Financialization: An Introduction

Abstract

Financialization has become the go-to term for scholarship that studies the vastly expanded role of finance in contemporary politics, economy and society. The growth of financialization studies reflects the evident need for an analytical vocabulary that can capture these key empirical developments in contemporary capitalism. Since the 1990s, a variety of divergent conceptualizations of financialization have been offered, allowing financialization studies to prosper in a transdisciplinary way. Tracing the evolution of the field's broad themes and reviewing its key definitions, we articulate what unites the diverse financialization scholarship and touch upon recent debates regarding the concept's continued value. We suggest that three principles may guide conceptualizations of financialization going forward: being limited, mechanism-oriented, and contextual. Finally, we introduce and review the contributions to six parts of the Handbook of Financialization and conclude with a brief outlook for the field.

Modelos de financiarización de las pensiones en cuatro estados de bienestar europeos

“…In their review of existing literature, Mader et al (2020) have called for a conceptualization of financialization that is mechanistic in addition to being limiting and contextualized. The contextualized comparison in this paper provides a starting point to consider the underlying mechanisms of pension financialization in the four cases.…”

“…While pension financialization broadly conceived can be defined as the growing role of financial markets and financial actors in the provision of old-age pensions, scholars within the field have categorized various empirical phenomena under this rubric. Following Mader et al (2020), I propose a limited understanding of pension financialization by outlining four dimensions associated with this concept. Based on a review of the literature, I identify: 1) the expansion of capital-funding; 2) changes to pension scheme design; 3) changes to the financial management of pension plans, including the investment of assets; and 4) the centrality of funded pension schemes in the (global) political economy.…”

“…The initial focus of the financialization scholarship on the non-financial corporation emerged out of the specific context of the United States with its highly developed financial markets (Krippner 2005). Since then, scholars of financialization have identified many other areas where the growing role of financial markets and actors has manifested itself in contemporary societies, including the household, the state and the natural world (see Mader et al 2020 and other articles in this special issue). The growth of financialization studies has also been met with a widening geographical scope of the literature with a growing number of studies on financialization in traditionally bank-based economies (Hardie and Howarth 2009), state capitalist economies (Wang 2020) and emerging markets (Bonizzi et al 2020).…”

“…In line with Mader et al (2020), I carry out a contextualized comparison of the four patterns of pension financialization. Contextualized comparison moves institutional analysis beyond explanations of cross-national variation that centre on path dependencies created by pre-existing welfare institutions.…”

THE EXTENDED LOCAL STATE UNDER FINANCIALIZED CAPITALISM : Institutional Bricolage and the Use of Intermunicipal Companies to Manage Financial Pressure

“…Despite growing attention to processes of financialization across various scholarly strands (Mader et al ., 2020), the debate about the role of the local state in financialization remains in a nascent phase. Recent contributions have started to uncover how local states operate under financialized capitalism, examining the variegated engagement of municipalities with financial instruments, narratives and actors (see e.g.…”