Into the void: Governing finance in Central and Eastern Europe

Twenty years after the fall of the iron curtain - which for decades had separated East from West - most countries of Central and Eastern Europe are now members of the European Union; some have even adopted the euro. Nonetheless, these countries have also remained exceptionally vulnerable to upset, including those that originate beyond their immediate sphere of influence as revealed by the global financial crisis. This paper explains this with the governance of finance, i.e., the allocation of de jure and de facto responsibilities for financial systems, which deprives host countries of capital flows of critical policy tools.