ABSTRACT
Scholars have come to recognize that financialization is a political phenomenon not only for its roots in political decisions and processes, but also for its consequences over the political processes and the design of public policies. This chapter focuses on the challenges associated with empirically examining how the conditions supporting financialization are reproduced politically. It highlights how existing scholarship has approached this topic from a methodologically pluralist orientation, relying on and benefiting from a variety of different methods. The chapter describes the research on how or whether financialization has affected the policy-shaping power of the financial industry itself, the preferences and engagement of both state actors and non-financial corporates as well as individuals. The process of financialization can be understood as having reinforced the structural power of the business community and constrained the capacity for states to regulate financial markets and institutions, because the state itself has become dependent on continued financial sector expansion.
