O poder estrutural dos bancos nas economias nacionais sempre foi um tema controverso nas ciências sociais. Após a crise de 2008 (e dos polpudos aportes de recursos públicos oferecidos aos bancos) a polêmica veio a tona mais uma vez. Dois artigos publicados este ano enfrentam diretamente o problema. O primeiro deles, escrito por Emiliano Grossman (Sciences Po) e Cornelia Woll (Science Po), procura medir o poder estrutural dos bancos através dos diversos "bailouts" - ou resgates - concedidos às instituições bancárias falidas, ou em vias de falir, na Europa pós-2008. Segundo os autores, o fato mais importante para uma divisão de risco vantajosa para os bancos (e, consequentemente, desvantajosa para os cidadãos) é explicada não tanto pelo poder econômico dos bancos mas pelo desenho institucional dessas instituições em cada país. Já os cientistas políticos Pepper Culpepper (European Institute) e Raphael Reinke (Zurich) publicaram na edição de dezembro da Politics & Society um artigo contestando tanto o poder estrutural de grandes instituições financeiras, como a ideia amplamente partilhada de que o governo dos EUA - devido ao volume de recursos controlados pelos bancos - estariam em uma posição de barganha mais fraca em comparação com o governo do Reino Unido.
- Grossman & Woll: "Saving the Banks: The Political Economy of Bailouts"
Abstract
How much leeway did governments have in designing bank bailouts and deciding on the height of intervention during the 2007-2009 financial crisis? By analyzing the variety of bailouts in Europe and North America, we will show that the strategies governments use to cope with the instability of financial markets does not depend on economic conditions alone. Rather, they take root in the institutional and political setting of each country and vary in particular according to the different types of business–government relations banks were able to entertain with public decision makers. Still, “crony capitalism” accounts overstate the role of bank lobbying. With four case studies of the Irish, Danish, British, and French bank bailout, we show that countries with close one-on-one relationships between policy makers and bank management tended to develop unbalanced bailout packages, while countries where banks negotiated collectively developed solutions with a greater burden-sharing from private institutions
- Culpepper & Reinke: "Strutuctural Power and Bank Bailouts in the United Kingdom and the United States"
Abstract
The 2008 bailout is often taken as evidence of the domination of the US political
system by large financial institutions. In fact, the bailout demonstrated the vulnerability
of US banks to government pressure. Large banks in the United States could not
defy regulators, because their future income depended on the US market. In Britain,
by contrast, one bank succeeded in scuttling the preferred governmental solution
of an industry-wide recapitalization, because most of its revenue came from outside
the United Kingdom. This was an exercise of structural power, but one that most
contemporary scholarship on business power ignores or misclassifies, since it
limits structural power to the automatic adjustment of policy to the possibility of
disinvestment. We show that structural power can be exercised strategically, that it is
distinct from instrumental power based on lobbying, and that it explains consequential
variations in bailout design in the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and
Germany.
