Scientization

In the decade 1995-2005, I had the opportunity to spend weeks if not months in the deep and protected basements of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Swedish Riksbank, the Bank for International Settlements, and the Danish central bank.This was where the central banks had stored their institutional memory.These were the days before digitalization.Literally flipping through tons of paper, it was possible to get a glimpse of the inner workings of very old institutions.Despite their age, it became clear to me, that central banks are very dynamic organizations.They adapt in flexible ways to their immediate contexts.Central banks are obviously very clever at reading the political, social, economic, and cultural context in which they have to navigate.Throughout modern history, central banks always found ways in which to maintain if not boost their organizational authority.Clearly, there are not two central banks that are alike.The Danish central bank works in very different ways than the Swedish Riksbank, and they both differ in important ways from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.However, despite their many differences, at some higher level of abstraction, there also seemed to be commonalities between the central banks.Important stories could be written about each and every one of the individual central banks taking into account their particular circumstances.But, it would also be possible, I thought, to look through these differences, in order to identify common themes.In the same decade, I was fortunate to participate in a number of scientific conferences.Some of these had to do with economic and monetary cooperation in Europe, others had to do with the financial stability and the management of financial crises, yet others were focusing more narrowly on matters related to employment, labor markets, and price stability.The common theme, though, was that many of these conferences were either organized by or hosted by central banks.Most typically, the Bank of England, the German Bundesbank, the Banque de France, or the European Central Bank would generously open their doors for open scientific deliberation.These banks would invite academic scholars from around the world, they would pay all the costs related to their conference attendance, and they would also offer to edit and publish their research in various types of scientific outlets.If the conferences were not physically hosted by central banks, but rather by a university, a think tank, or maybe a private fund, then it was almost always the case that among the conference participants there would be a good deal of central bank employees.They participated and contributed on exactly the same level as everybody else.Their work was not considered to be of a different (political) kind or of a different (lower) quality

Political science · Sociology and Norbert Elias

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