Professor Jeffrey M. Chwieroth
I am Head of the Department of International Relations and Professor of International Political Economy, as well as co-investigator of the Systemic Risk Centre, Associate of the Grantham Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, and Faculty Affiliate at the Phelan United States Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
My current research interests are in the political economy of international money and finance, specifically the political consequences of financial crises and financialization, the impact of wealth inequality on voter support for populist parties, and the politics of climate-related risks to financial stability and household wealth. I have also investigated sovereign wealth funds, financial globalisation, the International Monetary Fund, and the role of economic norms and ideas in the global economy.
Newest book:
The Wealth Effect: How the Great Expectations of the Middle Class Have Changed the Politics of Banking Crises, with Andrew Walter. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
Awarded annually by the International Studies Association International Political Economy Section to recognise an outstanding monograph in the field of IPE within the past two years.
This book offers an elegantly stated and highly original theoretical argument about the role of middle-class expectations in driving financial instability from the 1800s to the 2007 Global Financial Crisis. The authors substantiate their argument through a combination of rigorous quantitative content analysis and detailed (historical) case study research (including the generation of primary data on reactions to bank bail-outs from leading broadsheets from the 1825 to the 2007 financial crises in the UK, US and Brazil).
Award Committee's motivation
Awarded annually by the International Science Council, the University of Bergen and the European Consortium for Political Research to scholars making a very substantial and original contribution in comparative social science research.
This book is an impressive example of comparative scholarship. It masterfully weaves together an amazing wealth of historical, statistical, and narrative evidence, combining the analysis of long-term historical trends in policies and public opinion, correlational analyses of middle class expectations and policy changes, and historical process tracing of policy responses to systemic banking crises over more than 100 years… Its focus on finance will change the way we look at comparative politics, and its focus on the interests of the middle classes will change the way we look at the causes and resolutions of major financial crises.
Prize Jury’s laudation
This is an important analysis of the changing political economy of financial crises. The central argument is that middle-class electorates will not allow their wealth to be destroyed in such crises. But the consequent shift towards bailouts, in the interests not so much of the bankers as of the public at large, makes finance bigger and more fragile over time and so the crises themselves more dangerous. That, in turn, makes bailouts more politically essential, but no more politically popular. We have ended up in a race between the regulatory capacity of the state and the financial sector’s ability to discover new ways to collapse. There is no straightforward way out of this dangerous red queen’s race.
Martin Wolf - Financial Times
Other Reviews:
Special-interest politics figure importantly in all scholarly analyses of the causes and resolution of financial crises. Marshalling an amazing array of historical, statistical and narrative evidence, Chwieroth and Walter show that this point applies not just to the bankers who are commonly seen as the key players in these complex financial events, but also to the households whose deposits and savings are at risk. This observation has powerful implications for how financial crises play out in our modern era of mass democratic politics. The literature on financial crises will never be the same.
Barry Eichengreen - George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science, University of California, Berkeley
The global pandemic of banking crises, and government-sponsored bailouts in response to those crises, are both unprecedented phenomena. Such new and socially costly phenomena beg for deep inquiry by political scientists seeking to understand their political roots, and The Wealth Effect offers just such an inquiry. It argues convincingly that bailouts and the severity of crises are connected to each other, and both reflect a new underlying politics in which the protection of banks has become popular with a broad class of voters. This book challenges mechanical views of risks that abstract from politics, and in doing so, calls upon voters in democracies to look in the mirror when seeking causes for their financial system, and fiscal, troubles.
Charles W. Calomiris - Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions, Columbia University
A fascinating and novel argument about the politics of finance before and after the Great Recession. Tracing the development and effects of a an enlarged 'bailout' constituency, involving both wealthy and middle class citizens, this book offers valuable lessons about finance, class politics and the workings of democracy.
Nancy Bermeo - University of Oxford and Princeton University