Money for nothing: everyday actors and monetary crises

Why do monetary unions fail? Structural approaches that focus Oil Shifts ill the distribution of capabilities ascribe non-elites limited agency to influence large-scale political and economic change. Existing agent-centred approaches tend to simplify the social dynamics of the everyday politics of money by concentrating oil how elites determine formal changes within monetary systems. Answers to this question from a material-based perspective often point to a breakdown ill elite political support, driven by actors' material incentives to Cheat Oil their Multilateral commitments rather than cooperate to overcome the collective action problem that a monetary union entails. Recent ideational perspectives have focused oil the role of shared economic ideas among elites, as well as elite struggles over national identity, as crucial ingredients in the construction, maintenance, or failure Of a monetary union. While drawing oil the insights of rationalist and constructivist theories, this article uses a historical sociology approach to argue that the everyday actions taken by non-elites as Survival strategies in a monetary crisis provide all important additional ingredient for understanding monetary system change. This approach is illustrated through a case study of the collapse of the ruble zone monetary union over 1991-1993.