This book provides the first comprehensive account of post-crisis international regulation of derivatives by bringing together the international relations literature on regime complexity and the international political economy literature on financial regulation. It addresses three questions: What factors drove international standard-setting on derivatives post-crisis? Why did international regime complexity emerge? And how was it managed and with what outcomes? This research innovatively combines a state-centric, a transgovernmental, and business-led explanations. It examines all the main sets of standards (or elemental regimes) concerning various aspects of derivatives markets, namely: trading, clearing, and reporting of derivatives; resilience, recovery and resolution of central counterparties; capital requirements for bank exposures to central counterparties and derivatives; margins for derivatives non-centrally cleared. It is argued that regime complexity in derivatives ensued from the multi-dimensionality and the interlinkages of the problems to tackle, especially given the fact that it was a new policy area without a focal international standard-setter. Despite these challenges, international cooperation resulted in relatively precise, stringent, and consistent rules, even though there was variation across standards. The main jurisdictions played an important role in managing regime complexity, but their effectiveness was constrained by limited domestic coordination. Networks of regulators gathered in international standard-setting bodies deployed a variety of formal and informal coordination tools to deal with regime complexity. The financial industry, at times, lobbied for less precise and stringent rules and engaged in 'venue shopping', whereas, other times, it contributed to the quest for regulatory consistency.

Global Financial Networked Governance provides a careful analysis of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and the standard-setters under its umbrella to show how such government networks harness the power of public reputation to herd their members into compliance. The FSB’s track record in coordinating global financial regulatory reform is uneven. Some items on its agenda have seen the rapid evolution of globally coordinated regulatory standards and their implementation by all member states, sometimes even ahead of the stipulated timelines. In contrast, other initiatives have stalled at different stages of the policymaking process, global coordination is lacking, deadlines have been missed, and it is currently unclear when the post-crisis financial reform project will come to completion, if ever. In this book, the author asks the question: why has the FSB succeeded in some areas of its global financial regulatory coordination work and not in others? The book traces the global policymaking process in three major issue areas: banking regulation (Basel III), over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives, and ending too-big-to-fail. Through a combination of careful process tracing and rigorous testing against alternative explanations, it challenges the existing literature by revealing that the institutional pathway of policymaking is the main predictor of FSB progress. It shows that government networks on their own have succeeded in implementing globally coherent safety standards. In contrast, legislation and legislators in key G20 countries have limited the power and effectiveness of the FSB. The author analyzes the causes and effects of this phenomenon and suggests a novel institutional solution to the effectiveness-legitimacy dilemma that global governance forums face, combining the advantages of functional specialization and electoral accountability. This book will be of great interest to graduate students; academics working at the intersection of economics, political science, and international law; students of the FSB in particular; and policymakers in global economic governance.

Despite the role of shadow banking in the building up of the 2008 international financial crisis, the massive size of this sector, its cross-border nature, and the risks it entails for financial stability, the post-crisis regulation of shadow banking has remained rather feeble. Why? The Perils of International Regime Complexity in Shadow Banking identifies a 'game of shadows', which unfolded recursively concerning the definition, monitoring, and regulation of shadow banking internationally. Thus, states, regulators, and private actors tended to cast light away from various parts of the shadow banking system - shadow banking was (re)fined over time, its measurement was narrowed down, lessening the (perceived) need for regulation. The playing out of such a game was facilitated by the international architecture for shadow banking governance, which is a 'regime complex' characterized by the presence of multiple institutions and elemental regimes governing a set of related issues. Indeed, shadow banking is a quintessential case for demonstrating the perils of international regime complexity, which magnifies problems that are endemic in governing global finance - namely, interstate competition, disagreement between technocratic bodies, and the power of the financial industry - while splintering solutions, due to the fragmentation of regulatory authority. Empirically, this book examines various elemental regimes concerning different aspects of shadow banking, namely: international standards for defining, measuring, and monitoring global shadow banking; international standards for shadow banking entities, including money market funds, hedge funds, and investment funds; international standards for shadow banking activities, such as securitization, securities lending, and repos; international standards for bank capital exposures to shadow banking.

The book provides an analysis of the emergence, evolution, and transformation of transnational securities regulation and of the influences from and the interactions between global regulatory powers in the field. Combining insights from law and political science, the work employs a two-tier complementary "on-the-books" and "in-action” approach. The more classical "on-the-books" approach draws on scholarship in United States and European Union securities regulation; transnational regulation and global administrative law; regime complexity; global governance studies; and the regulatory production of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). The law in-action approach leverages the author’s experience as Compliance senior professional in a multinational financial institution as well as research interviews with senior IOSCO staff. The author’s findings enable the reader to develop an original understanding of IOSCO, its standards, and its unique place in the transnational regulatory arena. They also challenge the doxa that the US are the only driving regulatory power in the securities area when in fact, other regulatory powers are emerging – for the time being, the EU. The balance has shifted and regulatory compromises are achieved at different points in the rule making process.

Over the decade or so since the global financial crisis rocked EU financial markets and led to wide-ranging reforms, EU securities and financial markets regulation has continued to evolve. The legislative framework has been refined and administrative rulemaking has expanded. Alongside, the Capital Markets Union agenda has developed, the UK has left the EU, and ESMA has emerged as a decisive influence on EU financial markets governance. All these developments, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic, have shaped the regulatory landscape and how supervision is organized. EU Securities and Financial Markets Regulation provides a comprehensive, critical, and contextual account of the intricate rulebook that governs EU financial markets and its supporting institutional arrangements. It is framed by an assessment of how the regime has evolved over the decade or so since the global financial crisis and considers, among other matters, the post-crisis reforms to key legislative measures, the massive expansion of administrative rulemaking and of soft law, the Capital Markets Union agenda, the development of supervisory convergence as the means for organizing pan-EU supervision, and ESMA's role in EU financial markets governance. Its coverage extends from capital-raising and the Prospectus Regulation to financial market intermediation and the MiFID II/MiFIR and IFD/IFR regimes, to the new regulatory regimes adopted since the global financial crisis (including for benchmarks and their administrators), to retail market regulation and the PRIIPs Regulation, and on to the EU's third country regime and the implications of the UK's departure from the EU. This is the fourth edition of the highly successful and authoritative monograph first published as EC Securities Regulation. Heavily revised from the third edition to reflect developments since the global financial crisis, it adopts the in-depth contextual and analytical approach of earlier editions and so considers the market, political, institutional, and international context of the regulatory and supervisory regime.

Offering a fresh take on a crucial phase of European history, this book explores the years between the 1980s and 1990s when the European Union took shape. Whilst contributing to existing literature on the Maastricht Treaty and European integration at the end of the twentieth century, the book also brings those debates into the twenty-first century and makes connections with longer-term issues. The transformation of the European political climate in the wake of the global financial crisis in 2008, and the watershed Brexit vote in 2016, has made it all the more urgent to reconsider the way scholars and opinion-makers have looked at European integration in the past. Drawing from recently released archival documents, the authors analyse European cooperation as part of the broader international history in which it unfolded, taking into account the changes in the Cold War order and the advance of a new phase of globalisation. Comparing and contrasting the debates, objectives and achievements of the 1980s and 1990s with the current political landscape of the European Union, this book proposes a novel interpretation of the choices that were made during the Maastricht years, and of their longer-term consequences.

This extensive Handbook provides an in-depth exploration of the political economy dynamics associated with the international monetary and financial systems. Leading experts offer a fresh take on research into the interaction between system structure, t

This collection of essays explores the different ways the insights from complexity theory can be applied to law. Complexity theory – a variant of systems theory – views law as an emergent, complex, self-organising system comprised of an interactive network of actors and systems that operate with no overall guiding hand, giving rise to complex, collective behaviour in law communications and actions. Addressing such issues as the unpredictability of legal systems, the ability of legal systems to adapt to changes in society, the importance of context, and the nature of law, the essays look to the implications of a complexity theory analysis for the study of public policy and administrative law, international law and human rights, regulatory practices in business and finance, and the practice of law and legal ethics. These are areas where law, which craves certainty, encounters unending, irresolvable complexity. This collection shows the many ways complexity theory thinking can reshape and clarify our understanding of the various problems relating to the theory and practice of law.

The problem of banks being 'too big to fail' was the defining regulatory issue of the global financial crisis. However, attempts to tackle the problem by separating retail banking from higher risk trading activities - known as structural reform - proved to be highly divisive and contributed to significant regulatory divergence. In this book, David Howarth and Scott James explain this variation by examining the politics of bank structural reform across six key jurisdictions: the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Integrating political economy and public policy approaches, they develop a novel 'comparative financial power' framework to analyse how financial industry influence is mediated by two factors: first, whether bank lobbying is unified and centralized (cooperative financial power) or divided and fragmented (competitive financial power); and second, policy makers' use of venue shifting to depoliticize contentious policy issues. The book explains that the US and UK governments implemented major reforms because the banking industry was divided and faced significant opposition. However, venue shifting to an independent committee led to durable reform in the UK, while political polarization in the US contributed to contested reform. By contrast, the French and German governments balanced unified bank lobbying and political pressures to act by pursuing limited symbolic reforms; the Dutch government deflected the issue through delegation to multiple commissions (no reform); while political stalemate at the EU level resulted from early venue shifting and concerted pan-European bank lobbying. The book makes a major contribution to scholarship on the political economy of finance and business power.

The author provides a theoretical framework of the global political economy of banking regulation and analyses the policies and politics of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. He demonstrates how global governance has contributed to the onset of the Great Recession and continues to increase the likelihood of future global financial crises.