When Things Don't Fall Apart

Global Financial Governance and Developmental Finance in an Age of Productive Incoherence

by Ilene Grabel

Foreword by Dani Rodrik

Paperback

$28.00

Paperback

ISBN: 9780262538527

Pub date: August 6, 2019

Publisher: The MIT Press

400 pp., 6 x 9 in,

MIT Press Bookstore Penguin Random House Amazon Barnes and Noble Bookshop.org Indiebound Indigo Books a Million

Hardcover

$35.00

Hardcover

ISBN: 9780262037259

Pub date: January 12, 2018

Publisher: The MIT Press

400 pp., 6 x 9 in,

MIT Press Bookstore Penguin Random House Amazon Barnes and Noble Bookshop.org Indiebound Indigo Books a Million

eBook

$27.99

eBook

ISBN: 9780262344050

Pub date: January 5, 2018

Publisher: The MIT Press

400 pp., 6 x 9 in,

Penguin Random House

Winner, 2018 British International Studies Association International Political Economy Group Book Prize
Winner, 2019 International Studies Association Best Book Award, International Political Economy Section
Winner, 2019 Joan Robinson Prize, awarded by the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE)

400 pp., 6 x 9 in,

Paperback
9780262538527
Published: August 2019
Publisher: The MIT Press

$28.00

Hardcover
9780262037259
Published: January 2018
Publisher: The MIT Press

$35.00

eBook
9780262344050
Published: January 2018
Publisher: The MIT Press

$27.99

Other Retailers:

Description
Author(s)
Praise
Resources
Open Access

An account of the significant though gradual, uneven, disconnected, ad hoc, and pragmatic innovations in global financial governance and developmental finance induced by the global financial crisis.

In When Things Don't Fall Apart, Ilene Grabel challenges the dominant view that the global financial crisis had little effect on global financial governance and developmental finance. Most observers discount all but grand, systemic ruptures in institutions and policy. Grabel argues instead that the global crisis induced inconsistent and ad hoc discontinuities in global financial governance and developmental finance that are now having profound effects on emerging market and developing economies. Grabel's chief normative claim is that the resulting incoherence in global financial governance is productive rather than debilitating. In the age of productive incoherence, a more complex, dense, fragmented, and pluripolar form of global financial governance is expanding possibilities for policy and institutional experimentation, policy space for economic and human development, financial stability and resilience, and financial inclusion. Grabel draws on key theoretical commitments of Albert Hirschman to cement the case for the productivity of incoherence. Inspired by Hirschman, Grabel demonstrates that meaningful change often emerges from disconnected, erratic, experimental, and inconsistent adjustments in institutions and policies as actors pragmatically manage in an evolving world.

Grabel substantiates her claims with empirically rich case studies that explore the effects of recent crises on 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 concludes with a careful examination of the opportunities and risks associated with the evolutionary transformations underway.

The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding from Arcadia – a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin.

This clear and passionate argument that 'productive incoherence' is transforming the global financial system challenges believers in all kinds of 'isms'—and provides a source of optimism in otherwise dark times.
Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; Executive Secretary, International Development Economics Associates

How do you know a change when you see it? We like to see big bangs that lead to big changes. But life moves in increments. Recognizing this, Ilene Grabel has produced a lens for us that sees incoherence and discontinuity, not as noise, but as signal. And as evidence that when agents make changes to their institutional context locally, they effect changes that matter globally. Grabel shows us why institutional and ideational incoherence is the raw material of change.
Mark Blyth, Eastman Professor of Political Economy, The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University

This book, by a leading critical thinker on the global financial system, analyzes with outstanding creativity the evolution of the system since the East Asian crisis. It shows in a very innovative way how it has become a more complex and fragmented system, but one that has enhanced the voice and policy space of emerging and developing countries. It is a must read for those who work on international finance.
José Antonio Ocampo, codirector of Banco de la República de Colombia; Professor, Columbia University; former United Nations Under-Secretary-General; former Finance Minister of Colombia

Albert Hirschman's pathbreaking insights into the processes of socio-economic change have been forgotten as mainstream social scientists have become less apt to question the status quo and dismissive of the possibilities for social transformation. Ilene Grabel makes a powerful and fresh case for the 'Hirschmanian mindset' as an essential lens through which we can understand evolutions in global financial governance since the East Asian crisis of 1997 and especially following the global financial crisis.
Ha-Joon Chang, University of Cambridge; author of 23 Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism