International Political Economy

Comme le montrent la condamnation par l’Organisation mondiale du commerce (OMC) des règlements audiovisuels de la Chine et l’accord de libre-échange entre la Corée du Sud et les États-Unis, la conquête des marchés cinématographiques asiatiques reste un enjeu économique considérable pour les États-Unis et Hollywood. D’ailleurs, l’ouverture du marché cinématographique chinois illustre une défaite paradoxale de la Convention sur la diversité des expressions culturelles (CDEC). Le système chinois quasi-imperméable tend à s’ouvrir de plus en plus aux produits audiovisuels non nationaux grâce au principe du libre-échange, tandis que, jusqu’à présent, les Parties à la CDEC souhaitaient privilégier le consensus politique plutôt que dénoncer des politiques culturelles strictes qui interdisent les échanges culturels équitables.

"
    - Le rapport délibérément ambivalent entre la Convention de 2005 et le régime commercial de l’OMC
    - Le Fonds international pour la diversité culturelle : un mécanisme de solidarité non-contraignant
    - Une flexibilité accrue sur la panoplie des politiques culturelles appropriées
    - Des mesures concrètes pour une mise en œuvre efficace de la Convention
    - L’efficacité de la Convention de 2005 : loyauté et bonne volonté des États-Parties
    - Références
"

The global financial crisis has transformed the relationship between the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU). Until the crisis, the IMF had not lent to EU member states in decades, but now the two organisations closely coordinate their lending policies. In the Latvian and Romanian programmes, the IMF and the EU advocated different loan terms. Surprisingly, the EU embraced ‘Washington Consensus’-style measures more willingly than did the IMF, which much of the contemporary literature still portrays as an across-the-board promoter of orthodox macroeconomic policies. We qualify this stereotypical characterisation by arguing from a constructivist perspective that the degree of an organisation's autonomy from its members depends on the interpretation of its mandate. IMF staff viewed the Fund's technical mandate as an opportunity to react rather flexibly to the challenges of the latest crisis. By contrast, European Commission, as well as European Central Bank (ECB), staff interpreted the vast body of supranational rules as necessitating stricter adherence to economic orthodoxy. Thus, IMF lending policies were more flexible and, at least on fiscal issues, also less contractionary.

The international community and many financial experts have singled out the positive elements of how strong institutional reforms following Mexico's 1995 and Turkey's 2001 banking crisis have shielded their banking sectors today from the wider economic impact of the world financial crisis. By contrast, this article argues from a historical materialist analytical approach that the 1995 and 2001 bank rescues and reforms preserved, renewed, and intensified the structurally unequal social relations of power and class characteristic of finance-led neoliberal capitalism in forms institutionally specific to Mexican and Turkish society. The post-crisis reforms reinforced the dominance of banking and finance capital in Mexico and Turkey at the expense of popular classes and society in general, and it is this dynamic of power that explains the resilience of banks today.

This article discusses transnational professional knowledge in action and puts forward a conception of how professionals play off different forms of knowledge to provide policy solutions and, in doing so, generate markets for their services. The key concept is ‘epistemic arbitrage’ – when professionals exploit opportunities between bodies of professional knowledge. Professionals mediate between knowledge pools for strategic advantage and, if successful, they can become the ‘arbiters’ on what knowledge and practices are most influential in their area of transnational governance. Organizations also have a demand for epistemic arbitrage, as it permits managers to have greater control over what knowledge is dominant and allows greater control of staff.  The concept of epistemic arbitrage is situated in the relevant literature from International Relations, Organization Studies, and Sociology, and this interdisciplinary article brings them together to advance the new transnational sociology of professions. I suggest that transnationality matters for how professionals behave and one can draw a distinction between ‘thin’ transnational environments that are especially permissive of epistemic arbitrage and professional mobilization, and ‘thick’ domestic environments where professional jurisdictions can dampen epistemic arbitrage. The article outlines how transnational professionals can be understood as unique groups that have careers and operate in networks where there is a supply of, and demand, for epistemic arbitrage. It also establishes why ‘knowing well’ is crucial to those who have power in shaping how transnational issues are governed.