Samuel Knafo | University of Sussex (original) (raw)

Books by Samuel Knafo

"The Making of Modern Finance is a path-breaking study of the construction of liberal financial g... more "The Making of Modern Finance is a path-breaking study of the construction of liberal financial governance and demonstrates how complex forms of control by the state profoundly transformed the nature of modern finance.

Challenging dominant theoretical conceptions of liberal financial governance in international political economy, this book argues that liberal economic governance is too often perceived as a passive form of governance. It situates the gold standard in relation to practices of monetary governance which preceded it, tracing the evolution of monetary governance from the late middle Ages to show how the 19th century gold standard transformed the way states relate to finance. More specifically, Knafo demonstrates that the institutions of the gold standard helped to put in place instruments of modern monetary policy that are usually associated with central banking and argues that the gold standard was a prelude to Keynesian policies rather than its antithesis. The author reveals that state interventions played a vital role in the rise of modern financial techniques which emerged in the late 18th and 19th century and served as the foundation for contemporary financial systems.

Advancing central debates in international political economy about the evolution of the international monetary system, this book will be of very strong interest to students and scholars of international political economy, economic history and historical sociology. It will appeal to those interested in monetary and financial history, the modern state, liberal governance, and varieties of capitalism."

Neoliberalism by Samuel Knafo

Handbook on Critical Political Economy and Public Policy, 2023

The authors explore the concept of new public management. The term describes a deep restructuring... more The authors explore the concept of new public management. The term describes a deep restructuring of the state involving the weakening of the classical welfare state under the guise of increased efficiency and necessary structural adjustments. The authors argue that although the term new public management is widely perceived as the neoliberal approach to public administration per se, the relationship between the two is, in fact, far from clear and highly ambiguous. In order to problematize the notion of new public management and to elaborate its political dimension, the contribution critically discusses different explanations of its association with neoliberalism. The authors argue that the relation between new public management and neoliberalism is rather diffuse: first, in many cases centre-left governments have been strong supporters of new public management, both before and after New Right governments of the 1980s. Second, in many respects, public choice ideas and new public management are not compatible. Third, purported ‘business-like’ methods that are often associated with new public management are rather fuzzy and the dualistic framing of private versus public management has always been conceptually empty. In order to bring deeper insight into the role and politico-economic significance of new public management, Dutta, Knafo and Lovering trace the emergence of the approach in the 1950s and 1960s. Against this background it becomes clear that the success of the new public management approach was based on its ability to create a market-like environment in public administration. The authors conclude that while the neoliberal context was crucial to the development of new public management, the governance practices introduced with this approach had little to do with neoliberal ideas.

Review of International Political Economy, 2020

As a set of ideas and practices, managerialism has arguably become a powerful behavioural logic s... more As a set of ideas and practices, managerialism has arguably become a powerful behavioural logic shaping a range of processes and outcomes of governance in the world economy. Yet IPE has yet to directly interrogate managerialism as a distinct object of analysis. In this special issue, we bring together a range of authors to explore how managerialism reveals a set of complex histories, agents, and implications that are not self-evident and carry direct relevance for how we understand the global economy. Our main contention is that managerialism is not simply a technical means for the pursuit of policies, but has come to shape the very ways in which policy, and governance more generally, are conceived and conducted. Across a range of cases and fields, we dissect the emergence of the managerial logic, along with how it produces uneven mutations, ruptures, and forms of resistance. In doing so, we reflect upon the requirements for developing a political economy of managerialism.

Review of International Political Economy, 2019

There is a rich literature on the emergence of new public management in the 1980s yet surprisingl... more There is a rich literature on the emergence of new public management in the 1980s yet surprisingly little about the historical and social lineages of this movement. The scholarship on public management generally suggests that it was born out of the neoliberal critique of the state. The public sector would have thus borrowed corporate practices concerned with performance in order to instil market-like competition and make efficiency gains. This article challenges this reading by showing that concerns with performance management emerged instead from new planning technologies developed in the US military sector. I argue that these planning practices, initially developed at the RAND corporation, would radically transform governance by changing the way in which decision makers consider data about performance and use it to develop strategies or policies. I then explore the impact of this new approach on both corporate and public governance. I show how these ideas were translated for business studies and public administration in order to radically transform both fields and 'make them more scientific'. As I show, this process contributed directly to the rise of what became called public management and provided new planning tools that radically transformed how we think about governance. Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Sahil J. Dutta, Matthew Eagleton-Pierce, Richard Lane, Ian Lovering, Dinah Rajak, Christian Shepers, Alexandre Styhre, Steffan Wyn-Jones as well as two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

New Political Economy

Managerialism is often depicted as a key practice of neoliberalism yet relatively little has been... more Managerialism is often depicted as a key practice of neoliberalism yet relatively little has been written by scholars of neoliberalism about the actual relationship between managerialism and neoliberalism. Usually subsumed under a functional reading of neoliberalism, managerialism has too often been understood simply as a means for neoliberal ends (i.e. to promote market rule or competition). This paper challenges this perspective on the grounds that it conflates practices that stem from two different historical lineages. As we show, managerial governance not only has a very different history than neoliberal theory, but it also rests on different principles. Its development can be traced back to the US defence sector in the 1950s and the pivotal role of the RAND corporation. On the basis of this historical perspective, we argue for the need to analyse managerialism on its own terms and make the case for considering the rise of managerial science as a paradigmatic shift in governance. In doing so, we show how managerial governance represented a radical rupture from previous management practices and show how it profoundly reshaped how we have come to understand governance.

IPPR Progressive Review, 2018

Neoliberal policy owes less to the ideology of free-markets than it does the planning techniques ... more Neoliberal policy owes less to the ideology of free-markets than it does the planning techniques born in Cold War America.

Review of Social Economy, 2020

The last two decades have seen an explosion of writings about neoliberalism insisting on the role... more The last two decades have seen an explosion of writings about neoliberalism insisting on the role of the state as a key architect of market dynamics. Drawing substantially from the work of Karl Polanyi, this literature has emphasised in various ways the socially constructed nature of neoliberalism. But as I argue, conceptual flaws in Polanyi's conception of 19 th liberal governance have helped perpetuate an ongoing reliance on the notion of the Market despite the recognition that there is no such thing as a self-regulated Market. Criticising the turn to Polanyi, I show how this has directed our gaze towards the rhetorical claims of neoliberal governance, at the expense of a reflection on its institutional features. The article then suggests avenues for reconfiguring the study of neoliberalism without recourse to the problematic notion of the Market.

Karl Polanyi's Political and Economic Thought: A Critical Guide, 2019

Finance and Financial Governance by Samuel Knafo

New Political Economy, 2021

It has long been assumed that marketisation would undermine banks, a claim reflected in the commo... more It has long been assumed that marketisation would undermine banks, a claim reflected in the common opposition of market and bank-based finance. But as recent research shows, some banks have flourished in the marketized environment of financialisation. I argue the reason they have come to dominate financialisation stems from a revolution in funding that began in the 1960s with the rise of liability management. This practice enabled some banks to dramatically leverage their operations and expand their balance sheet. The new funding practice also impacted the business model of US banks fuelling a move from lending to trading. As I show, this revolution in finance shifted the power away from lenders and towards leveraging financial agents that focused on capturing assets through predatorial strategies.

Finance and Society, 2020

The Routledge International Handbook of Financialization, 2020

Review of International Political Economy, 2019

This article re-examines the shareholder value revolution of the 1980s to challenge the dominant ... more This article re-examines the shareholder value revolution of the 1980s to challenge the dominant conception of the financialization of the firm. This transformation is widely interpreted as a re-alignment of corporate management in response to growing shareholder power and neoliberal managerial norms associated notably with agency theory. By contrast, we demonstrate how the financialization of the firm has its roots in the innovations made in 1960s America by a small group of outsider firms, the conglomerates, to challenge the corporate establishment. As we show, these firms pioneered financial techniques that profoundly transformed the nature of corporate strategy and launched a process of financialization as firms began to exploit the leverage financial markets could provide in various corporate contests. Taking stock of this historical lineage leads us to re-interpret the shareholder revolution of the 1980s. We demonstrate how the key features of this era: the orientation of firms towards capital market, the increase in shareholder activism, and the rise of agency theory, should be read as unintended outcomes of the success of financialized management and its destabilizing effects on corporate governance.

This paper focuses on the history of financialised management and its connections to shareholder ... more This paper focuses on the history of financialised management and its connections to shareholder value which is often viewed as undermining patient strategies of investments. We argue that the rise of financialised management has in fact a long history that goes back to the conglomerate movement in 1960s America. As we show, the conglomerates pioneered the use of financial markets as a baseline for strategy, and the emphasis on financial transactions as an engine for growth. They developed key techniques-high leverage, share-price maximisation, accounting manipulation-that later came to be associated with managerial strategies of the shareholder value era. This legacy has important implications for how we think about patient capital. It challenges the idea that patient capital consists foremost in shielding non-financial companies from capital markets and highlights the central role of management too often neglected in these debates.

Finance has traditionally been conceptualised on the basis of what could be labelled a credit mod... more Finance has traditionally been conceptualised on the basis of what could be labelled a credit model. This model theorises finance as a functional actor in the process of capitalist accumulation. This structural model has entertained a specific understanding of the contradictions of finance which emphasises the imbalances in its relation to production. While the rich literature based on this template has generated important insights for understanding capitalist finance, it is debatable whether the credit model is sufficient to account for financial speculation. In this article, I argue that the perception that speculation is essentially based on irrational optimism fails to capture what is important about recent developments of finance. I thus put forward new conceptual foundations which are required, I argue, in order to develop a political economy of speculation which examines the way in which speculation is socially constructed, how it evolves through history and whether it is in the process of transforming the nature of capital accumulation.

This paper criticises the tight association in the political economy literature of speculation wi... more This paper criticises the tight association in the political economy literature of speculation with liberal forms of governance. Having emphasised liberalisation, it is argued, scholars who ascribe to such a view are too often left without an institutional account of speculative dynamics. The paper then sets out the foundation for a political economy of speculation; one which emphasises the various forms speculation has taken and how these are rooted within specific institutional structures. In order to do so, the paper develops a distinction between premodern and modern speculation and uses it in order to contrast British and American finance. This contrast then serves as a basis for challenging the idea that speculation emerges from liberal forms of governance.

This article challenges the way liberal economic governance has come to be theorised as a passive... more This article challenges the way liberal economic governance has come to be theorised as a passive and depoliticised form of governance. Using the classic case of the gold standard, it shows how state intervention came to be shaped by considerations of state power and diverged considerably from the traditional emphasis on free markets and stable conditions of investments. As I argue, the gold standard was constructed through political struggles over monetary governance which involved significant constraints for capitalist investors. Its institutions helped establish a new structure for exerting control over finance. By resituating the gold standard in a broader historical perspective, I show how nineteenth-century monetary governance, far from leading to a retreat of the state, established in fact the foundations of a new form of state intervention: modern central banking.

This article discusses the origins of the speculative configuration that has come to characterize... more This article discusses the origins of the speculative configuration that has come to characterize English banking. It criticizes Gerschenkron's view that early nineteenth-century English banking developed relatively autonomously from manufacturing. Pointing out that he misunderstood the specific nature of English finance and the reasons that explained the later shift towards speculation, it shows how Gerschenkron and his followers have consistently underestimated the role of the state in shaping the nature of English finance. The main argument of the article is that state intervention was a decisive factor in shaping the nature of English finance. It proved crucial in initiating the divergence between English and continental finance, and contributed to the rise of modern banking in England. Finally, I argue that the speculative configuration of finance often associated with England was a late development of the nineteenth century that again reflected changes in the form of financial and monetary regulation.

This article explores the ways in which the classical gold standard established the foundations f... more This article explores the ways in which the classical gold standard established the foundations for a modern international monetary system with its distinctive forms of crisis and regulatory frameworks. The specific nature of
this transformation is often overlooked because of a tendency in the literature to compare the gold standard in relation to subsequent monetary systems, such as BrettonWoods. To remedy this historical bias, the classical gold standard is compared with previous monetary systems and it is concluded that it contributed to expand the array of monetary instruments for conducting monetary policy. By progressively subjecting the management of fiduciary money to state control the institutions of the gold standard created a new monetary framework that opened the way for central banking. However, the commitments taken to this effect, such as provisions on the convertibility of banknotes, created new opportunities for speculation. I argue that this new weakness would become the main preoccupation of monetary policy in the 20th century and lay down the foundations for international cooperation and
its novel emphasis on monetary stability.

Historical Materialism, 2007

Handbook on Critical Political Economy and Public Policy, 2023

Review of International Political Economy, 2020

Review of International Political Economy, 2019

New Political Economy

IPPR Progressive Review, 2018

Review of Social Economy, 2020

Karl Polanyi's Political and Economic Thought: A Critical Guide, 2019

New Political Economy, 2021

Finance and Society, 2020

The Routledge International Handbook of Financialization, 2020

Review of International Political Economy, 2019

Historical Materialism, 2007

This article examines recent attempts to flesh out a reflexive approach by turning to the work of... more This article examines recent attempts to flesh out a reflexive approach by turning to the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and his idea of turning the tools of sociology onto oneself in order to apply the same grid of social analysis to the object and subject of IR scholarship. In the words of Pierre Bourdieu, one needs to objectify the objectifying subject. This article assesses whether this strategy can help push the agenda of reflexivity. It argues that Bourdieu largely overestimated, as most reflexive scholars, his ability to grasp his own subject position. For reflexive scholars assume they can be objective about the very thing they have the least reasons to be objective about: themselves. Through a detailed critique of this reflexive attempt to locate the subject, I seek to set out a series of principles which can help develop a more productive strategy for reflexivity. Instead of bending over backwards in order to take the subject directly into account, I propose to rearticulate the problematic of reflexivity by going back to a more classic concern with the question of alienation.

This article examines the significance of the concept of agency for the project of critical theor... more This article examines the significance of the concept of agency for the project of critical theory as defined by Robert Cox. Even if numerous scholars recognize the importance of agency, very few have managed to set up an agenda that uses this notion in productive ways. I argue that this failure largely stems from the desire to present power as a structural phenomenon. If we see power as embedded in the very structure of society, it becomes difficult to see how social forces can escape the inherent tendencies imposed by structures. For this reason, the issue of social change has continued to elude critical theory making it difficult to open up space for an approach based on agency. Against structural conceptions of power, I present an agent-based conception of power which can serve to contextualize international relations in different terms. By presenting power in terms of practice, I argue, one can better overcome the reifying gaze of positivism.

Historical Materialism, 2021

This is a response to the contributions to the symposium on our initial article, ‘Political Marxi... more This is a response to the contributions to the symposium on our initial article, ‘Political Marxism and the Rules of Reproduction of Capitalism: A Historicist Critique’.

Historical Materialism, 2020

Marxism has often been associated with two different legacies. The first rests on a strong exposi... more Marxism has often been associated with two different legacies. The first rests on a strong exposition and critique of the logic of capitalism, which has been grounded in a systematic analysis of the laws of motion of capitalism as a system. The second legacy refers to a strong historicist perspective grounded in a conception of social relations and an emphasis on the centrality of power and social conflict to analyse history. In this article, we challenge the prominence of structural accounts of capitalism, which are inspired by the first of these legacies and argue for the need to radicalize the agent-centered and historicist contribution of Marx that derive from the second. Our claim is that Marxists operating within a structural framework systematically fall into economistic readings of capitalism, which hinder the practice of historicisation Marxism was supposed to buttress. To make this argument, we show how this tension between these legacies has played out within Political Marxism (PM). We argue that both orientations – encapsulated in the simultaneous programmatic emphasis on historically specific social conflicts and determinate rules of reproduction that are logically deduced from definitive social property relations – co-existed already uneasily in Robert Brenner’s original contributions to the Transition Debate. We proceed by critically exploring the increasing reliance on a structural conception of the ‘rules of reproduction’ in later works of PM’s early proponents and by some of its contemporary followers. This, we argue, has led to the reification of capitalism and a growing divide between theoretical premises and historical explanation. In response, we seek to return to the early historicist innovation of PM and to recover and develop its commitment to a more contextualised and open-ended interpretation of social conflicts. Through this internal critique and re-formulation of PM, we wish to open a broader debate within Marxism on the need for a more agency-based account of capitalism, which builds more explicitly on the concept of social relations.

This book chapter offers a reflection on the challenges that history poses for social theory and ... more This book chapter offers a reflection on the challenges that history poses for social theory and critical IPE. It poses the foundations for a radical historicism that uses the work of historicisation as a mode of theorising.

Perspectivism, the idea that knowledge is always only a perspective on world politics, never a fu... more Perspectivism, the idea that knowledge is always only a perspective on world politics, never a fully objective account of it, is perhaps the main foundation behind the emergence of critical approaches in the 1980s and 1990s. As a first step, this idea became a tool to highlight how mainstream approaches concealed class, patriarchal, or colonial interests, and more generally worldviews under the pretense of universal claims. Yet critical scholars rarely took the second step of working out the reflexive implications of perspectivism for the way they carry out their own work. Usually employed as a relativizing device, a means to celebrate diversity (Weldon 2006; Levine 2012), the perspectival nature of knowledge was never taken to place its own methodological demands on critical scholars. This chapter argues that the future of the discipline, or at least of its critical approaches, should be cast in the font of a methodological turn. I contend that it is time for critical scholars to move beyond their long infatuation with ontology in order to reflect concretely on the demands that perspectivism places on critical scholarship. For the challenge of critique does not consists in open promises to recognize complexity, but in the sober recognition that doing so forces us to make more difficult decisions as to what should be left out. In that respect, I will argue that the difficult part is not to open up doors, but rather to decide on which door to close.

Th is article proposes a reading of value theory fi rmly entrenched in the historicist framework ... more Th is article proposes a reading of value theory fi rmly entrenched in the historicist framework of political Marxism; one which gives precedence to social relations and historical development over abstract logic and formal models. It argues that Marx's theory of value can be read as elucidating how social norms are being unwittingly created under capitalism by contrast with precapitalist societies. Th e article is divided into two sections. Th e fi rst examines the two main ways in which value is considered within Marxism and highlights the problems that can emerge when taking into account the issue of the specifi city of capitalism. Th e second section off ers an alternative formulation of value theory grounded in the notion of alienation. Th is leads to the conclusion that the idea that value is shaped by labour refers to a political fact about decisions concerning the organisation of the labour process, rather than an economic fact about the expenditure of labour in the process of production. Value refl ects the class struggles over the labour process and the norms that govern social life, rather than an embodied quantity of socially necessary labour-time expended within the labour process.

This paper engages critically with Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler's work, especially t... more This paper engages critically with Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler's work, especially their 'power theory of value.'