Global economic governance: Players, power and paradigms

Many have already written about the mistakes associated with the working of global economic governance and about the reforms that should be implemented to improve its efficiency and legitimacy. In this Handbook, we tackle these issues from a different perspective by disclosing the foundations of specific governance rules and arrangements. In particular, the contributions in this volume help shedding light on the changing players, power and paradigms that have modeled the major institutions, rules and practices developed with the purposes of governing behavior in the area of trade, money and finance, and development. The book thus explores the variety of the governance infrastructures that aim at providing public goods such as an open trade system, a stable financial system, and economic development. The remaining part of this introductory chapter is organized as follows. In the next section, we discuss the concept of power, players, and paradigms within the context of global economic governance. We then provide an overview of the governance arrangements analyzed in this book and of the major themes that are the object of investigation. The lessons that can be distilled from the detailed case-studies will be taken up in the concluding chapter.