The business of insurance plays a growing and important part in the world market economy. Those who supply it are not seeking power over outcomes – but they exercise it none the less. And increasingly so. Yet it is hardly mentioned in texts on world politics; and in economics, the study of insurance is dominated by a few informed specialists, most of whom are ideologically committed to the value judgements of economic liberalism, putting the pursuit of free trade and untrammelled competition above all other possible policy objectives.

How and why the insurers and risk managers exercise such power over outcomes, and with what consequences for the world market economy and for the allocation of values among social groups, national economies and business enterprises is a fundamental question for contemporary international political economy. For fifteen years I have waited, in vain, for someone to write a definitive analysis – not just a descriptive account – of this highly transnational business. From its beginning in the early 1970s, I have followed with interest the activities and publications of Orio Giarini's Geneva Association for the Study of Insurance Economics. Mostly it has been concerned with matters of technical and professional interest. Just occasionally papers have been published that address what you might call the political philosophy of insurance.

One interesting study of insurance, by Virginia Haufler, was included in a collection of essays round the theme of international regimes (Rittberger, 1993).