Support H-Net | Buy Books Here | Help Support the NBN and NBN en Español on Patreon | Visit New Books Network en Español!
- African Studies
- African American Studies
- American Politics
- American Studies
- American South
- American West
- Asian American Studies
- Australian and New Zealand Studies
- British Studies
- Canadian Studies
- Caribbean Studies
- Central Asian Studies
- Chinese Studies
- East Asian Studies
- Eastern European Studies
- European Politics
- French Studies
- German Studies
- Iberian Studies
- India Studies
- Indian Ocean World
- Iranian Studies
- Irish Studies
- Israel Studies
- Italian Studies
- Japanese Studies
- Korean Studies
- Latino Studies
- Latin American Studies
- Mexican Studies
- Middle Eastern Studies
- Native American Studies
- Pacific Studies
- Polish Studies
- Russian and Eurasian Studies
- Southeast Asian Studies
- South Asian Studies
- Turkish Studies
- Ukrainian Studies
- Western European Studies
- World Affairs
- Animal Studies
- Anthropology
- Archaeology
- Business, Management, and Marketing
- Media
- Critical Theory
- Disability Studies
- Drugs, Addiction and Recovery
- Education
- Economics
- Finance
- Geography
- Gender Studies
- Genocide Studies
- Higher Education
- Human Rights
- Journalism
- Language
- Law
- LGBTQ+ Studies
- National Security
- Philosophy
- Policing, Incarceration, and Reform
- Political Science
- Politics & Polemics
- Public Policy
- Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work
- Sociology
- Sound Studies
- Sports
- Urban Studies
- Big Ideas
- Celebration Studies
- Co-Authored
- Cover Story
- Historical Materialism
- History Ex Silo
- Invested Investor
- Landscape Architecture
- Mormonism
- NBN Book of the Day
- NBN Seminar
- Postscript
- Practical History
- Preparing for Life After Grad School
- Psychology and Climate Change
- Interpretive Political and Social Science
Mar 9, 2014
Rethinking Sovereign Debt
Politics, Reputation, and Legitimacy in Modern Finance
Summary
In 1927 Russian-American legal theorist Alexander Sack introduced the doctrine of "odious debt." Sack argued that a state's debt is "odious" and should not be transferable to successor governments after a revolution, if it was incurred without the consent of the people; and not for their benefit.
This doctrine has largely been rejected, with a firm presumption of "sovereign continuity" emerging instead: post-revolutionary governments must repay sovereign debt even if it was incurred to cover the personal expenses of plutocrats. If they fail to do so, their credit reputation is harmed. As Odette Lienau explains in a striking line, "we can now imagine prosecuting the leaders of a fallen regime for crimes against a state's population while simultaneously asking that population to acknowledge and repay the fallen regime's debts."
In Rethinking Sovereign Debt: Politics, Reputation, and Legitimacy in Modern Finance (Harvard University Press, 2014), Lienau unfolds the historical conditions from which this seeming inconsistency emerged. Seamlessly moving between case studies from the early 20th century to the present, Lienau discusses several different versions of this puzzle. Ultimately, Lienau ends up rejecting "sovereign continuity," and arguing for the recognition of "principled default."
With revolutions and uprisings across the Middle East, and in Ukraine, this book's argument will likely provoke lively discussion among lawyers, economists, political theorists, and historians. But lay people should ideally engage with the ideas as well. The book gives an extraordinary point of access into what is at stake in the work of enormous international organizations, such as the World Bank.
