The rise of central bankers to the status of new ‘masters of the universe’ has been matched by mounting allegations of political overreach. In the Eurozone, for instance, the European Central Bank has increasingly been accused of straying into the fiscal realm. Why do politically independent central banks engage intensely and publicly with government policies, thereby threatening the neat separation between monetary and fiscal policy that was meant to protect central banks themselves from interference? While existing political economy accounts have focused squarely on the issues of government debt and central bankers’ fears of fiscal dominance, we argue for the emerging role of ‘financial dominance’ throughout the crisis, thereby shedding light on the structural forces that master the new masters of the universe. To this end, we pursue a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative text analysis techniques with a qualitative understanding of the context in which central banks communicate on fiscal policy.

This paper contributes to the growing empirical work on deliberation in legislatures by proposing a novel approach to analysing parliamentary hearings using both thematic and topic modelling textual analysis software. We explore variations in deliberative quality across economic policy type (fiscal policy, monetary policy and financial stability) and across parliamentary chambers (Commons and Lords) in UK select committee oversight hearings during the 2010–2015 Parliament. Our overall focus is not only to suggest a multi-method approach to the textual analysis of parliamentary data, but also to explore more substantive aspects of parliamentary oversight, such as: (1) the extent to which oversight varies between unelected and elected policy makers; and (2) whether parliamentarians conduct oversight more forcefully or more along partisan lines when they are challenging fellow politicians as opposed to central bank officials. Our findings suggest consistent differences in deliberative styles between types of hearings (fiscal, monetary, financial stability) and between chambers (Commons, Lords).

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