ABSTRACT
The creation of a single European market in financial services is a small part of a bigger story: the financial services revolution in the leading financial centres of the advanced capitalist world. Both were convinced that, whatever comparative advantage the Japanese enjoyed in manufacturing, American firms had a comparative advantage in financial services. It is the process of integration which explains the growing Americanisation of financial regulation in Japan. Three key factors are at work: American structural power in the international system; American policy priorities; and the symmetry between the needs of key parts of the American state and economic interests in Japan. The experience of the German exchanges, how inadequate is 'deregulation' as a summary of what has been going on in financial markets. Meso-corporatism allowed these privileged interests to use state power to support regulation while erecting barriers against democratic control.
