This PONARS Eurasia talk with Juliet Johnson, director of McGill University's EU Centre of Excellence-Montreal, explores the transformation of  post-communist central banks from command-economy cash cows into Western-style monetary guardians and the conflicts facing today's central bankers as the comfortable certainties of the past collapse around them.

Johnson conducted more than 160 interviews in 17 countries with central bankers, international assistance providers, policymakers and private sector finance professionals over the course of 15 years. She argues that a powerful transnational central banking community concentrated in Western Europe and North America integrated post-communist central bankers into its network, shaped their ideas about the role of central banks and helped them develop modern tools of central banking.