¹ Calleo, D. and Strange, S., ‘Money and world politics’, in S. Strange (ed.), Pathways to International Political Economy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984), p. 99 Google Scholar.

² See, for example, Andrews, D. M. (ed.), Orderly Change: International Monetary Relations since Bretton Woods (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008)Google Scholar or Helleiner, E. and Kirshner, J. (eds), The Future of the Dollar (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

³ See, for example, Helleiner, E. and Kirshner, J. (eds), The Great Wall of Money (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014)Google Scholar; and Lombardi, D. and Wang, H. (eds), Enter the Dragon: China in the International Financial System (Waterloo: Centre for International Governance Innovation, 2015)Google Scholar.

⁴ By dominant international currency, we mean what Cohen, B. J., Currency Power: Understanding Monetary Rivalry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar calls a ‘great currency’.

⁵ Keynes, J. M., The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (London: Macmillan, 1936)Google Scholar; Schumpeter, J., The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1934)Google Scholar.

⁶ Here, Schumpeter precisely parallels Knight’s argument about the sources of profit; see Knight, F. H., Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (New York: Houghton Miflin, 1921)Google Scholar.

⁷ Falkus, M., ‘United States economic policy and the “dollar gap” in the 1920s’, Economic History Review, 24:4 (1972), pp. 599–623 Google Scholar; Keynes, J. M., ‘National self-sufficiency’, The Yale Review, 22:4 (1933), pp. 755–769 Google Scholar, posited and preferred a third, historically rare option with balanced trade flows and capital controls.

⁸ Pettis, M., The Great Rebalancing (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014)Google Scholar; cf. Keynes, ‘National self-sufficiency’.

⁹ Given its large US dollar denominated reserves, China could lend in dollars, but this would have ambiguous macroeconomic effects and of course leave the dollar’s centrality untouched.

¹⁰ Hung, H. F., ‘China: Saviour or challenger of the dollar hegemony?’, Development and Change, 44:6 (2013), pp. 1341–1361 Google Scholar; Jiang, Y., ‘The limits of China’s monetary diplomacy’, in Helleiner and Kirshner (eds), The Great Wall of Money Google Scholar.

¹¹ The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves data for 2015 show the principal international reserve currencies to be the US dollar and euro at approximately 64 per cent and 20 per cent of reported official allocated holdings respectively, followed by the pound sterling, Japanese yen, Canadian and Australian dollars, and Swiss franc (which together total just over 12 per cent). IMF Data, available at: {http://data.imf.org/?sk=E6A5F467-C14B-4AA8-9F6D-5A09EC4E62A4} accessed 24 October 2016. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) reports that 88 per cent (out of 200 per cent) of foreign exchange contracts were in US dollars in 2016, basically the same level as the 1990s. BIS, Triennial Survey: Foreign Exchange Turnover in April 2016 (Bank for International Settlements: Basel, 2016), available at: {http://www.bis.org/publ/rpfx16fx.pdf} accessed 19 December 2016.

¹² Cohen, Currency Power. Cohen earlier developed a widely deployed and functionalist taxonomy to describe an international currency in terms of a two by three matrix that illustrates how public and private agents perform the three key roles of any currency (that is, to act as medium of exchange, unit of account and store of value). Cohen, B. J., The Future of Sterling as an International Currency (London: Macmillan, 1971)Google Scholar.

¹³ Strange, S., Sterling and British Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971)Google Scholar. Strange’s typology of international currencies comprised what she called top, master, negotiated and neutral currencies, depending on the degree of political control involved in their creation and use. For an expanded discussion of the idea of an international currency, see Germain, R. and Schwartz, H. M., ‘The political economy of failure: the euro as an international currency’, Review of International Political Economy, 21:5 (2014), pp. 1095–1122 Google Scholar.

¹⁴ See Wang, D., Huang, Y., and Fan, G., ‘Will the renminbi become a reserve currency?’, China Economic Journal, 8:1 (2015), pp. 55–73 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵ See, for example, Cohen, B. J. and Benney, T., ‘What does the international currency system really look like?’, Review of International Political Economy, 21:5 (2014), pp. 1017–1041 Google Scholar; Drezner, D., ‘The system worked: Global economic governance during the Great Recession’, World Politics, 66:1 (2014), pp. 123–164 Google Scholar; and Kirshner, J., American Power after the Financial Crisis (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Drezner, ‘The system worked’; Kirshner, American Power; Norloff, C., ‘Dollar hegemony: a power analysis’, Review of International Political Economy, 21:5 (2014), pp. 1042–1070 Google Scholar; Stokes, D., ‘Achilles’ deal: Dollar decline and US grand strategy after the crisis’, Review of International Political Economy, 21:5 (2014), pp. 1071–1094 Google Scholar; Helleiner, E., The Status Quo Crisis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Helleiner, E. and Malkin, A., ‘Sectoral interests and global money: Renminbi, dollars and the domestic foundations of international currency policy’, Open Economies Review, 23 (2012), pp. 33–55 Google Scholar consider some domestic sources of what they identify as ‘global money’, but do so in terms of interest groups with varying degrees of enmeshment in the global financial system.

¹⁷ Triffin, R., Gold and the Dollar Crisis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Ibid., p. 63.

¹⁹ On deflation during the period of the international gold standard, see Eichengreen, B., Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System, 2^nd edn (Princeton University Press, 2008), pp. 15–19 Google Scholar. On the build-up of dollars outside of the US during the Bretton Woods period, see Block, F., The Origins of International Economic Disorder (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), pp. 140–143 Google Scholar.

²⁰ Triffin, Gold and the Dollar Crisis, pp. 90–3. Triffin here agreed with Keynes about the need for a banking union, but not with his solution. Triffin’s call to internationalise the provision of world liquidity was echoed recently by the Governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), Zhou Xiaochuan, who called for a non-national form of international reserve asset. Mr Zhou invoked Triffin’s name directly in his 2009 call for world monetary reform. See Chin, G., ‘China’s rising monetary power’, in Helleiner and Kirshner (eds), The Great Wall of Money Google Scholar.

²¹ Despres, E., Kindleberger, C., and Salant, W., ‘The dollar and world liquidity: a minority view’, in C. Kindleberger (ed.), International Money: A Collection of Essays (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981)Google Scholar.

²² This theme is elaborated in Schwartz, H. M., Subprime Nation: American Power, Global Capital and the Housing Bubble (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

²³ This theme is elaborated in Germain, R., The International Organization of Credit: States and Global Finance in the World-Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

²⁴ Note that Triffin and Kindleberger disagreed about how world liquidity could be provided. Triffin wanted to internationalise the provision of world liquidity via a new, non-national currency unit, and was influential in the creation of the Special Drawing Right at the IMF in the 1960s (Calleo and Strange, ‘Money and world politics’, pp. 105–6). Kindleberger’s preferred method was supporting the establishment of private international capital markets to expand financial intermediation. See Kindleberger, International Money, pp. 25–30 Google Scholar, 51–2, and 54–5.

²⁵ Kindleberger, International Money, p. 28 Google Scholar.

²⁶ Triffin, R., The Evolution of the International Monetary System: Historical Reappraisal and Future Perspectives (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 1964), pp. 2–20 Google Scholar; see also de Cecco, M., The International Gold Standard: Money and Empire (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1984), pp. 1–20 Google Scholar.

²⁷ In theory a borrower could generate an export surplus with a third country and use those proceeds to make payments on its loans. As noted below, however, our reading of the historical record does not support such an indirect configuration of international economic transactions: trade overwhelmingly follows investments. See de Cecco, International Gold Standard and Germain, International Organization of Credit.

²⁸ Secure property rights also matter for financial intermediation, because foreign purchasers’ confidence in those assets allows them to be issued in quantities large enough to support the trade and investment transactions that power global liquidity and demand. Although space prevents us from exploring this thoroughly, we must recognise that the strength or security of property rights in law – another domestic condition – is a signal element of an international currency.

²⁹ See Strange, Sterling and British Policy; and Strange, S., ‘The politics of international currencies’, World Politics, 23:2 (1971), pp. 215–231 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁰ Strange, ‘Politics of international currencies’, pp. 226–7. Strange here ran against prevailing intellectual currents in identifying the sensitivity of US financial markets to international disturbances. Because these markets channelled such large investments abroad, they were acutely responsive to changes in the distribution of the costs and benefits associated with them, whether at home or abroad.

³¹ Falkus, ‘United States economic policy’.

³² Strange, ‘Politics of international currencies’, p. 227.

³³ Strange argued that ceasing to support sterling as an international currency would allow British policymakers to concentrate on building the kind of society its people deserved, ‘undistracted and undisturbed’ by how to pay the costs required to run an international currency. See Strange, Sterling and British Policy, p. 349.

³⁴ See Hobsbawm, E., The Age of Capital (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975)Google Scholar; Langley, P., World Financial Orders: An Historical International Political Economy (London: Routledge, 2002)Google Scholar; and Schwartz, H. M., States versus Markets (New York: St Martins Press, 2010)Google Scholar. We note here that first-mover advantages – Britain’s emergence as an industrial titan was unprecedented – played a role in sterling’s consolidation as the world’s principal international currency.

³⁵ See de Cecco, International Gold Standard; Eichengreen, Globalizing Capital.

³⁶ Imlah, A. H., Economic Elements of the Pax Britannica (New York: Russell & Russell, 1958/1969), pp. 70–75 Google Scholar. See also Germain, International Organization of Credit, pp. 47–57 Google Scholar.

³⁷ Offer, A., The First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 82–83 Google Scholar.

³⁸ Germain, International Organization of Credit, pp. 54–57 Google Scholar.

³⁹ Gambles, A., Protection and Politics (London: Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 1999)Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ See, for example, the historical accounts provided by Carr, E. H., The Twenty Years’ Crisis: 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1946)Google Scholar; Cox, R. W.: Production, Power and World Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; and Eichengreen, Globalizing Capital.

⁴¹ See Offer, First World War, pp. 82, 219.

⁴² Clark, G., ‘The price history of English agriculture, 1209–1914’, Research in Economic History, 22 (2004), pp. 41–124 Google Scholar.

⁴³ Offer, A., ‘Farm tenure and land values in England, c. 1750-1950’, Economic History Review, 44:1 (1991), pp. 1–20 Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Kindleberger, International Money. See also the analysis by Ingham, G., Capitalism Divided? (London: Macmillan, 1984)Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ This is a point well articulated by Cox, Production, Power and World Order, pp. 211–219 Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Houthakker, H. S. and Magee, S. P., ‘Income and price elasticities in world trade’, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 51:2 (1969), pp. 111–125 Google Scholar; Helleiner, E., States and the Re-emergence of Global Finance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Block, Origins of International Economic Disorder.

⁴⁷ Seabrooke, L., The Social Sources of Financial Power (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Schwartz, Subprime Nation.

⁴⁸ IMF, Global Financial Stability Report, October 2009 (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, 2009)Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ US Treasury, Report on Foreign Portfolio Holdings of US Securities as of June 2015 (US Treasury: Washington DC, 2016)Google Scholar, p. 5.

⁵⁰ IMF, Global Financial Stability Report.

⁵¹ S. Cecchetti, ‘How Securitization Really Works’, available at: {http://www.moneyandbanking.com/commentary/2014/6/30/how-securitization-really-works} accessed 23 May 2015.

⁵² Eichengreen, B. and Flandreau, M., ‘The rise and fall of the dollar (or when did the dollar replace sterling as the leading reserve currency?)’, European Review of Economic History, 13:3 (2009), pp. 377–411 Google Scholar; Chitu, L., Eichengreen, B., and Mehl, A., ‘When Did the Dollar Overtake Sterling as the Leading International Currency? Evidence from the Bond Markets’, European Central Bank Working Paper Series, No. 1433 (2012)Google Scholar.

⁵³ McNeil, W. C., American Money and the Weimar Republic (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ We acknowledge that the American economy generated global demand slightly differently in the early postwar period versus after 1980. Our point, however, is that the international role of the US dollar was critical in both periods for the transmission of this demand from the American to the global economy.

⁵⁵ Howard, C., The Hidden Welfare State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997)Google Scholar calls mortgage interest tax deductions part of the ‘hidden welfare state’ in the US, which he defines as the component of social and welfare ‘spending’ formed by tax expenditures rather than direct transfers or payments. When this ‘hidden welfare state’ is added to the more visible one, the extent to which the American state actively mediates the pressures of economic competition by boosting the purchasing power of its middle class is considerably expanded. See also Block, F., ‘Swimming against the current: the rise of a hidden developmental state in the United States’, Politics and Society, 36:2 (2008), pp. 169–206 Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items [CPIAUCSL], Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Apparel [CPIAPPSL], and Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Nondurables Less Food and Beverages [CUSR0000SANL11]. Available through FRED, ‘Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis’: {https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2} accessed 5 March 2015.

⁵⁷ Cohen, Future of Sterling Google Scholar; Jenkins, P. and Zelenbaba, J., ‘Internationalization of the renminbi: What it means for the stability and flexibility of the international monetary system’, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 28:3 (2012), pp. 512–531 Google Scholar. Cohen’s taxonomy is widely employed in the literature: see, for example, Bowles, P. and Wang, B., ‘Renminbi internationalization: a journey to where?’, Development and Change, 44:6 (2013), pp. 1365–1385 Google Scholar; Eichengreen, B., ‘Sequencing renminbi internationalization’, in Lombardi and Wang (eds), Enter the Dragon, pp. 85–112 Google Scholar; Cohen, B. J., ‘The yuan tomorrow? Evaluating China’s currency internationalisation strategy’, New Political Economy, 17:3 (2012), pp. 361–371 Google Scholar; and Cohen, Currency Power Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Bowles, and Wang, , ‘Renminbi internationalization’, p. 1375 Google Scholar; see also Hung, ‘China’.

⁵⁹ Ito, T., ‘China as number one: How about the renminbi?’, Asian Economic Policy Review, 5:2 (2010), pp. 249–276 Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Wang, H., ‘Global imbalances and the limits of the exchange rate weapon’, in Helleiner and Kirshner (eds), The Great Wall of Money Google Scholar; Steinberg, D., ‘Why has China accumulated such large foreign reserves’, in Helleiner and Kirshner (eds), The Great Wall of Money Google Scholar. More broadly, Helleiner and Kirshner in The Great Wall of Money reflect prevailing analyses of the politics of RMB internationalisation insofar as the contributors are mostly concerned with the political effects of liberalisation of the current account, and how such efforts impinge on China’s evolving international monetary relations.

⁶¹ Similarly, Helleiner and Malkin, ‘Sectoral interests and global money’ consider domestic sectoral influences in China’s currency internationalization strategy, but stop short of framing these influences in terms of social policy; see also Steinberg, D. and Shih, V., ‘Interest group influence in authoritarian states’, Comparative Political Studies, 45:11 (2012), pp. 1405–1434 Google Scholar.

⁶² Cohen, ‘Yuan tomorrow?’.

⁶³ See, for example, Thimann, C., ‘Global roles of currencies’, International Finance, 11:3 (2008), pp. 211–245 Google Scholar. Thimann also deploys Cohen’s functionalist taxonomy.

⁶⁴ IMF, World Economic Outlook, April 2016 (Washington: International Monetary Fund, 2016)Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ World Bank, World DataBank (Washington World Bank Group, 2014), available at: {http://databank.worldbank.org/data/home.aspx} accessed 27 August 2015.

⁶⁶ He and Zhang call into question the extent to which China’s economy has been export-led over the past decade. However, Lui notes that a decline of nearly 10 per cent in Chinese exports over the past year does seem to be contributing to the recent slowdown in economic growth in China, which in 2015 was under 7 per cent, the slowest rate since 1979. See He, D. and Zhang, W., ‘How dependent is the Chinese economy on exports and in what sense has its growth been export-led?’, Journal of Asian Economics, 21:1 (2010), pp. 87–104 Google Scholar; and Liu, Z., ‘Is China’s growth miracle over?’, FRBSF Economic Letters, Pacific Basin Note, No. 2015-26 (10 August 2015). China’s 2015 growth statistics are taken from IMF, World Economic Outlook Google Scholar, p. 172.

⁶⁷ Bowles, and Wang, , ‘Renminbi internationalization’ Google Scholar; Gruin, J., ‘Asset or liability? The role of the financial system in the political economy of China’s rebalancing’, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 42:4 (2013), pp. 73–104 Google Scholar; Yu, Y., ‘China’s financial stability’, in Lombardi and Wang (eds), Enter the Dragon Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ ‘When a bubble is not a bubble’, The Economist, 421 (15–21 October 2016), pp. 67–68 Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ Yu, Y., ‘Understanding China’s external imbalances’, China Economic Journal, 8:1 (2015), pp. 46–47 Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Hung, ‘China’, p. 1355.

⁷¹ Barboza, D. and LaFraniere, S., ‘“Princelings” in China use family ties to gain riches’, New York Times (17 May 2012), available at: {http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/world/asia/china-princelings-using-family-ties-to-gain-riches.html} accessed 11 May 2015Google Scholar; Guevara, M., Ryle, G., Olesen, A., Cabra, M., Hudson, M., and Giesen, C., ‘Leaked Records Reveal Offshore Holdings of China’s Elite’, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (21 January 2014), available at: {www.icij.org/offshore/leaked-records-reveal-offshore-holdings-chinas-elite} accessed 22 June 2015Google Scholar.

⁷² Anderlini, J., ‘China has “wasted” $6.8tn in investment, warn Beijing researchers’, Financial Times (27 November 2014), available at: {www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/002a1978-7629-11e4-9761-00144feabdc0.html} accessed 7 March 2015Google Scholar.

⁷³ Chen, K. and Wen, Y., ‘The Great Housing Boom of China’, Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis Working Paper, No. 2014-022A (August 2014), p. 6, available at: {http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2014/2014-022.pdf} accessed 20 April 2015Google Scholar; Fung, E., ‘More than 1 in 5 homes in Chinese cities are empty, survey says’, The Wall Street Journal (11 June 2014), available at: {www.wsj.com/articles/more-than-1-in-5-homes-in-chinese-cities-are-empty-survey-says-1402484499} accessed 16 June 2015Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ Deer, L. and Song, L., ‘China’s approach to rebalancing: a conceptual and policy framework’, China & World Economy, 20:1 (2012), p. 22 Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Pettis, Great Rebalancing.

⁷⁶ Wong, C. P., ‘Central-local relations revisited: the 1994 tax-sharing reform and public expenditure management in China’, China Perspectives, 31 (2000), pp. 52–63 Google Scholar; Wang, X. and Herd, R., ‘The System of Revenue Sharing and Fiscal Transfers in China’, OECD Economics Department Working Papers, No. 1030 (Paris: OECD, 2013)Google Scholar.

⁷⁷ McNally, C., ‘The political economic logic of RMB internationalization: a study in Sino-capitalism’, International Politics, 52:6 (2015), pp. 704–723 Google Scholar; Otero-Iglesias, M. and Vermeiren, M., ‘China’s state-permeated market economy and its constraints to the internationalization of the renminbi’, International Politics, 52:6 (2015), pp. 684–703 Google Scholar; and Sohn, I., ‘China’s monetary ambitions: RMB internationalization in comparative perspective’, Korean Journal of International Studies, 13:1 (2015), pp. 181–206 Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ It is worth noting here that a critical feature of China’s current role in the global monetary and financial system – as compared with Britain in the late nineteenth century and the US in the mid-twentieth century – is that it is running a surplus not only on its trade and current account, but also on its capital account. Since 2004 China has absorbed billions of dollars per year in capital flows, posting surpluses (that is, inflows) of over US $3 billion each year until 2014. Unlike its British and American comparators, there are no capital outflows to offset the enormous current account surpluses it has earned since 2004, which have fluctuated between US $200–400 billion per year. Data from World Bank DataBank, ‘Net Capital Account Databank’, available at: {http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BN.TRF.KOGT.CD?locations=CN} accessed 21 February 2017.

⁷⁹ See Autor, D. H., Dorn, D., and Hanson, G. H., ‘The China syndrome: Local labor market effects of import competition in the United States’, The American Economic Review, 103:6 (2013), pp. 2121–2168 Google Scholar. A more recent paper by these authors examines the trade-related costs of Chinese exports to America. They estimate that since 1990 over 2 million American workers have been displaced directly or indirectly by increased Chinese imports. Wages have also suffered for affected workers while transfer benefits have increased, although not enough to offset the reduction in incomes. D. H. Autor, D. Dorn, and G. H. Hanson, ‘The China Shock: Learning from Labor Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade’, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, No. 21906 (Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2016), available at {http://www.nber.org/papers/w21906} accessed 24 June 2016.

⁸⁰ See Hung, ‘China’.

⁸¹ He, and Zhang, , ‘How dependent is the Chinese economy’Google Scholar.

⁸² Zheng, J., Bigsten, A., and Hu, A., ‘Can China’s growth be sustained?: a productivity perspective’, World Development, 37:4 (2009), pp. 874–888 Google Scholar.

⁸³ Cohen and Benney, ‘International currency system’, pp. 1017–41; Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), ‘RMB Strengthens its Position as the Second Most Used Currency for Documentary Credit Transactions’ (2015), available at: {http://www.swift.com/about_swift/shownews?param_dcr=news.data/en/swift_com/2015/PR_RMB_second_most_used_currency.xml}.

⁸⁴ Yu, Y., ‘China’s Capital Account Liberalization’, Australian National University, Pacific Trade and Development Working Paper Series, No. 36-07 (ANU: Canberra, 2013)Google Scholar; Schwartz, H. M., ‘Banking on the FED: QE1-2-3 and the rebalancing of the global economy’, New Political Economy, 21:1 (2016), pp. 26–48 Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ Pettis, Great Rebalancing.

⁸⁶ Sohn, , ‘China’s monetary ambitions’, pp. 199–200 Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ D. Keohane, ‘China and those (more severe) capital outflows’, FT Alphaville, available at: {http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2015/07/20/2134822/china-and-those-more-severe-capital-outflows/} accessed 22 July 2015.

⁸⁸ Cohen, Currency Power, pp. 96–7.

⁸⁹ This link is noted in passing by many scholars, but without connecting democratisation to currency internationalisation as we do here. See, for example, B. Eichengreen and M. Kawai, ‘Issues for Renminbi Internationalization: An Overview’, ADBI Working Paper, No. 454 (Tokyo: Asian Development Bank Institute, 2014), available at: {http://www.adbi.org/working-paper/2014/01/20/6112.issues.renminbi.internationalization.overview/} accessed 19 June 2016.

⁹⁰ See Seabrooke, Social Sources of Financial Power; Schwartz, ‘Banking on the FED’.

⁹¹ Otero-Iglesias and Vermeiren, ‘China’s state-permeated market economy’.

⁹² SWIFT, ‘RMB Strengthens its Position’; Cohen and Benney, ‘International currency system’; Wang, Huang, and Fan, ‘Renminbi’.

⁹³ D. Shambaugh, ‘The coming Chinese crack-up’, The Wall Street Journal (6 March 2015), available at: {www.wsj.com/articles/the-coming-chinese-crack-up-1425659198} accessed 29 May 2015.

⁹⁴ We rather see our work as attempting to bridge the gap in IPE discourse first identified by Benjamin Cohen a decade ago. See Cohen, B. J., International Political Economy: An intellectual history (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008)Google Scholar. For critical interrogations of open economy politics, see Lake, D., ‘Open economy politics: a critical review’, Review of International Organization, 4:2 (2009), pp. 219–241 Google Scholar and Oatley, T., ‘The reductionist gamble: Open economy politics in the global economy’, International Organization, 65:2 (2011), pp. 311–341 Google Scholar.