IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ctwqxx/v34y2013i4p710-725.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Critical Review: the politics of sovereign debt

Author

Listed:
  • Jesse Hembruff

Abstract

In this article, I interrogate what is meant by ‘the politics of sovereign debt’, and examine how various authors, especially David Graeber, have addressed this question. More specifically, I seek to extend my contribution to the goals of the ‘Repoliticizing Debt’ workshop, which inspired this special issue, by proposing a theoretical framework for understanding the role of sovereign debt in mediating the contradictions of neoliberal capitalism, and by challenging dominant treatments of the sovereign debt crisis currently underway in Greece. I argue that the existing literature fails to help grasp the complexity of sovereign debt as a social relation, and that debt must be understood as what Marx refers to as ‘fictitious capital’, that is, capital backed not by a commodity transaction, but by a claim on future value. The management of confidence in the value of fictitious capital through the use of the ‘golden noose’ of debt is the key process to be understood in order to grasp the complexity of sovereign debt crises.

Suggested Citation

  • Jesse Hembruff, 2013. "Critical Review: the politics of sovereign debt," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(4), pages 710-725.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:34:y:2013:i:4:p:710-725
    DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2013.786293
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436597.2013.786293
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01436597.2013.786293?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Angelos Angelou, 2023. "Dysfunction and Pathology in Brussels: The European Commission and the Politics of Debt Restructuring," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(4), pages 1082-1099, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:34:y:2013:i:4:p:710-725. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/ctwq .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.