Can the international economic and legal system survive today’s fractured geopolitics? Democracies are facing a drawn-out contest with authoritarian states that is entangling much of public policy with global security issues. In Global Discord, Paul Tucker lays out principles for a sustainable system of international cooperation, showing how democracies can deal with China and other illiberal states without sacrificing their deepest political values. Drawing on three decades as a central banker and regulator, Tucker applies these principles to the international monetary order, including the role of the U.S. dollar, trade and investment regimes, and the financial system.
Combining history, economics, and political and legal philosophy, Tucker offers a new account of international relations. Rejecting intellectual traditions that go back to Hobbes, Kant, and Grotius, and deploying instead ideas from David Hume, Bernard Williams, and modern mechanism-design economists, Tucker describes a new kind of political realism that emphasizes power and interests without sidelining morality. Incentives must be aligned with values if institutions are to endure. The connecting tissue for a system of international cooperation, he writes, should be legitimacy, creating a world of concentric circles in which we cooperate more with those with whom we share the most and whom we fear the least.
Paul Tucker is a Research Fellow of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the author of Unelected Power: The Quest for Legitimacy in Central Banking and the Regulatory State and most recently Global Discord: Values and Power in a Fractured World Order. His other current activities include being a senior fellow at the Harvard’s Center for European Studies, and President of the UK’s National Institute for Economic and Social Research. For over thirty years, Tucker was a central banker until 2014, at the Bank of England and chairing a number of international groups.
More about this event
Harvard research fellow and former central banker Paul Tucker will present his views about how the international security, economic and legal system can survive today’s fractured geopolitics.
After his opening remarks, our panel – comprised of Professor John Bew, Professor Stephanie J. Rickard, and Dr Peter Wilson – will engage in a discussion with Paul and each other, and questions from the audience. Professor Paul Kelly will chair the discussion.
This event forms part of LSE’s Understanding the UK Economy series, showcasing research and expertise on the state of the UK economy, its global context and its future.
The event is supported by the Mouradian Foundation.