Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 February 2026
This chapter considers whether the book’s explanation of political-economic regimes in terms of cross-cutting alliances “travels” beyond the specific cases that I have analyzed so far. For that purpose, I start from a simple observation: The early 2020s witnessed an accelerated sequence, in reverse order, of the monetary regime changes of the previous forty years. The pandemic’s economic standstill was first followed by an episode of ultra-accommodative policies. The Fed and the ECB rolled out rapid monetary accommodation in response to the pandemic, with a much quicker and more decisive return to quantitative easing than in the 2010s. Then, barely two years later, the mood changed considerably amid resurging concerns about inflation. Fed and ECB central bankers shifted to tighter monetary policies, with the most rapid hikes in interest rates since the early 1980s. In view of this rapid evolution, observers disagree on whether departures from the status quo ante signal a new era of “post-neoliberalism,” or a mere interlude before a return to monetary austerity. While an obituary of neoliberalism may be premature, this chapter begins to extrapolate the argument in the form of research hypotheses about the future of the Fed and the ECB, but also about the recent evolution of the IMF, the Bank of Japan, and the Bank of England.
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