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Abstract
Feminists and other progressives have long argued that global macroeconomic governance is deeply deficient. The deficiencies have been revealed and amplified by the COVID-19 crisis. The need to radically reconstruct the global economic governance architecture is therefore pressing. Albert Hirschman’s conception of “possibilism” is particularly relevant for navigating these challenges. In the spirit of Hirschmanian possibilism, I make a case for what I refer to as “enabling global financial governance.” I use this term to refer to reforms of global financial governance that could provide a supporting environment for feminist and other progressive plans for sustainability and social justice. I advance the provocative claim that feminists and other social justice advocates should embrace what I term “permissive multilateralisms” rather than “harmonized multilateralism.” I also highlight a number of directions for global financial governance reform that could provide policy space for progressive initiatives, including those advanced by feminists. I offer this paper as a small way of honoring my friend, Eugenia Correa, whose intellectual legacy and commitment to engaged scholarship has influenced me profoundly.
Acknowledgements
I thank George DeMartino for invaluable comments on this paper. I also thank two anonymous referees for their thoughtful suggestions and Laura Turquet and participants at the November 2020 UN Women Expert Group Meeting for reactions to previous versions of this work. I also thank Daniel Rinner for excellent research assistance. Deep appreciation to Wesley Marshall and Mario Seccareccia for organzing this symposium.
Notes
1 Discussion of multilateralism and permissive multilateralisms draws on Grabel (Citation2017, Citation2021, Citation2022).
2 The US state of Hawaii’s April 2020 “Feminist Economic Recovery Plan” is an example of the kind of policy heterogeneity—albeit subnational—that a permissive global order should support (Hawai’i State Commission on the Status of Women Citation2020). See Piscopo (Citation2021) on national and subnational feminist recovery programs in Argentina, Hawaii, Canada, and elsewhere (2021).
3 Even here, however, I urge reflection since what can sometimes seem unambiguously beneficial or neutral can carry troubling normative assumptions. For example, “rules-based” global orders seem appealing (especially when compared to claims by autocratic leaders of “our country, our norms”). But they can provide rhetorical and practical cover for an order that is dominated by or serves the interests of powerful actors in powerful nations. The obvious point is that it is not a simple matter to straddle the line between global rules and national autonomy. In a related vein, see the critique of the Biden administration’s regular invocation of the need to “defend a rules-based order” in Beinart (Citation2021), and a broader critique that centers on the contradictions and deep flaws in Biden’s foreign policy (Haas Citation2021).
4 For an application of this approach to many aspects of global economic governance, see DeMartino (Citation2000); and for an application to fair trade, see DeMartino, Moyer, and Kate Watkins (Citation2016). This “social index tariff” approach provides means and incentives for improvement in human capabilities in ways that support heterogeneity in priorities and policy autonomy.
5 Other contributions to recent literature on American decline include Bello (Citation2022).
6 Some observers also propose debt-for-climate swaps (Akhtar et al. Citation2021).
7 However, many observers rightly noted that $650 billion is inadequate and call for the release of $3 trillion in SDRs (United Nations Citation2021).
8 These arguments are developed in Grabel (Citation2017) and extended in Grabel (Citation2018, Citation2022). This aligns with the case that I have made for sensibilities derived from Albert Hirschman’s work (Grabel Citation2017, chap. 2), Elinor Ostrom’s complimentary arguments for polycentrism (Ostrom Citation1999), and related arguments in complexity theory concerning the benefits of heterogeneous, adaptive systems and the dangers of monocultures and centripetal systems (Elsner Citation2017).
9 See Grabel (Citation2019).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Ilene Grabel
Ilene Grabel is Distinguished University Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies of the University of Denver. Her book, When Things Don’t Fall Apart: Global Financial Governance and Developmental Finance in an Age of Productive Incoherence (The MIT Press, 2017), won the 2019 European Association of Evolutionary Political Economy Joan Robinson Prize, the 2019 International Studies Association International Political Economy Best Book Award, and the 2018 British International Studies Association International Political Economy Book Prize. Grabel’s previous book (with Ha-Joon Chang), Reclaiming Development, was reissued in 2014, and has been translated into Korean, Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, Tamil, Malayalam and Bahasa/Indonesian. Grabel has published widely on financial policy and crises, developmental financial architectures, international financial institutions, international capital flows, and global financial governance. Grabel served as a standing member of the Intergovernmental Expert Group on Financing for Development at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD); has been a research consultant to UNCTAD’s Division of Globalization and Development Strategies and UNCTAD’s Group of 24; and the Human Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); International Poverty Center for Inclusive Growth of the UNDP; and the United Nations University/World Institute for Development Economics Research.