Description
This paper signals two possible ‘blind spots’ in International Political Economy (IPE) research. First, it draws attention to the interrelation between finance and state security practices. This relation is often overlooked, because the themes are now relegated to broadly separate disciplinary domains— IPE on the one hand, and (critical) Security Studies on the other. Second, it highlights the political importance of the otherwise invisible global financial (payment) infrastructures. What is often considered to be the mere ‘plumbing’ of international finance, turns out to be more political and inscribed with power than often thought. To start addressing these blind spots, the article draws on literatures in critical infrastructure studies, that offer understandings of infrastructure as lively, contested and profoundly political. The argument is that attending to infrastructure inevitably brings into view the postcolonial nature of contemporary capitalism and finance. The article uses the case of the contemporary payment infrastructure wars, whereby the SWIFT infrastructure is used to enforce sanctions policies, as example to develop the arguments.
