The Fragility of Depoliticization: What the Failure of Past Inflation-management Strategies Means for Today

As inflation has spiralled upwards in recent months, central banks have rushed to reimpose strict inflation targeting policies, pivoting away from their brief flirtation with paying more attention to the politically fraught problems of unemployment, inequality and climate change. Faced with this renewed enthusiasm for orthodox monetary practices, it is hard not to see this return to the depoliticized strategies of narrow, rules-based economic policy as natural and inevitable. Depoliticization is immensely appealing as both a set of policy practices and as an analytic concept. Yet it is easy to overstate both its prevalence and its effectiveness. Drawing on recently declassified material, I argue that since the early 1980s policies that aim at depoliticizing monetary policy have encountered as many failures as successes and confronted significant skepticism from monetary policy officials. This raises serious questions about the sustainability of central banks’ recent strategy for coping with renewed inflation.

Speaker:

Jacqueline Best is a Full Professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her research is at the intersection of international relations, political economy and social theory.

Chair: 

Pascale Massot is an Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa’s School of Political Studies. She was a member of the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs’ Indo-Pacific Advisory Committee. She has served as the Senior Advisor for China and Asia to various Canadian Cabinet ministers, including the Minister of Foreign Affairs, at different points between 2015 and 2021.