Ilene Grabel, Ph.D.
Ilene.Grabel@du.edu
University of Denver, Josef Korbel School of International Studies
Address: 2201 S Gaylord St
City: Denver, Colorado - 80208
Country: United States
About Me:
I am Distinguished University Professor and co-director of the graduate program in Global Finance, Trade, and Economic Integration at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver (USA). I have served as a consultant to the International Poverty Centre for Inclusive Growth of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development /G-24, UNCTAD Division on Globalization and Development Strategies, United Nations University/World Institute for Development Economics Research, and the UNDP’s Human Development Report Office. In addition I have had the opportunity to work with other organizations, such as the NGO Action Aid, the NGO coalition “New Rules for Global Finance,” have been an Expert Advisor to the Third World Network project on capital controls and free trade agreements, served as a member of the Task Force on Regulating Global Capital Flows for Long-Run Development (of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-range Future, Boston University), have been a member since 2013 of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of the European Parliament, and since 1987 has been a staff economist with the Center for Popular Economics. In the fall of 2017 I became a member of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Expert Group on Financing for Development. My book, When Things Don't Fall Apart: Global Financial Governance and Developmental Finance in an Age of Productive Incoherence (MIT Press, 2017) won the 2018 British International Studies Association International Political Economy Group Book Prize and the 2019 International Studies Association International Political Economy Section Best Book Award. I have published widely on financial policy and crises, developmental financial architectures, international financial institutions and global financial governance, international capital flows and capital controls, central banking and currency boards, and non-neliberal development strategies.
Research Interests
Political Economy
Development
International Political Economy
International Financial Institutions
International Capital Flows
Financial Crises
Global Finance
Regional Financial Arrangements
International Financial Policy
Global Financial Governance
My Research:
My recent research focuses on changes in global financial governance and developmental finance that have been induced by the global financial crisis. I recently published a book on this subject, When Things Don’t Fall Apart: Global Financial Governance and Developmental Finance in an Age of Productive Incoherence (MIT Press, 2017). The book won the 2018 British International Studies Association International Political Economy Group Book Prize and the 2019 International Studies Association International Political Economy Section Best Book Award. In the book I reject the conventional wisdom that holds that nothing of significance has changed for emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) as a consequence of the global crisis. Against the dominant (and incorrect) narrative I show that the global crisis has had significant, though ad hoc, inconsistent, experimental, and uneven effects on global financial governance and developmental finance. The resulting incoherence is, in my view, productive of development since it expands possibilities for policy and institutional experimentation, policy space for economic and human development, financial stability and resilience, and financial inclusion. I cement my case for what I term “productive incoherence” through case studies that explore the effects of the global crisis (and the earlier East Asian crisis) on informal financial governance networks (such as the G-20 and the Financial Stability Board); the power, governance, and practice of the IMF (with particular emphasis on the institution’s relationships with EMDEs); institutional innovations in liquidity (i.e., crisis) support and project/infrastructure finance on the national, sub-regional, regional, and transregional levels; and the “rebranding” of capital controls as a macroprudential policy instrument. I have examined many of these issues in earlier papers. The book deepens and broadens my analysis, while also reading them through a theoretical and epistemic framework inspired by the work of an intellectual hero of mine, Albert O. Hirschman.Prior to completing the above book, I conducted research on the origins and consequences of the Mexican and East Asian financial crises of the 1990s; policies to mitigate financial instability and reduce the spillover effects of financial crises in EMDEs; on the political economy of capital control policies and international private capital flows (particularly, portfolio investment and remittances); the effects of financial liberalization on macroeconomic and distributional outcomes and on political voice; pro-poor financial policies (with Gerald Epstein); and on the negative developmental effects of independent central banks and currency boards. In addition to this work, I co-authored with Ha-Joon Chang the book, Reclaiming Development: An Alternative Economic Policy Manual (Zed Books/Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, reissued 2014). In Reclaiming Development Chang and I challenge the damaging and incorrect “There is no alternative” narrative, and make a case for a range of policies that can promote economic development that is robust, equitable, and stable. See my CV for further details on my research. Also see my books and selected journal articles and book chapters for details on my work.My research has also benefitted from the numerous opportunities I’ve had to engage with policy makers working in and on behalf of EMDEs. I’ve worked, for example, as a consultant to the International Poverty Centre for Inclusive Growth of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)/G-24, UNCTAD Division on Globalization and Development Strategies, United Nations University/World Institute for Development Economics Research, UNDP’s Human Development Report Office, and lectured at policy-oriented events sponsored by UNCTAD, Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), the Central Banks of Argentina and Costa Rica, and the Technical Commission for the New International Financial Architecture of the Ministry Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility of Ecuador. I have also been a member of the Task Force on Regulating Global Capital Flows for Long-Run Development (an initiative of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-range Future, Boston University) and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of the European Parliament (2013-present). In the fall of 2017 I became a member of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Expert Group on Financing for Development.I have also enjoyed the opportunity to support the work of those in NGO community seeking to make the world a better place. In this connection I have been a consultant to Action Aid, the coalition “New Rules for Global Finance,” and an Expert Advisor to the Third World Network project on capital controls and free trade agreements. I am also connected to several research institutes. For instance, I am a Research Partner at the Centro de Estudios Financieros y Económicos de América del Norte at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (2012-present and a Research Scholar at the Political Economy Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (2007-present).
Publications:
Journal Articles:
2020b. “Irreparable Ignorance, Protean Power, and Economics,” contribution to symposium in International Theory on Protean Power: Exploring the Uncertain and Unexpected in World Politics (Peter J. Katzenstein and Lucia A. Seybert, eds., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 12(3), pp. 435-48, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752971920000263.
Control in Crisis: A Discussion of COVID-19 and the Futility of Control in the Modern World” by Andy Stirling and Ian Scoones, Issues in Science and Technology 37(1), Fall 2020)
This article examines the effects of the Asian crisis and especially the global financial crisis on developmental finance (that is, long‐term project finance and counter‐cyclical liquidity support) and the global financial architecture. In this connection three claims are advanced. The first is positive: that the crises occasioned meaningful although ad hoc, uneven discontinuities. The conjunction of discontinuities and continuities is imparting incoherence to the developmental and global financial architecture. The second claim is normative and controversial. Contrary to the common narrative, emergent incoherence is (on balance) productive of development and stability rather than debilitating. Actors in parts of the global South and East enjoy greater opportunities for institutional experimentation today in comparison with the limited space available in the coherent neoliberal era when the Bretton Woods institutions were monolithic. All of the experiments underway are not equally likely to survive, but even failures can provide lessons and networks that contribute to future successes. Emergent redundancy and new networks of institutional cooperation increase financial resilience. The article also explores the risks of incoherence and redundancy. The third claim is that productive incoherence can be understood within a ‘Hirschmanian mindset’ — an understanding of change and development informed by Albert Hirschman's theoretical and epistemic commitments.
My controversial normative claim is that emergent incoherence in the global financial architecture (GFA) is to be understood in significant measure as a good thing. The emergent incoherence is on balance productive of development and financial stability. I use the term incoherence to capture the complex, dense, messy, and redundant aspects of the GFA. The emergent incoherence holds significant, promising, and generally overlooked opportunities for EMDEs, opportunities that were not available in the coherent financial environment of the last many decades when the BWIs were monolithic and were the only game in town.
The rebranding of capital controls during the global crisis has widened the policy space in the financial arena to a greater, more consistent degree than following the Asian crisis. How are we to account for this extraordinary ideational and policy evolution? The paper highlights five factors that contribute to the evolving rebranding of capital controls. These include: (1) the rise of increasingly autonomous developing states, largely as a consequence of their successful response to the Asian crisis; (2) the increasing assertiveness of their policymakers in part as a consequence of their relative success in responding to the current crisis; (3) a pragmatic adjustment by the IMF to an altered global economy in which the geography of its influence has been severely restricted, and in which it has become financially dependent on former clients; (4) the need for capital controls by countries at the extremes, i.e. those that faced implosion, and also and more importantly by those that have fared “too well”; and (5) the evolution in the ideas of academic economists and IMF staff. The paper also explores tensions around the rebranding of capital controls as exemplified by efforts to “domesticate” their use via a code of conduct.
Books Written:
When Things Don’t Fall Apart: Global Financial Governance and Developmental Finance in an Age of Productive Incoherence by Ilene Grabel (The MIT Press, 2017). Winner of the 2018 British International Studies Association International Political Economy Group Book Prize and the 2019 International Studies Association International Political Economy Section Best Book Award. In When things Don’t Fall Apart, Ilene Grabel makes a simple but controversial claim, based on the work of the eminent social scientist Albert O. Hirschman. Grabel argues that as concerns global financial governance and development finance we are now in a period that she calls productive incoherence. Unlike the Keynesian period of the middle 20th century and the neoliberal period that followed, the current conjuncture lacks an overarching theoretical framework to guide financial governance. In its absence, Grabel maps the proliferation of institutional innovation at the national, regional, and transregional levels. These experiments are grounded in a spirit of Hirschmanian pragmatism rather than Keynesian or neoclassical dogmatism. They are ad hoc, often limited in scope, and even inconsistent with each other. They are in that sense incoherent. The book’s novel normative claim is that this incoherence is productive. It is allowing for new institutional and policy innovations that are contributing to a pluripolar financial governance architecture that is more robust and offers greater opportunities for problem solving and experimentation than the coherent architecture it is displacing. Grabel substantiates these claims with empirically-rich case studies that explore the effects of recent crises on established and new networks of financial governance (such as the G-20); transformations within the IMF; institutional innovations in liquidity support and project finance from the national to the transregional levels; and the “rebranding” of capital controls. Grabel acknowledges, however, that the incoherent transformations underway also pose grave risks. She considers these risks in the concluding chapter of the book.
There is no alternative to neoliberal economics - or so it appeared when Reclaiming Development was published in 2004. Many of the same driving assumptions - monetarism and globalization - remain within the international development policy establishment. Ha-Joon Chang and Ilene Grabel confront this neoliberal development model head-on by combining devastating economic critique with an array of innovative policies and an in-depth analysis of the experiences of leading Western and East Asian economies. Still, much has changed since 2004 - the relative success of some developing countries in weathering the global financial crisis has exposed the latent contradictions of the neoliberal model. The resulting situation of increasingly open policy innovation in the global South means that Reclaiming Development is even more relevant today than when it was first published. History is being made.