The politicisation of macroprudential regulation: The critical Swedish case

Abstract

This article explores the prospects of stabilising financialisation in Europe as a spatial-temporal fix for Anglo-American capitalism’s crisis-tendencies. We analyse the politics of (countercyclical) macroprudential regulation in the critical case study of Sweden. Here, macroprudential regulation is introduced, in contrast with much of the rest of the EU economies, in a credit boom. We find evidence of an administrative crisis, as technocrats face the political constraints on re-regulating financialised accumulation. This suggests that the conditions are ripe for a deepened administrative crisis in Europe once countercyclical macroprudential regulation is implemented.