CFR: Global Governance Monitor

The US-based think tank the Council for Foreign Relations monitors developing situations worldwide—an important feature resident on their excellent website is an interactive utility which they have called the Global Governance Monitor (click to link)

Its function? - "Tracks, maps and evaluates multilateral efforts to address today's global challenges". Sounds perfect for our needs in the Global Politics strand of the A2 syllabus....!

About the Global Governance Monitor

The challenge of global governance has never been more imperative and more daunting to realize. The headlines are filled with transnational challenges, from terrorism to climate change to weapons of mass destruction. To foster better understanding of modern global challenges--and the international community's record in responding to them--the International Institutions and Global Governance (IIGG) program has launched the Global Governance Monitor.

The Global Governance Monitor is a tool that shows how the international community is doing in addressing the most daunting threats that it faces. For each issue area, the monitor provides:

• a cinematic overview of the challenge, which explains why international cooperation is needed;
• an interactive timeline that traces the world's efforts to craft collective responses to the challenge;
• an issue brief that evaluates the overall performance of the regime and suggests potential reforms to improve international cooperation;
• a matrix that catalogs relevant international treaties, organizations, and initiatives;
• an interactive map that details critical countries and groups; and
• a resource guide for further information on the topic.

We hope that by monitoring the world's performance now, we can help U.S. and international policymakers identify remaining gaps in global regimes and propose new institutions or partnerships to fill them.

It's pleasing to see that each of the areas reported on within the CFR Global Governance Monitor have fairly recent updates... Two areas of current concern to us—War and Nuclear Proliferation—have updates of 28 February and 18 November respectively.

Definitely worth a look in effort to broaden our knowledge of these topics!

Slate Magazine: A World Adrift

Why there is no global leadership on climate change, trade policy, energy, and too many other issues. ...

So runs the by-line on Nouriel Roubini's concise analysis of the G-20 and world affairs in general, published today in Slate magazine. (Nouriel Roubini is chairman of Roubini Global Economics and Professor of Economics at New York University's Stern School of Business.) Some tasters from the beginning and the conclusion:

We live in a world where, in theory, global economic and political governance is in the hands of the G-20. In practice, however, there is no global leadership. And there is severe disarray and disagreement among G-20 members about monetary and fiscal policy, exchange rates and global imbalances, climate change, trade, financial stability, the international monetary system, and energy, food, and global security. Indeed, the major powers now see these issues as zero-sum games rather than positive-sum games. Ours is, in essence, a G-Zero world.  ....

.... for the first time since the end of World War II, there is no nation—or strong alliance of nations—with the political will and economic leverage to secure its goals on the global stage. As in previous historical periods, this vacuum may favor the ambitious and the aggressive as they seek their own advantage. In such a world, the absence of a high-level agreement on creating a new collective-security system—focused on economics rather than military power—is not merely irresponsible, but dangerous. A G-Zero world without leadership and multilateral cooperation is an unstable equilibrium for global economic prosperity and security.

It's definitely worth reading the whole piece. Do it. Now.

Profile: IMF and World Bank (BBC News)

Very helpfully, the BBC News website has put together a profile page for the two most important institutions responsible for economic governance and development on a global basis: the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

This concise but useful guide provides an overview of the two bodies, a brief fact sheet, a profile of the institutions' leaders and an insight into issues arising from their work. The BBC profile is particularly useful in providing examples of the latter, both positive and critical. As you hopefully know, the policies and actions of both institutions have provoked protests world-wide, particularly on the occasion of IMF-World Bank summits.

Take a look: This is a convenient source for the revision of notes generated for these key, high profile institutions. The right sidebar also provides links to recent and current (!) news stories in which these examples can be explored in greater detail by motivated students.

Economist: Thinking the UNthinkable (UN Security Council)

Redesigning the United Nations Security Council might not be easy, but it would be a great prize

... so says the Leader in this week's issue of The Economist:

To do the right deed for the wrong reason, T.S. Eliot wrote, is “the greatest treason”—a familiar one in the world of politics. This week’s culprit is Barack Obama, who has pledged American support for reforming the Security Council of the United Nations (UN), and giving India a permanent seat on it.

By backing India, the president proved that America rates it as a world power and helped set it against China, which quietly opposes permanent Indian membership. And, since UN reform has long been blocked by regional rivalries and powerful countries with something to lose, America can be pretty sure that nothing will come of it.

Mr Obama’s pledge was all the more forceful because his foreign-policy rhetoric has put store by rules and international consensus. Stoking India’s unfulfilled ambition will only fuel the sense that the UN’s most senior body fails to represent the world as it is. That will do the UN no good at all.

To lessen the chance that his India policy comes at the expense of his UN policy, Mr Obama needs to be as good as his word and to put America squarely behind a reform of the Security Council. Reform would be just, it is overdue, and it would make the UN work better. It might even be achievable.

Pretty much everyone agrees that the Security Council’s permanent, veto-wielding membership reflects a bygone age, when what mattered was who won the second world war. An increasingly unrepresentative, anachronistic Security Council speaks with diminishing authority. It is less able to debate the issues that matter, because important actors may be missing. And it is less able to hand down opinions that count, because they do not bear the seal of all the world’s great powers. Whether you think the UN can accomplish a little or a lot, a better Security Council would be able to get more done.

Who shall come to the ball?

Alas, the consensus ends there. Among today’s permanent members France and Britain worry about their declining influence. China objects to Japan as a permanent member. Mexico and Argentina object to Brazil. Italy objects to Germany. African states cannot choose between South Africa and Nigeria. Do you need a Muslim state? And if so, which?

It is a mess and it has been debated fruitlessly for years. Diplomats roll their eyes and say that talking about reform is a waste of breath. Yet international governance can eventually change—just ask the IMF, where Europe is finally giving up some of its clout, or ask the leaders turning up this weekend in Seoul for a summit of the G20, eclipser of the G7.

Any plausible UN reform starts with compromise. The Security Council needs to be large enough to be representative, but small enough to do business. It should reflect real power in the world, but aim not to reward anti-social behaviour. It should strive for the best council for today, but it cannot start with a clean sheet, because the original membership controls the reform under the original rules. Extending permanent membership would help the council, but extending the veto to a lot of new countries risks making it unworkable.

Such ideas help sketch out a plan. Emerging countries need more say. Brazil is the most plausible candidate from Latin America, as Britain’s foreign secretary reiterated this week. In Africa Nigeria is too anarchic, despite its size and supply of peace-keepers. South Africa would be better. Ideally the European Union would have one seat, but Britain and France would veto that, so Germany makes it by default. As an economic power, but not a geopolitical one, Japan barely scrapes in, despite an American promise to back it. A Muslim country would give the council clout: best would be Turkey or Indonesia, which increasingly see themselves as regional powers. And Mr Obama is right: India has the strongest claim of all.

The case for reform is overwhelming. America’s unipolar moment has passed. Rules help in a world where power is shifting. The longer Britain and France wait, the weaker their negotiating position. Russia could probably live with reform, so long as it kept its veto. If China were faced with a united front, it might go along, however reluctantly. Nobody should think that designing a new UN would be easy. But the alternative is a declining UN in a messy, interconnected world. That would not be easy either.

G20 summit agrees to reform IMF

BBC Online brings news of a slight re-balancing within world economic governance—towards emerging economies—at the G20 Summit currently being held in South Korea: [link]

Finance ministers from the G20 leading economies have agreed reforms of the International Monetary Fund, giving major developing nations more of a say.

At a meeting in South Korea, they agreed a shift of about 6% of the votes in the IMF towards some of the fast-growing developing countries.

Those nations will also have more seats on the IMF's Board, while Western Europe will lose two seats. But the US will retain the veto it has over key decisions.

Such decisions require an 85% vote - Washington holds 17% under the IMF's weighted voting system.

The Guardian has more [link]:

Fast-growing emerging economies will get more clout at the International Monetary Fund under a landmark agreement clinched on Saturday that reflects a shift in global power from industrial countries.

Under the deal, more than 6 percent of voting shares at the Fund will shift to dynamic developing countries such as China, which will become the third-biggest member of the 187-strong Washington-based lender. Europe will give up two of the eight or nine seats it controls at any given time on the IMF's Executive Board, which will continue to have 24 members, according to a statement issued after a meeting of finance ministers from the Group of 20 leading economies.

As part of a wide-ranging package, the G20 also agreed to double the IMF's quotas, which determine how much each country contributes to the IMF and how much it may borrow from it. The quotas currently total about $340 billion. The IMF staff had argued for a doubling, which it said would put the fund "in a strong position to forestall or cope with potential crises in the coming years".

The G20 said the reforms would make the Washington-based lender "more effective, credible and legitimate". The governance reforms amount to an overhaul of the global economic order established when the Fund was set up after World War Two, prompting IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn to describe the agreement as historic. "This makes for the biggest reform ever in the governance of the institution," he told reporters.

The reduction in Europe's representation is less than the United States was seeking. However, Washington, which has a 17.67 percent share of IMF quotas will retain its veto on the Fund's most important decisions. These will continue to require a super-majority vote of 85 percent, according to IMF officials.

Without doubt, today's news represents an important update on World Governance (Unit 3) - should a question on the International Monetary Fund come up in the exams, this development would form a valuable current example!

Cautious welcome to the World Bank's rejection of old orthodoxies

The one-size-fits-all development strategy is dead, says Robert Zoellick. But will the World Bank therefore be run differently? - asks The Guardian newspaper in its PovertyMatters Blog [link]:

The World Bank provided one of the three pillars of the Washington consensus. Along with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the US Treasury, it was the source of an economic orthodoxy exported, often ruthlessly, from America to the rest of the world.

Put simply, the Washington consensus provided a one-size-fits-all solution to the problems of development. Countries were told to privatise and to liberalise, to slim down the size of the state, bear down on inflation, reduce their budget deficits and concentrate on exports. "We know what works", the advocates of the consensus said. "Free markets work."

So it was fascinating yesterday to find the World Bank's president, Robert Zoellick (pictured), acting as the gravedigger for the once-all powerful dogma. Urging a rethink of development economics, Zoellick said in a speech in Georgetown: "This is no longer about the Washington consensus. One cannot have a consensus about political economy from one city applying to all. This is about experience regarding what is working – in New Delhi, in Sao Paolo, in Beijing, in Cairo, and Accra. Out of experience may come consensus. But only if it is firmly grounded – and broadly owned."

Some might say this is simply bowing to the inevitable, since one big casualty of the crisis has been the economics profession, with its over-elaborate mathematical models and its messianic belief in the invisible hand of the price mechanism. But, as Zoellick rightly noted, even before the crisis broke there was a questioning of the orthodoxy and a sense that development economics needed to be rethought.

Critics such as the Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang said that no country in history had ever based a successful development strategy on the free-trade model: all protected their fledgling industries. It was also noted that the countries most successful in riding out the economic storm, India and China, were those that had defied the Washington consensus and kept controls on capital flows in place.

There is, though, a bit more to it than that. The rapid growth of the bigger emerging nations – China, India and Brazil in particular – has given them added clout on the world stage. The first manifestation of this was at the World Trade Organisation, where it is no longer possible for the US and the European Union to cook up a private deal and then present it to the rest of the world on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.

Now the developing world wants a bigger say in the running of the World Bank and the IMF. Change to the anachronistic governing structure – which reflects the world as it was in 1944 rather than as it is in 2010 – is happening, even if at a somewhat glacial pace. Developing countries are also reluctant to see the World Bank take charge of a new fund that will help poorer nations adapt to climate change, and want it to be run out of the United Nations instead. So when Zoellick says, as he did yesterday, that a multi-polar economy requires multi-polar knowledge, a cynic might say he was trying to ingratiate himself with the policy makers in Beijing and New Delhi.

There was a sense of genuine humility in Zoellick's speech. "We need to democratise and demystify development economics, recognising that we do not have a monopoly on the answers. 

"We need to throw open the doors, recognising that others can find and create their own solutions. And this open research revolution is underway. We need to recognise that development knowledge is no longer the sole province of the researcher, the scholar, or the ivory tower."

All absolutely true, and very welcome. Talk, of course, is cheap. The real test is whether Zoellick's openness to new ideas makes a difference to how the World Bank is run and how it acts.

Important news for our current understanding of how the World Bank operates in the present-day world—vital insights for World Economic Governance in Unit 3D, particularly in regard to criticisms that have been made of the past approach to economic development and governance by the World Bank!

CFR Backgrounder: NAFTA

The US think tank Council on Foreign Relations features a useful 'backgrounder' article on its website summarising their take on "The Economic Impact of NAFTA" (the North American Free Trade Agreement). Last updated on 7 July last year (2009), the article is highly informative and gives equal time to Canadian and Mexican perspectives.... Not just the American viewpoint!

http://www.cfr.org/publication/15790/naftas_economic_impact.html

More importantly, the article finishes with a brief discussion of the future of NAFTA, imporatnt for our understanding of future regionalisation worldwide.... Take a look! All in all, a very useful resource for your research on world economic governance and background knowledge of key institutions.