New Approaches to International Financial Regulation

Abstract

What has happened to scholarship on international financial regulation since the global financial crisis? This paper maps out core debates suggestive of the new intellectual terrain that emerged out of the global financial meltdown. I argue that the old-consensus in neoclassical economic theory has given way to a new mainstream institutionalist legal literature, which I term the Reformist approach. I show that this post-crisis shift of focus parallels developments in the fields of international political economy, and law and development. I argue that this Reformist literature could benefit from further engagement with what I term the “New Approaches” literature in international legal theory and in the anthropology and social studies of finance.

Keywords: financial regulation, international law, anthropology, social studies of finance, political economy