Global Governance after the Financial Crisis: A New Multilateralism or the Last Gasp of the Great Powers?

Abstract

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 $1 trillion 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. A new order may emerge in which multilateral institutions – such as the IMF – end up with only a limited role to play alongside emerging national and regional strategies, unless a more radical transformation begins. Policy Implications IMF governance (decision‐making majority, location, management and staffing) needs to transform fast if it is to address the tasks assigned to it by the G20. The IMF’s dependence on loans from its wealthiest members (for its new $600 billion) restrains the institution from serious reform, only weakly offering a driver for further change. There has been a failure to mandate and resource the IMF (and its sister institution the World Bank) so as to ensure a multilateral response to the ‘development emergency’ that has resulted from the financial crisis.

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