KNOWLEGPO - Central banking in hard times: Knowledge, legitimacy, and politics

The Project

Central banks have been drawn into debates over how to address the challenges of the 21st century, namely inequality and climate change. In the process, they have become increasingly contested, both among experts and in the broader public sphere. KNOWLEGPO aims at developing an extensive theory of central bank behaviour in this new context and testing it through a mixed-methods approach.

It is funded for a period of 3 years (June 2023-May 2026) by the ANR and the DFG in the framework of the Franco-German Programme in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Project Objectives

Central banks used to be solely focused on inflation, and their status as apolitical and independent was accepted. But in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, central banks have become politicised to an extent that finds parallels only in the 1930s and the 1970s.How do these technocratic organisations navigate this newly politicised landscape? How do monetary theory and practice evolve under these new pressures?

KNOWLEGPO will build an original theoretical framework that is capable of explaining the behaviour of independent central banks in this new context. To this end, it will combine cutting-edge quantitative analysis of large volumes of textual data (text mining) covering a three-decade period with detailed case studies (European Central Bank, US Federal Reserve, Bank of England, Bank of Japan, South African Reserve Bank) based on document analysis and expert interviews.

At the end of the project, the data will be made available in the form of an open-format database to allow further study of the interaction between economic knowledge and technocratic policy making. The broader societal objective is to contribute empowering the civil society to monitor the activities of central banks.

French Team

• Matthias Thiemann, Associate Professor, Sciences Po, CEE (Principal Investigator)
• Jérôme Deyris, Post-doctoral Researcher, Sciences Po, CEE
• Vincent Lépinay , Associate Professor, Sciences Po, Medialab
• Frédéric Lebaron , Full Professor, ENS Paris-Saclay, IDHES laboratory
• Jacqueline Best, Full Professor, University of Ottawa (Canada)
• Marion Fourcade, Full Professor, University of California, Berkeley (USA)
• Manuela Moschella , Associate Professor, Scuoala Normale Superiore di Pisa (Italy)
• Bart Stellinga, Associate Researcher, WRR (Netherlands)

Partners

This French-German project involves a German team led by Benjamin Braun, Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG).