Description
Book SynopsisWhy have the states of Europe agreed to create an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and a single European currency? What will decide the fate of this bold project? This book explains why monetary integration has deepened in Europe from the Bretton...
Trade ReviewA significant contribution to our understanding of the relationship between ideas and political and economic decisions.
* Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration *
An exhaustive case study.... McNamara's book provides a wealth of valuable detail on the path taken by European elites to develop a coordinated monetary policy and ultimately, a shared currency.
* Society for Women in International Political Economy Newsletter *
It is the prevailing wisdom that economic forces have driven Europe toward the adoption of its single currency, the euro, and that political forces have played a secondary role, if that. It is refreshing, therefore, to find a book that takes politics seriously in what is surely a political situation (as well as an economic one). McNamara considers not just politics but the ideas that condition political decisions and the environment in which those ideas are developed. An interesting book.... Well written with many useful references.
* Choice *
Kathleen McNamara's book is a welcome addition to the small but growing collection of scholarship which straddles the political/economic divide in order to understand contemporary developments in the global political economy.... Together with another recent Cornell publication, Louis Pauly's Who Elected the Bankers, McNamara's work provides a good example of both the strengths and limitations which a perspective anchored firmly in the scholarly mainstream can offer to our knowledge of how the global political economy is organized.
-- Randall Germain * International Affairs *
McNamara's book brings much good political and economic sense to bear on a subject where it is often lacking.
-- Alan S. Milward * The Times Literary Supplement *
The Currency of Ideas has much to offer those desiring to learn more about the forces driving monetary integration in Europe.
* British Politics Group Newsletter *
Table of Contents1. Introduction
2. The Puzzle of Exchange Rate Cooperation
3. Capital Mobility and Ideas in European Monetary Cooperation
4. Capital Control, Keynesianism, and Bretton Woods
5. Capital Mobility, Policy Crisis, and the Snake
6. Neoliberal Policy Consensus and the European Monetary System
7. The Drive toward Economic and Monetary UnionIndex
