Nicolas Jabko is a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. His scholarly contributions have been mostly in the fields of comparative politics, political economy, and European politics. His latest book is Technocrats in Turmoil: The Fed, the ECB, and the Changing Politics of Money (Cambridge University Press, 2026). His current research interests include money and central banks, neoliberalism and political-economic regimes, sovereignty and the state. After receiving his PhD from UC Berkeley in 2001, he joined the faculty at Sciences Po-Paris and then Johns Hopkins in 2011.
Abstract: The new monetary policy regimes that emerged in the 2010s and early 2020s broke with the previous neoliberal policy status quo. Yet many observers gloss over this retreat from neoliberalism because they see central bankers either as stewards of financial markets, or as economists dedicated to economic stability. Based on a machine-assisted analysis of policy records published by the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, I argue that central bankers navigate and powerfully shape three overlapping arenas – their own internal monetary policy committees; the economics profession; and the broader public arena. Changing alliances between central bankers, economists, and politicians thus provoke momentous shifts in monetary regimes. Ultimately, Fed and ECB technocrats played a key yet underappreciated role in the waning of technocratic neoliberalism in America and Europe.
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