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Conjuring the spirit of multilateralism: Histories of crisis management during the ‘great credit crash’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2015

Abstract

In recent years, critical scholars have emphasised how the recollection of past events as traumas can both constrain and widen the political possibilities of a present. This article builds on such research by suggesting that the management of contemporary financial crises is reliant on a ritual work of repetition, wherein prior ‘crisis’ episodes are called upon to identify and authorise specific sites and modes of crisis management. In order to develop this argument, I focus on how past crises figure within the public pronouncements of four key policymaking organisations during the financial instability of 2007–9. I find that while the Great Depression does enable these organisations to reaffirm old ways of managing crises, both it and the more recent Asian crisis are also made to disclose new truths about the evolution of multilateralism as a form of governance. In so doing, I argue, these historical narratives reveal how the management of global financial crisis depends upon a kind of ‘magic trick’. Rather than a strictly rational, historical process of problem solving, contemporary crises are instead negotiated through a contingent and self-referential conjuring of crisis-histories.

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Articles
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© 2015 British International Studies Association 

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References

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43 This, for example, is the narrative that underpins Kindleberger’s The World in Depression. Incidentally, Kindleberger’s narrative of the Great Depression was carried through into subsequent theories of hegemonic stability within international studies. On these theories and the debates they inspired see Grunberg, Isabelle, ‘Exploring the “myth” of hegemonic stability’, International Organization, 44:4 (1990), pp. 431–477CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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49 Ibid., para. 19.

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51 See McCormick, ‘Remarks on IMF Reform’, Section II; and Sobel, ‘Global Financial Crisis and the IMF’, Section I.

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60 The then Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke first articulates this crisis history in a speech entitled ‘Global Imbalances: Recent Developments and Prospects’, Berlin (11 September 2007). available at: {http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20070911a.htm} accessed 6 October 2009.

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64 Frederic Mishkin, ‘Systemic risk and the international lender of last resort’, Chicago (28 September 2007), Section III, available at: {http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/mishkin20070928a.htm} accessed 12 October 2009.

65 Jean-Claude Trichet, ‘Reflections on the international financial architecture’, Salzburg (29 September 2007), Section III, available at: {http://www.ecb.int/press/key/date/2007/html/sp070929.en.html} accessed 23 June 2009.

66 Ibid., Section I. Paradoxically, in this schema the task of ‘crisis prevention’ is at once both never and always the same – never, because each new solution always has its particulars, and always, because these solutions never actually solve the problem which prompts them (namely, the emergent properties of globalisation itself).

67 Ibid., Section I.

68 Ibid., Section I.

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70 See Trichet, ‘International financial architecture’, Section III; and ‘Reflections on the global financial system’, Washington DC (20 October 2007), Section II, available at: {http://www.ecb.int/press/key/date/2007/html/sp071020.en.html} accessed 23 June 2009.

71 Jean-Claude Trichet, ‘Remarks on the Recent Turbulences in Global Financial Markets’, New York (14 April 2008), Section III, available at: {http://www.ecb.int/press/key/date/2008/html/sp080414_1.en.html} accessed 23 June 2009.

72 Clay Lowery, ‘Remarks at the Annual Conference of the Institute of International Bankers’, New York (3 March 2008), Section IV, available at: {http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/hp855.aspx} accessed 18 September 2013; David McCormick, ‘The International Response to Financial Market Turmoil’, Chicago (16 April 2008), Section III, available at: {http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/hp931.aspx} accessed 18 September 2013.

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