Definition

Specifics

The saying that ‘money has no smell’ (pecunia non olet) can give us the wrong idea, that is, that money should be seen as a ‘super resource’ and dominant in the hierarchy of all public action resources. In my view, this is not the case at all. First, it is important to differentiate this resource from the resource Property (administrative and financial assets) held in public or private hands. The constitutive values of administrative assets (which render an actor ‘rich’ or ‘poor’) are usually unsaleable and cannot therefore be converted into money. The value of financial assets, although convertible into money, is not always ‘available’ as it is associated with objects with varying degrees of saleability. Thus it is advisable not to consider financial assets as forming part of the resource Money in all cases.

Furthermore, the use of this resource, which is universally available in civil society, is far more limited and regulated than other public action resources in the public policy sphere (for example, measures to prevent corruption, misappropriation of funds and other abuses by the authorities, public procurement, the strict regulation of the use of subsidies). In this sense, as a public action resource, Money does indeed have a traceable ‘smell’ that is consciously regulated by multiple possession, behavioural and decisional institutional rules and, moreover, by substantive public policies (such as anti-money laundering policy and monetary policy).