ABSTRACT
During the past decades, central banks acquired considerable independence from democratic institutions under the Central Bank Independence (CBI) template. Yet, the changing role of central banks since the 2007–2008 crisis has led to a (re)politicization of central banking and has weakened the scientific and political consensus on the CBI model. In turn, central bankers have tried to neutralize repoliticization and these efforts have shaped their unconventional monetary policies. In this chapter, we review how the (critical) political economy literature has scrutinized the evolving role of central banks this last decade, and we debunk central banks’ depoliticization strategies. First, we examine how financial power shapes central banks’ unconventional policies to the benefit of private finance. Second, we analyze how these “high-finance” struggles affects “low-finance,” that is, what are the distributive effects of post-crisis monetary policy on firms and households? Finally, we review current debates on alternative monetary tools, which could potentially fare better than current monetary arrangements in distributive, ecological, and democratic terms.
