{"title":"Populism and De Facto Central Bank Independence.","authors":"Michael Gavin, Mark Manger","doi":"10.1177/00104140221139513","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Although central bank independence is a core tenet of monetary policy-making, it remains politically contested: In many emerging markets, populist governments are in frequent public conflict with the central bank. At other times, the same governments profess to respect the monetary authority's independence. We model this conflict drawing on the crisis bargaining literature. Our model predicts that populist politicians will often bring a nominally independent central bank to heel without having to change its legal status. To provide evidence, we build a new data set of public pressure on central banks by classifying over 9000 analyst reports using machine learning. We find that populist politicians are more likely than non-populists to exert public pressure on the central bank, unless checked by financial markets, and also more likely to obtain interest rate concessions. Our findings underscore that <i>de jure</i> does not equal <i>de facto</i> central bank independence in the face of populist pressures.</p>","PeriodicalId":10600,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Political Studies","volume":"56 8","pages":"1189-1223"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/3a/b1/10.1177_00104140221139513.PMC10251451.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Comparative Political Studies","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00104140221139513","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2022/11/17 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Although central bank independence is a core tenet of monetary policy-making, it remains politically contested: In many emerging markets, populist governments are in frequent public conflict with the central bank. At other times, the same governments profess to respect the monetary authority's independence. We model this conflict drawing on the crisis bargaining literature. Our model predicts that populist politicians will often bring a nominally independent central bank to heel without having to change its legal status. To provide evidence, we build a new data set of public pressure on central banks by classifying over 9000 analyst reports using machine learning. We find that populist politicians are more likely than non-populists to exert public pressure on the central bank, unless checked by financial markets, and also more likely to obtain interest rate concessions. Our findings underscore that de jure does not equal de facto central bank independence in the face of populist pressures.
期刊介绍:
Comparative Political Studies is a journal of social and political science which publishes scholarly work on comparative politics at both the cross-national and intra-national levels. We are particularly interested in articles which have an innovative theoretical argument and are based on sound and original empirical research. We also encourage submissions about comparative methodology, particularly when methodological arguments are closely linked with substantive issues in the field.