ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that an absence of democratic oversight of financial market regulators permitted their thinking to develop purely within closed, international, technocratic and 'independent' networks, with dire consequences in terms of systemic market risk. It is merited in normative terms, since its exclusion from normal political debate is as unacceptable exception, as is the well known 'national security exception', which places so much of foreign and national policy beyond the democratic process. It is also merited on grounds of policy and regulatory effectiveness: democratisation of financial market regulation offers a way out of the over-connectedness that exists, both within the market and between it and its regulators. Social democratic regulation writ large could be as connection-friendly and similarity-building as neoliberalism writ large. In contrast, the chapter calls for democratisation of financial market regulation, and finds encouraging some 'green shoots' of such democrat isation.
