The Money Shapes the Order

Abstract

American monetary prominence shows no sign of weakening. In fact, by some measures it has strengthened since the global financial crisis (Cohen and Benney, 2014). This is due to the unique characteristics of networked international money systems, in combination with a strong commitment by American monetary policymakers to maintain a key position within this structure even during times of crisis. Absent such a commitment the monetary order might have changed during the global financial crisis, which could have presaged a structural re-ordering of world politics more generally (Helleiner, 2014). But endogenous network processes are very powerful forces that are capable of keeping core nodes at the center of the network for long periods of time. A qualitative change to the prevailing international order is unlikely without a substantial revision of the international monetary system, a re-wiring of the monetary network, yet the conditions under which that could occur appear to be quite far away. Therefore, we believe that a qualitative order shift is unlikely for the foreseeable future, although we discuss the likely conditions under which one could occur in the conclusion of this essay.