Structural power and the global financial crisis: a network analytical approach

Abstract

How did the most severe global financial crisis since the 1930s affect the organization of the world political economy? Was Anglo-American structural power in finance eroded? I employ network methodologies that have been recently extended for use with weighted and directed networks to shed light on these questions. I draw from complexity science and political economy to link these empirics to prior theories of structural power, which I refine in several ways. This approach provides unique explanations for developments in global banking since the crisis, including expected outcomes that didnotoccur: the continuation – and even expansion – of Anglo-American prominence, the decline of continental European prominence, and the lack of emergence of the BRICS economies into the core of the global banking system.