Capital Rules

In this era of globalisation, Rawi Abdelal's analysis of the foundations of global financial markets is a valuable contribution towards advancing the cause of global governance. -- Pascal Lamy, Director General of the World Trade Organisation This book addresses one of the most significant shifts in the organization of the international economy--the lowering of national border level controls to the entry and exit of capital--and explains how and why states renounced this powerful lever of national control over their economies. In place of the standard explanations, Abdelal develops a sociological argument about the construction of norms and their spread across institutions. Beautifully and engagingly written with brio and clarity, Capital Rules is a brilliant work that will become a mainstay of political economy literatures. -- Suzanne Berger, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Drawing on extensive documentary evidence, as well as dozens of interviews with high-level finance officials and midlevels bureaucrats, [Abdelal] tells a fascinating (and largely unknown) tale: how a clutch of French socialists helped to upend economic orthodoxy and lead the charge for lifting restrictions on capital flows within Europe and throughout the world...The book is a mix of accessible political history and counterintuitive insight, bringing to our attention one of the most important, and least appreciated, developments in the postwar global economy. -- Matthew Rees * Wall Street Journal * Brilliant and authoritative...Abdelal's book is the definitive account of the politics of global financial deregulation--and its increasingly disastrous consequences...This book deserves the widest general audience of serious people. -- Robert Kuttner * American Prospect * Capital Rules is an engaging description of the history behind changes in capital flow doctrine...Abdelal...accomplishes an excellent and quite thorough treatment of the subject matter. -- Ikee Gardner * Journal of Economic Issues * Offer[s] original insights into the politics of international financial regulation. -- Tim Büthe * Review of International Organizations * Rawi Abdelal supplies a valuable historical perspective. He explains that the liberalization of capital markets emerged not from a conspiracy of global financiers or the hegemony of Wall Street, but from a turn towards liberal economics by the French Socialists under François Mitterrand. -- Robert Howse * Harvard Law Review *