Conceptualizing resistance to the Americanization of finance in advanced economy states

The case of the Canadian-dollar system

Bibliographic Data

ID4495183
AuthorsDustin Fergusson-Vaux (0009-0006-4894-941X, University of Waterloo, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume11
Issue2
Pages165-185
Publication date2025-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFinance and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2059-5999 • E-ISSN: 2059-5999
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/fas.2025.2
OpenAlexW4408685696
LanguageEN
References cited31

This article derives four propositions for conceptualizing resistance to the Americanization of finance in advanced economy states. Resistance entails truncation of market-based financial innovations in line with political profit-sharing arrangements between governments, bankers, and other coalitional interests locked in a game of bank bargains. Resistance transpires through two key power structures in the national architecture for economic statecraft: the political executive and the financial supervisory system. Since change does not occur in a vacuum, resistance manifests as political bricolage amid idiosyncratic enabling and constraining factors comprising the broader public policy environment. Lastly, resistive capacity by state bricoleurs is contingent upon leeway for executive power and coherence of the financial supervisory system in relation to the underlying system of representative democracy. Using Canada as an exploratory case, it is shown that federal policymakers effectively truncated the Americanization of Canadian finance through strategic political and regulatory interventions geared toward preserving the incumbent profit-sharing arrangement with its Big Six banks. In line with the growing body of scholarship illuminating neoliberalism as governance through markets rather than a freeing of market forces, the findings suggest that truncation enabled re-regulation of Canadian finance along the grain of financial globalization as opposed to deregulation per se

Americanization · Business · Economics · Financial system · Liberian dollar · Political science · Banking stability, regulation, efficiency · Economic Theory and Policy · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Finance

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