The frame: how do rating analysts rationalize their approach to politics and policy?

Abstract

Abstract This chapter presents the findings of unstructured interviews with rating analysts from Fitch, Moody’s, and Standard and Poor’s. Analysts delineate their niche within their broader professional and epistemic community by narrowly defining the stakeholders of their activities as the investors who use ratings, which implies a particular perspective on politics and policy, analyzed purely as sources of credit risk. Focusing on downside risks dictates concentrating on how countries might react to unforeseen shocks and on the expected influence of observed political and policy features on that reaction. In this context, analysts emphasize the importance of the ostensibly value- and ideology-free requirements of “robustness,” “resilience,” and “flexibility,” especially in the higher rating ranges, even though they are usually reluctant to explicitly translate these concepts into clear correspondence between specific political and policy features and ratings.