Revolving Doors in International Financial Governance

“Revolving doors” is a well-suspected but rarely demonstrated phenomenon of skills and knowledge transfer between the private and public sectors. This study investigates revolving doors in the issue-area of international financial governance by targeting professionals who worked on policy teams linked to the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) and the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Financial Sector Assessment Programme (FSAP). Those who move through revolving doors are more likely to have mixed career experiences and can supply a diverse range of skills and knowledge to address policy uncertainties. Demand for such flexibility is pronounced in areas of high issue complexity, such as financial regulation. We test for revolving doors by examining career histories for those working with the BCBS on the development of the Basel II accord, and staff on policy teams for financial systems monitoring via FSAP missions. Using Optimal Matching we trace career histories between 1971 and 2011 to differentiate career experiences and assess the extent of revolving doors. Social network analysis is used to link career experiences to prominence within work teams. As such, this paper brings together concerns about professional trajectories and social networks found in Economic Sociology with theories about the drivers of transnational governance found in International Political Economy. We find that revolving doors are present in both club-like elite policy communities and in regular policy teams in international financial institutions. But going through revolving doors does not, in itself, guarantee power and prestige in professional and organizational networks. Rather, revolving doors provide access to several professional networks, where, permitting institutional design, power brokers can occupy multiple positions that can lead agenda setting and foster intellectual capture.