GEG WP 2009/54 Global Governance after the Financial Crisis

Full Title: Global Governance after the Financial Crisis: A new multilateralism or the last gasp of the great powers?

Author: Ngaire Woods

Type: GEG Working Paper 2009/54

Abstract

In the wake of the global financial crisis, three G20 Summits have reinvigorated global cooperation, thrusting the International Monetary Fund centre-stage with approximately $1trillion of  resources. With China, Brazil, India, Russia and other powerful emerging economies now at the table, is a new more multilateral era of governance emerging? This article examines the evidence. It details the governance reforms and new financing of the IMF but finds only very limited shifts in the engagement of major emerging economies – insufficient to position the IMF to address the global imbalances, to set new multilateral rules, to operate as an alternative to self-insurance, or indeed to provide a more multilateral response to the development emergency. The IMF is  shifting between borrower dependence (relying on fee-paying borrowers for income); independence (with its own investment income); and lender-dependence (relying on wealthy members to extend credit lines to it). The result is an ambiguous set of forces restraining the IMF to stay as it is, and only weakly driving reform, creating a new order in which multilateral institutions – such as the IMF – may end up with only a limited role to play alongside emerging national and regional strategies, unless a more radical transformation begins.

Author Bio

Professor Ngaire Woods is the inaugural Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government and Professor of International Political Economy. Her research focuses on global economic governance, the challenges of globalization, global development, and the role of international institutions. She founded and is the Director of the Global Economic Governance Programme. She is co-founder (with Robert O. Keohane) of the Oxford-Princeton Global Leaders Fellowship programme. She lead the creation of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University and, before her appointment as Dean, served as the School’s Academic Director.

For more information about Professor Woods, please see her people page