GEOPOLITICAL ECONOMY AND COMPETING CAPITALIST BLOCS IN THE EU POST-CRISIS FINANCIAL REGULATION: TWO CASES FROM THE REFORM OF THE BANKING SECTOR

In this contribution I will test the geopolitical-economic approach as formulated by Desai (2013) in the analysis of the EU's regulatory response to the financial crisis by focusing on two relevant pieces of legislation in the post-crisis reform of banking governance: the adaptation of the Basel III agreement to the package on Capital requirements, composed of a regulation and a directive, and the ongoing legislative process concerning the structural reform of banks. As I try to show, the concept of "competing geopolitical bloc" derived from the work of Desai, but even detectable in some recent Neo-Gramscian literature, is useful in analysing the shortcomings of the European regulatory response to the 2007/8 economic and financial crisis.