Neutrality and the International Monetary System (Routledge Studies in the Modern World Economy)

Neutrality and the International Monetary System develops a new research programme for understanding neutrality, asymmetry, and institutional design in the twenty-first century.Bridging Critical Realism and International Political Economy, it introduces a reformulated Ontological Realism through Ontological Containment Theory, a unified analytical architecture for examining how asymmetries emerge, stabilise, reproduce themselves, and may be better contained within monetary and governance systems. The book reconceptualises neutrality and demonstrates that contemporary monetary tensions within both BRICS and the United States can be understood as differentiated responses to a shared structural condition.Rather than treating these developments as evidence of competing civilisational projects, the analysis explores how they may contribute to the conditions under which greater system-level neutrality becomes possible.The book investigates how structural asymmetry has historically developed,