Event Date: April 1, 2014 - 2:30 pm
Location: University of Ottawa, Social Sciences Building, room FSS-4006, 120 University Private

JONATHAN KIRSHNER, Cornell University

Presented by CIPS and the International Political Economy Network (IPEN).
Free. In English. Registration is not required. Seating is limited and available on a first come, first served basis.

The Global Financial Crisis that began in 2007 will mark the end of what can be called the Second American Postwar Economic Order.  The First American Order, founded on the ruins of the Great Depression and World War II, was a Keynesian-influenced system that reflected the ideology of “embedded liberalism,” which held that market forces needed to be embraced, but nevertheless harnessed in the support of domestic social purpose.  The Second Order, which emerged an American project in the wake of the Cold War, was a more classical, or “market fundamentalist” order that assumed markets (even markets for financial assets), always know best. At the same time, the International Monetary Fund, in a radical and bold power play, moved to reverse its post-war charter and force member states to completely eliminate their capital controls. Not coincidentally, the rise of market fundamentalism also coincided with the widely shared assumption within the American foreign policy establishment that U.S. power and interests would be advanced by the spread of financial globalization. For many outside the U.S., however, skepticism about the wisdom of this approach were raised during the Asian Financial Crisis and confirmed by the more recent catastrophe.  The de-legitimization of the ideology of the Second American Order will influence the pattern of international economic relations and the balance of power between states.

Jonathan Kirshner is the Stephen and Barbara Friedman Professor of International Political Economy in the Department of Government and Director of the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at Cornell University.  He is the author of Appeasing Bankers: Financial Caution on the Road to War, which won the best book award from the International Security Studies Section of the International Studies Association, and Hollywood’s Last Golden Age: Politics, Society and the Seventies Film in America.  He has also edited the volumes Monetary Orders: Ambiguous Economics, Ubiquitous Politics, and Globalization and National Security; and is the co-editor (with Eric Helleiner) of the volume The Future of the Dollar and of the multi-disciplinary book series Cornell Studies in Money.  His next book, America Power After the Financial Crisis, will be published later this year.  From Cornell University Kirshner is a recipient of the Provost’s Award For Distinguished Scholarship, and the Stephen and Margery Russell Distinguished Teaching Award.