Democratic accountability and central bank independence: historical and contemporary, national and European perspectives

West European Politics

Volumn 21, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 53-76

  Elgie, Robert ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

BANK INDEPENDENCE; DEMOCRACY; FINANCIAL SYSTEM; POLICY MAKING; REGIONAL POLITICS;

EUROPE;

EID: 0031668679     PISSN: 01402382     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01402389808425257     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. Brian Snowdon, 'Politics and the Business Cycle', Political Quarterly 68 (1997).
2. This section draws upon some of the information and the Appendices in Robert Elgie and Helen Thompson, The Politics of Central Banks (London: Routledge 1998).
3. John T. Woolley, 'The Politics of Monetary Policy: A Critical Review', Journal of Public Policy 14 (1994) p.63.
4. Alberto Alesina and Lawrence H. Summers, 'Central Bank Independence and Macroeconomic Performance: Some Comparative Evidence', Journal of Money, Credit and Banking25(\993)p.\53.
5. John B. Goodman, The Politics of Central Banking in Western Europe (London: Cornell UP 1992) p. 8.
6. Alex Cukierman, Steven B. Webb and Bilin Neyapti, 'Measuring the Independence of Central Banks and Its Effect on Policy Outcomes', World Bank Economic Review 6 (1992) pp.353-98.
7. The years in Appendix 2 and Appendix 3 correspond to the main occasions when the banks were reformed.
8. The text of Brown's letter to the Governor of the Bank of England in which the details of the reform are outlined can be found in the Financial Times, 7 May 1997.
9. The Times, 7 May 1997, p.2.
10. Andreas Busch, 'Central Bank Independence and the Westminister Model', West European Politics 17 (1994)pp.53-72.
11. Le Monde, 16 June 1993, p.2. All translations are by the author.
12. Ibid., 10 June 1993, p.7.
13. Needless to say, the index of independence does not indicate the degree to which the government itself is democratically accountable. It simply indicates the degree of central bank accountability to the government.
14. In the supplement to Libération, 31 Aug. 1992, p.9.
15. Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, Globalization in Question (Oxford: Polity Press 1996) p. 162.
16. Busch (note ll)p.55.
17. Hirst and Thompson (note 18) p. 162.
18. For a discussion of this issue, refer to Kenneth Dyson, Kevin Featherstone and George Michalopoulos, 'Strapped to the Mast: EC Central Bankers between Global Financial Markets and Regional Integration', in Journal of European Public Policy 2 (1995) pp.465-87.
19. Reported in the Financial Times, 7 May 1997, p. 7.
20. See, for example, the 'scapegoating' argument in the context of eastern Europe by Dwight Semler, 'Focus: The Politics of Central Banking', East European Constitutional Review 3 (1994) p.51, and in the context of the US by John T. Woolley, Monetary Politics: The Federal Reserve and the Politics of Monetary Policy (Cambridge: CUP 1984) p. 11.
21. The argument that central bank independence has been pursued by a powerful epistemic community is made in Kenneth Dyson, Elusive Union: The Process of Economic and Monetary Union in Europe (London: Longman 1994) pp.250-2.
22. See, for example, David Marsh, The Bundesbank: The Bank that Rules Europe (London: Mandarin 1992) p. 170.
23. Roland Sturm, 'How Independent is the Bundesbank?', German Politics 4 (1989) pp.3910.
24. Elgie and Thompson (note 2) Ch.6.