Paper short abstract:

A discussion of post-2008 EU financial reforms and the resilience of the international financial system, drawing on Leach's vision of society as a process implying either structural continuity or transformation, as well as on the concepts of dispositif (Foucault) and continuous change (Arrighi).

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses post-2008 EU financial reforms and the apparent resilience of the international financial system, which bends but does not break easily, notwithstanding its multiple crises. The problem at stake dates back at least to Leach's classic discussion of society as a process involving basically two types of changes - those which are part of a movement of continuity and those which bring forth a transformation of social structure (Leach 1954). In addition to Leach, the paper also draws on the concepts of dispositif (Foucault 1975) and continuous change (Arrighi 1994). These ideas will be here applied to a series of evolutions taking place inside what appears to be a specific power framework. Such a framework may be useful both to illuminate the crossroads at which contemporary finance presently stands and to evaluate the possibility of a disruption within this field. It comprises three unstable movements or dynamics: the touch-and-run game between innovation and deviance, the delicate articulation between national sovereignty and international harmonization, and the predominance of technical facticity over money's inherent fictionality. On this basis, it becomes possible to understand the repetition of a sequence of deliberation + technical normativity + regulatory arbitrage + deviance, which prolongs the current impasse and postpones any major political breakthrough.