Introduction The financial crisis and the politics of reform: explaining incremental change

This introductory chapter sets out the theoretical framework that helps explain the lack of punctuated, paradigmatic shift in global financial regulation following the burst of the 2007 global financial crisis. Specifically, the chapter is organised as follows. Section 1 introduces the puzzle that animate this collective research project. In Section 2, we analyse existing literature on the evolution of global financial regulation and how it addresses and/or explains the incremental pattern of change in the post-crisis regulatory reform process. In Section 3, we develop the analytical tools and concepts that are taken up in the volume’s case studies. In particular, we delineate the set of factors shaping the pattern of incremental change in global financial governance. Section 4 explains the relevance of studying the evolution of global financial governance by using the analytical concepts and methods developed within historical institutionalism. Section 5 provides an overview of the book.