ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of structure as a determinant of state policy change. It examines how states have attempted to temper the structural power of non-state actors through regimes. Structuralists set out to explain structural outcomes, such as international financial integration, directly in terms of structural causes. Information technology becomes a transformative force that makes international financial integration a structural variable in world politics. The globalization of financial markets has been one of the most spectacular developments in the world economy in recent years. Most explanations of the globalization of financial markets discount the role played by states. International financial markets were able to develop only within a broader institutional structure delineated by the power and policies of states. States also granted financial asset-holders an extra degree of freedom after the mid-1970s when they began to abolish their postwar capital controls.
