Interested? Contact Alexandru to participate!
The architecture of global finance is no longer a neutral technical backdrop to markets. Payment systems, clearing houses, credit rating agencies, or digital currencies increasingly shape the distribution of power and vulnerability in the international order. Decisions about who controls financial infrastructures, and under which jurisdiction they operate, now influence not only capital flows, but also sanctions regimes, currency hierarchies, and the strategic autonomy of states. Yet, despite their profound geopolitical significance, these infrastructures remain opaque and poorly understood outside specialized expert circles.
The Impact Group “Infrastructural Financial Sovereignty: Strategic Autonomy and the Reconfiguration of Global Finance” seeks to make these hidden architectures visible. We aim to analyze and explain how states across the globe, from the European Union to India, Brazil, China, and beyond, are reasserting control over financial infrastructures as part of a broader geoeconomic transformation. Moving beyond a narrow focus on great power rivalry, the group develops a conceptual framework of infrastructural financial sovereignty to understand how payment systems, clearing and settlement platforms, messaging networks, and digital currencies are being redesigned as instruments of economic security and political sovereignty.
Our objective is to bridge cutting-edge academic research in International Political Economy, financial geography, and digital monetary governance with public debate and policy discussions. Through publications, workshops, and accessible analytical outputs, we seek to translate complex macro-financial and infrastructural dynamics into clear and structured insights. By doing so, the Impact Group contributes to a broader understanding of how financial infrastructures are being re-territorialized, modularized and, ultimately, strategically redesigned in an era of global fragmentation.
Beyond research, we aim to foster dialogue between scholars, policymakers, and practitioners. The group will seek to organize online and offline events, policy roundtables, and collaborative initiatives to disseminate findings and stimulate debate on the future of global financial connectivity. We welcome support from individuals with expertise in finance, law, geopolitics, digital technology, or policy analysis. At this stage, we are particularly interested in collaboration on research dissemination, event organization, digital tools, and strategic partnerships.