Twenty years ago not a single country had a policy against money laundering; currently, over 170 have very similar anti-money laundering (AML) policies in place. Why have so many countries with so little in common adopted the same policy so rapidly? This extensive diffusion is particularly puzzling given the lack of evidence that AML policies actually work. In explaining the international spread of AML policies, this article draws on recent literature from International Relations, sociology, comparative politics, and public policy dealing with policy diffusion and policy transfer, but also differs from most of this work in two key aspects: First, it is argued that the process of diffusion in the developing world has been much more power-based than voluntary. Second, the mechanisms driving policy diffusion (direct coercion, mimicry, and competition) are all shown to be discursively mediated exercises of power, rather than reflecting rational learning or brute material forces. Evidence is drawn from surveys, interviews, and participant-observation in developing countries from three regions.
This article argues that public blacklisting by international organizations can be an effective means of bringing about compliance in otherwise recalcitrant states. This contention is examined in light of overlapping campaigns by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Financial Action Task Force to pressure targeted states to adopt costly financial reforms. In a constructivist vein, blacklisting is held to be a form of speech act that changed the world by damaging states' reputations among investors, and thus produced pressure to comply through actual or anticipated capital flight. To be removed from blacklists, thereby preventing future economic damage, those targeted have had to comply with stringent regulatory standards mandated by these international organizations. Evidence is taken from interviews, press accounts, official documents and quantitative data relating to seven affected tax havens as well as Austria and Switzerland.
Conventional wisdom maintains that since 1648 the international system has comprised states-as-like units endowed with Westphalian sovereignty under anarchy. And while radical globalization theorists certainly dispute the centrality of the state in modern world politics, nevertheless most assume that the state retains its sovereignty under globalization. In contrast we argue that hierarchical sub-systems (and hence unlike units) have been common since 1648, and that the international system continues to be characterized by hierarchical (as well as anarchic) relations. The article goes on to reveal the existence of these multiple hierarchic formations and uncovers the differing social logics connected with identity-formation processes that govern their reproduction. Successive religious, racial, socialist and democratic social logics not only constitute their reproduction, but the emergence of new norms, social ideas and identities have to an important extent accounted for the rise and decay of successive hierarchies.
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