

本文主要关注美国和英国的银行业危机。了解银行家代理以及形成这种代理的制度和结构背景是至关重要的。银行家们经历了各种各样的约束和机会。在一个层面上，强调制度约束的制度理论无法轻易解释关键银行家享有的权威和代理权。另一方面，银行家受到市场“自由化”形式的制度变化的严重影响，这种变化产生了激烈的竞争和实现更高利润回报的压力:一种严格形式的市场纪律。在2007年至2008年的金融危机之前，美国和英国的银行家和金融家改良了机构，彻底改变了银行业。然而，这些代理人受到制度压力和更广泛的结构性力量的严重制约，最终被压倒，这些压力鼓励高风险杠杆交易，并产生了系统性风险。为了解释这一点，制度理论需要纳入更广泛的制约背景，特别是结构性或系统性力量对行动者的影响，以及这些力量作为“生态系统力量”形式实现的方式。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

British Journal of Politics & International Relations Multiple-

CiteScore

4.90

自引率

5.60%

发文量

期刊介绍： BJPIR provides an outlet for the best of British political science and of political science on Britain Founded in 1999, BJPIR is now based in the School of Politics at the University of Nottingham. It is a major refereed journal published by Blackwell Publishing under the auspices of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom. BJPIR is committed to acting as a broadly-based outlet for the best of British political science and of political science on Britain. A fully refereed journal, it publishes topical, scholarly work on significant debates in British scholarship and on all major political issues affecting Britain"s relationship to Europe and the world.