%0 Journal Article
%T Governing through financial markets: Towards a critical political economy of Capital Markets Union
%A Benjamin Braun
%A Daniela Gabor
%A Marina H¨¹bner
%J Competition & Change
%@ 1477-2221
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/1024529418759476
%X Capital Markets Union is a large-scale political project to strengthen and further integrate European market-based finance. An initiative of the European Commission under Jean-Claude Juncker¡¯s leadership, Capital Markets Union seeks to realize a long-standing goal of European policy makers: a financial system in which capital markets will absorb more of citizens¡¯ savings and play a greater role in corporate finance. Market-based banking, too, is set to benefit from Capital Markets Union, which includes measures to revive the European securitization market. Given that market-based finance ¨C or shadow banking ¨C shouldered much of the blame for the financial crisis of 2007¨C2008, its resurgence as a policy priority of the European Union constitutes a puzzle. The present article lays the theoretical groundwork for a special issue that tackles this puzzle. It argues that rather than an end in itself, Capital Markets Union represents an exercise in ¡®governing through financial markets¡¯. Pioneered in the United States, governing through financial markets is a political strategy adopted by state actors in pursuit of policy goals that exceed their institutional capacity
%K European Union
%K euro area
%K European Commission
%K market-based finance
%K shadow banking
%K financialization
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1024529418759476