Central bank independence (CBI) has been one of the most significant regulatory state developments of the last three decades. Following the 2008 financial crisis, many central bank mandates were extended to include a responsibility for financial stability. Some commentators claim this jeopardizes CBI by drawing central banks into contested political issues that can impact financial stability, in what we term an independence in decline thesis. Through a detailed study of the Bank of England's financial stability communications employing the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) codebook, we subject this independence in decline thesis to scrutiny. We show that since the extension of the Bank's mandate in 2011, Bank officials have discussed a wider range of more contentious policy issues. However, these communications appear to date to have largely reinforced the Bank's reputation for technical competence and political neutrality. In this sense, central bank “communicative agency” can be deployed to protect CBI performatively, while CBI can in turn be studied and understood as an ongoing communicative performance act. We find that repoliticization is a more contingent process than much central banking literature has allowed for, while financial stability communications are a potentially powerful regulatory instrument deserving of more scholarly attention.

中文翻译：

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履行央行独立性：英格兰银行的沟通性金融稳定战略


中央银行独立性（CBI）是过去三十年来最重要的监管国家发展之一。 2008 年金融危机之后，许多央行的职责得到扩展，纳入了金融稳定的责任。一些评论家声称，这会导致央行卷入可能影响金融稳定的有争议的政治问题，从而危及英国央行，这就是我们所说的“衰落中的独立性”论点。通过使用比较议程项目（CAP）密码本对英格兰银行的金融稳定沟通进行详细研究，我们对这一独立性下降的论文进行了仔细审查。我们发现，自 2011 年延长世行任期以来，世行官员讨论了更广泛、更具争议性的政策问题。然而，迄今为止，这些沟通似乎在很大程度上增强了世行在技术能力和政治中立方面的声誉。从这个意义上说，央行“沟通机构”可以被用来对CBI进行绩效保护，而CBI又可以作为一种持续的沟通绩效行为来研究和理解。我们发现，再政治化是一个比许多央行文献所允许的更为偶然的过程，而金融稳定沟通是一种潜在的强大监管工具，值得更多学术关注。