Global economic governance reached a high point in 2009-10 with the establishment of the Leader Level G20 group as the premier forum for international economic cooperation.
The G20 was intended to coordinate the national economic polices of the world’s leading economies. It would also be a forum through which to provide political leadership and direction to a complex system of international economic organisations, including the IMF, World Bank, WTO, Financial Stability Board and a number of economic institutions in the UN system.
However, the G20 was never able to fulfil the high expectations set for it at the Pittsburgh Summit of 2009. Over the past decade the international economic system has been progressively weakened by economic shocks, policy tensions and political crises.
These culminated in G7 calls for Russia to be expelled from the G20 following its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the refusal of the group’s other major emerging economies to agree.
This panel discussion coincided with publication of a new issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy (OxREP). This issue, co-edited by Professor David Vines of Oxford University, brings together international relations scholars and international economists to examine the challenges facing the post WW2 economic order.
Questions include:
Can the rules-based multilateral trading system and global financial safety net based on the IMF survive the growing priority the West and some emerging economies are giving to industrial policy and to economic security?
How do accelerating technical change, climate change, rising geopolitical tensions, and the growing weight of developing economies in global output change both the demands on global economic governance and how these may realistically be met?
What offer should the G7 make to China, and separately the Global South on reform of the current system of global economic governance?
What role can the values of international liberalism play in the future international economic system?
