Régulation Approach to Financial Crisis: Potential Economic Policies under Structural Changes of Institution

Notes

1. They also propose a theory necessary to solve the problem of global warming with an economic frame of reference. They argue that not only ecology but also economic growth should be considered in dealing with the environmental problems. This is a declaration of cessation of “growth mania.” Experimental study shows that “the amount of greenhouse gas emissions is in inverse proportion to the rate of economic growth” (Uni et al. 2011: vii). From this, they present a growth process of “economic growth → capital investment → new technology for energy saving and conversion to renewable energy” and conclude that the necessary social compromise for the process is “that of using part of the profit from increased productivity to enforce measures to arrest global warming” (ix).

2. Similar suggestions are made by Boyer (2011: 311–313; translated from Japanese). He defines such a growth regime as an “extensive unfair expansion regime,” and notes that its successor is the “finance-led” growth regime.

3. This type of conversion to a finance-centered economic system is discussed by a number of economists. Among them is Christian Marazzi (2009), who identifies the emergence of this growth regime as the inception of a new “universal” financial capitalism, different from conventional industrial capitalism, and interprets the difference as “transformation of temporal and spatial dimensions of surplus valorization” and also as its multi-stratification and extension. Financial extension through securitized commodities, such as sub-prime loans which derive enormous profits from housing loans, means that the form of exploitation has mutated: the masses of people are still exploited as laborers, but have come to be exploited also as ordinary citizens who live social lives. Marazzi calls this “crowdsourcing” and points out that this tendency is more or less universal. This article does not explore this discussion in detail. At least, the above-mentioned changes in capitalist economy mean that the wage—labor relations, which assumed the major position in the Fordist accumulation regime, have been replaced by the monetary/financial relations, which were regarded as institutions subject to the wage—labor relations in Fordism. The theorists of Régulation deal with this as the issue of “institutional hierarchy,” unlike Marazzi. In any case, it is to be noted that these changes are perceived as irreversible by most theorists, though some heretics may deal with the issue of institutional hierarchy differently.

4. Wakamori (2009) introduces the following view by Aglietta: “The increasing influence on the financial market of pension funds, whose source is the social credits of workers, calls for social control of financial capitalism; and to that extent, pension funds can thus be regarded as a counterbalancing power to the power of finance.” Refer to Wakamori (2009: 189–190) for details.

5. Refer to Yamada (2011: 39, Figs 1–4) and Wakamori (2009: 181, Figs 1 and 2) for details.

6. The citizen is conceptualized in more detail, for example, by Saitō (2010). This defines the mode of Régulation by governance of the civil society due to Foucault's disciplinary power; and defines the civil society as “controlling private conflicts of interest and hostile relations between classes, establishing different social and communal relations, and formulating unique political and social structures.” The concept of “compromise” as it is used in this chapter is used to express very clearly the positive and passive governance of society, but it may tend to derive the modality of politics, the center of power source, exclusively from economic interests. As discussed in the conclusive part of this article, it is to be noted that a different mode of Régulation can be explored by “defining the regime of capital accumulation as mediated by governance and power in the civil society” and “identifying the institution as a product of governing technology,” rather than relating to the structure of causal relations in which “political compromise is intended to solve economic problems” (Saitō 2010: 92).

7. Refer to Yonemori (2007) for abduction. Peirce argues that scientific discoveries can be made neither by using “deduction,” which emphasizes only formal logic, not paying attention to facts, nor by “induction,” which pays attention only to facts, but only by inferring the probability of events. Actually, his argument is introduced into the theory of “institutional economics” by J. R. Commons, the father of the American school of institutional economics. Refer to Bazzoli (1999: 57–67) for details. Besides, we assume that there is much affinity between the economics by Commons and the theory of Régulation. This may be discussed in a different paper.

8. Refer to Théret (1992) and Nakahara (2010), for example. The studies by Aglietta and Orléan (1998), covered in the next section, are based on this discussion.

9. The well-known “Tobin Tax,” which was based on a similar idea, failed to be implemented because political legitimacy necessary for taxation was not secured.

10. Refer to Théret (1992, 2007a, 2007b) and Nakahara (2010) for the details of Théret's studies.

11. This paper makes up one chapter of Aglietta and Orléan (2011), and is based on their theory of money. For the details of the studies, refer to the translator's note to their work (by Sakaguchi Akiyoshi) and to Sakaguchi (2011). Particularly the translator's note clearly explains how the economic integration of the EU faces a crisis by using the logic of “sovereign currency.”

12. These values are stratified into relations “between man and woman,” their superior relations between “husband and wife,” still superior “family” relations, “community” relations, relations comprehended by “the civil rights,” and eventually, the most comprehensive, “society.” The higher the value is, the higher its social totality is.