A state's financial power is built on the effect its credit, property, and tax policies have on ordinary people: this is the key message of Leonard Seabrooke's comparative historical investigation, which turns the spotlight away from elite financial actors and toward institutions that matter for the majority of citizens. Seabrooke suggests that everyday contests between social groups and the state over how the economy should work determine the legitimacy of a state's financial and fiscal system. Ideally, he believes, such contests compel a state to intervene on behalf of people below the median income level, leading the state to broaden and deepen its domestic pool of capital while increasing its influence on international finance. But to do so, Seabrooke asserts, a state must first challenge powerful interests that benefit from the concentration of financial wealth.

Seabrooke's novel constructivist approach is informed by economic sociology and the work of Max Weber. This book demonstrates how domestic legitimacy influences the character of international financial orders. It will interest all readers concerned with how best to transform state intervention in the economy for the good of the majority.

Leonard Seabrooke is Associate Professor in the International Center for Business and Politics at the Copenhagen Business School and Adjunct Senior Fellow in the Department of International Relations, RSPAS, The Australian National University. He is the author of U.S. Power in International Finance and coeditor of Everyday International Political Economy and Global Standards of Market Civilization.

This intelligent, bold, trenchant, and important book seeks to take the notion of legitimacy from the periphery of political economy into the mainstream. Leonard Seabrooke, supported by impressive archival work, forces readers to rethink much of what they think they know about the political economy of the United Kingdom and Germany in the early twentieth century and the United States and Japan in the latter half of that century. Seabrooke argues convincingly that if a state's credit policies at home are unstable, then that state cannot seriously affect the global financial order.

Colin Hay, University of Birmingham:

Leonard Seabrooke has written a remarkably prescient and important book, a landmark intervention. The Social Sources of Financial Power is a model of theoretical erudition, analytical precision, and empirical depth. Seabrooke makes a most powerful and convincing case for a constructivist political economy and, in so doing, recasts important parts of the prevailing wisdom on international finance.

Eric Helleiner, CIGI Chair in International Governance, University of Waterloo:

How do states acquire and maintain international financial power? By intervening economically at home to benefit lower-income citizens, suggests Leonard Seabrooke. This unconventional argument offers a stimulating reinterpretation not just of the financial rivalry between England and Germany in the pre-1914 era but also of the U.S. success in withstanding the Japanese financial challenge in the late twentieth century.