Geopolitics of global finance: Exploring the reconfiguration of states, markets & power

The world of global finance is changing. Gone are the days where states were in the back seat. Instead, we observe the increasing weaponization of financial interdependencies, sanctions and investment restrictions, efforts to move away from the dollar—financial statecraft has become ubiquitous. What is the systemic impact of this geopolitical turn on the global financial order?

GEOFINANCE examines the impact of geopolitical competition on global finance and its reconfiguration of the relations between states, markets and power. The project pursues four objectives: (1) to identify and classify shifts in state-market configurations beyond neoliberalism; (2) to investigate how power is distributed and exercised between different major powers in the global financial system; (3) to map systemic reconfigurations of cross-border finance across flows, actors, infrastructures and currencies to assess whether US centrality persists, bipolarity emerges, regional blocs form, or fragmentation deepens; and (4) to synthesise findings into a theory of the geopolitics of global finance.

The project uses a comparative mixed-methods design to analyse how major financial powers (US, China, EU, Saudi Arabia, Japan, India) and key international financial centres (Hong Kong, Singapore, UK, UAE) reconfigure banking and stock markets. It combines fieldwork, interviews, document analysis, original datasets and network analysis to trace changes across three levels: national cases, bilateral ties, and global networks. Outputs include a typology of state-market configurations, a geofinancial power index, an Atlas of Geofinance, open indicators and datasets, academic and policy publications.

Showing whether and where state authority over private finance is resurgent, who holds power in this new landscape, and how the system evolves, GEOFINANCE develops an empirically grounded, interdisciplinary framework for understanding the politics of global finance under intensifying geopolitical competition.

GEOFINANCE is funded by the European Research Council (ERC Starting Grant; grant no. 101303255).