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Abstract
This exploratory case study of repositioning focuses on changing relations among actors and the structures of global governance. It examines interactions between formal institutions, particularly the IMF, and informal networks of authority manifested in global forums, such as the G7/G8 and G20. The core argument is that global repositioning may be best understood in terms of increasing pliability in neoliberal globalisation. Pliable neoliberalism encompasses elasticity in practices and the stretching of spatial and institutional networks, plus pushback in the global North and South. It has two axes, one lateral and the other longitudinal. The former constitutes changes in global governance institutions; the latter turns on the resilience of neoliberalism and challenges to it. Horizontal shifts in global governance, as in changes in membership organisations, are made possible by verticality – hierarchies in social power relations. The evidence is drawn from documentary research and semi-structured discussions with global governance officials in Africa, Europe and North America.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to the Global Governance and the Emerging Global South (SouthGovNet) research network for its workshops and stimulating discussions, and to Third World Quarterly’s anonymous reviewers for excellent comments on a draft of this paper. I am indebted to Daniel T. Dye and Nicholas T. Smith for providing stellar research assistance; and to Robert Denemark for generously sharing research material.
Notes
1. For example, Keohane, After Hegemony; and Milner, Interests, Institutions, and Information. In the vast literature on global governance, I have especially benefited from Murphy, International Organization and Industrial Change; Rosenau, Along the Domestic–Foreign Frontier; Hewson and Sinclair, Approaches to Global Governance; Sinclair, Global Governance; and Weiss, Global Governance.
2. Nielson and Tierney, “Delegation to International Organizations”; Hawkins et al., Delegation and Agency; and Martin, “Distribution, Information, and Delegation.”
3. Onuf, World of Our Making; Finnemore, National Interests; and Ruggie, Constructing the World Polity.
4. Vetterlein, “Lacking Ownership,” 94. Melding tenets from delegation theory and constructivism, Copelovitch, The International Monetary Fund, applies these constructs to the IMF.
5. Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy, 70; Arrighi and Drangel, “An Exploration”; Dezzani, “Measuring Transition and Mobility”; Babones, “The Country-level Income Structure”; and Babones, “Position and Mobility.”
6. As in Beeson and Bell, “The G-20”; Overbeek, “Global Governance”; and Soederberg, “The Politics of Representation.”
7. Harvey, Limits to Capital.
8. Panitch and Gindin, The Making of Global Capitalism.
9. Ibid., 21.
10. Bond, “BRICS and the Tendency.”
11. I have profited from a wealth of research on the political economy of international organisation, most notably, Strange’s early writing on IMF ‘monetary managers’. See Strange, “IMF”; Strange, States and Markets; and Scholte, Building Global Democracy? Also important to analysis is Haas’s call for a case-study approach to studying reforms in international organisation and delimiting ‘when knowledge is power’, and Slaughter’s work on ‘network power’. Haas, When Knowledge is Power; and Slaughter, A New World Order. Noteworthy, too, is a series of books edited by Kirton and his colleagues, especially the contribution by Fratianni and Pattison on the IMF. Fratianni and Pattison, “Governance and Conflicts of Interest.”
12. International Monetary Fund officials, discussion with author, Washington, DC, October 12, 2010.
13. The genesis of the G20 is tracked by Hajnal and policy researchers comprising the G20 Research Group, founded by Kirton at the University of Toronto. It maintains the G20 Information Centre website, at http://www.g20.utoronto.ca/, which provides documents and analysis. See Hajnal, The G8 System. While think-tanks such as the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Canada, the Brookings Institution, and the Peterson Institute for International Economics have sponsored much of the G20 research, this work is also informed by more theoretically oriented studies, such as Germain, “Global Financial Governance”; Helleiner and Pagliari, “Towards a New Bretton Woods?”; and Payne, “How Many Gs?”
14. Lagarde, “Facing the Future,” 5.
15. Ibid.
16. See Harvey, A Brief History; Crouch, The Strange Non-death; and Overbeek and van Apeldoorn, Neoliberalism in Crisis.
17. See Ban, Is there more Room?
18. Buchanan and Keohane, “The Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions”; and Hurrell, On Global Order.
19. For empirical evidence, see, inter alia, Wade, “Income Inequality”. Cf. Dollar, “Globalization, Poverty, and Inequality,” 145–175.
20. Quandl’s Data Collections, Citation2015. http://www.quandl.com/collections/economics/gdp-as-share-of-world-gdp-at-ppp-by-country.
21. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2015. http://books.sipri.org/files/FS/SIPRIFS1504.pdf.
22. Calculations based on Nobel Foundation, http://nobelprize.org, accessed August 6, 2009,
and discussed in Mittelman, Hyperconflict, 11.
23. See Mittelman, “Global Bricolage.”
24. Mzukisi Qobo (programme head: Emerging Powers and Global Challenges, South African Institute of International Affairs), discussion with author, Johannesburg, March 27, 2010; and Cheru, “South–South Cooperation.”
25. IMF officials, discussion with author; and IMF official, discussion with author, Washington, DC, January 7, 2011.
26. Uganda former minister, discussion with author, Washington, DC, January 8, 2011.
27. IMF official, discussion with author, Washington, DC, October 17, 2011; and IMF official, seminar, Washington, DC, October 21, 2014.
28. IMF official, discussion with author, Washington, DC, July 2, 2012.
29. Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents.
30. IMF IEO, “IMF Performance,” 5.
31. Ibid.
32. For a careful analysis, see Patomäki, The Great Eurozone Disaster. In the 2015 Greek crisis the IMF counselled debt relief. But at the time of writing, the options for annual transfers from other European governments to the Greek budget remain unclear and beg agreement.
33. Tett, “Davos Man’s Belief.”
34. IMF official, discussion with author, Washington, DC, July 18, 2014.
35. Walton and Seddon, Free Markets, 39–40; and WDM, States of Unrest III.
36. O’Brien et al., Contesting Global Governance.
37. Woods, “Global Governance after the Financial Crisis.”
38. Independent Commission on International Development Issues, North–South; and Brandt Commission, Common Crisis North–South.
39. Strauss-Kahn (managing director, International Monetary Fund), remarks delivered at European Development Days, Stockholm, October 22, 2009.
40. Park and Vetterlein, Owning Development.
41. IMF IEO, “IMF Performance,” 36.
42. Rob Davies (Minister of Trade and Industry, South Africa), discussion with author, Pretoria, March 29, 2010.
43. Ibid. The connection to universities is patent. Higher education is supposed to foster inquiring minds, some as staff expected to bring intellectual heft to governance units.
44. As suggested by the work of Nobel laureates in economics, Sen and Stiglitz.
45. IMF official, 2014.
46. Rosenau, Along the Domestic–Foreign Frontier, 146–147.
47. Language used by IMF officials, 2010.
48. Avant et al., Who Governs the Globe?
49. Walzenbach, “Power and Delegation,” 63.
50. Rosenau, “Governance, Order, and Change,” an insight prefigured in Rosenau, “Patterned Chaos in Global Life.”
51. Rosenau, Along the Domestic–Foreign Frontier, 153–156.
52. Strange, The Retreat of the State, 168–171.
53. A competing interpretation is advanced by Bremmer and Roubini, “A G-Zero World,” who evoke an eponymous world: an era without international leadership, prone to conflict, and absent a new Bretton-Woods arrangement.
54. Group of 20, http://www.g20.org/about/about_G20.html, accessed March 12, 2013. Using 2009 World Development Indicators, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies recalculated these data on the G20 and reported lower figures. See Vestergaard, The G20 and Beyond.
55. Zoellick, “A Monetary Regime.”
56. UN official, discussion with author, New York, February 3, 2011.
57. Martinez-Dias, The G20 after Eight Years; and Martinez-Diaz and Woods, Networks of Influence?
58. Saliem Patel (director, Labour Research Service), discussion with author, Cape Town, April 1, 2010; and Kader Asmal (Professor Extraordinaire, University of the Western Cape, and former minister of education, minister of water affairs and member of parliament, South Africa), discussion with author, Cape Town, March 31, 2010.
59. Davies, discussion with author.
60. Bank of Finland official, Helsinki, discussion with author, June 24, 2010.
61. Cooper, “The G20 as an Improvised Crisis Committee”; Patrick, The G20 and the United States; Heinbecker, The Future of the G20; and Jones, “How the United States.”
62. New Rules for Global Finance, “High-level Panel”; and Jo Marie Griesgraber (executive director, New Rules for Global Finance Coalition), discussion with author, Washington, DC, November 2, 2010.
63. See South Centre, “Reform of the International Financial System.” http://www.southcentre.int/tag/reform-of-the-international-financial-system/, accessed August 7, 2015.
64. Bradford and Linn, Global Governance Reform.
65. Cox with Sinclair, Approaches to World Order; van der Pijl, Transnational Classes; and Rai and Waylen, Global Governance.
