Global Financial Governance and the Problem of Inclusion

The Asian financial crises of 1997-1998 set in motion a long-overdue reform of the formal decisionmaking mechanisms of global financial governance. (1) By "global financial governance" I mean the broad fabric of rules and procedures by which internationally active financial institutions are governed, while the architectural element of governance I understand to be the public mechanisms by which authoritative decisions about these rules and procedures are made. From this perspective, the post-Asia reform efforts center on the creation of two new forums: a technical committee known as the Financial Stability Forum (or FSF) and a new political grouping of countries known as the Group of 20 (or G-20). My purpose in this article is to draw attention to the way in which the creation of the G-20 and the FSF constitutes a potentially progressive development for global financial governance because they include emerging market economies in its decisionmaking mechanisms for the very first time. I proceed in three steps. First, I provide a framework for thinking about the problem of inclusion in terms of the international financial architecture. Here the focus is on the reciprocal relationship between inclusion and ownership as key prerequisites for an effective international financial architecture. Second, I explore how the post-Asia reform effort has addressed the "inclusion deficit" within the international financial architecture. The focus in this section is on the novelty of recent developments when compared with previous mechanisms of international decisionmaking. Finally, I assess these efforts within the context of what some skeptics consider to be fundamental governance problems within the global financial system. Here I stress that although a new departure has been made regarding the inclusion of emerging market economies within the broader structure of global financial governance, much remains to be done, including strengthening the workings of inclusion at the national level. Broadly, my analysis suggests that the results of the reform effort to date at least offer the possibility that in the medium term global finance will become subject to an increasingly legitimate governance structure. But this newfound legitimacy in turn rests upon explicitly recognizing the political significance of the principle of inclusion as a parallel dynamic driving the reform effort (alongside the more technical issues that are often associated with it, such as timely data dissemination, transparency, private sector involvement, prudential regulation, capital account liberalization, and moral hazard). In making this argument I am traversing a large and growing literature on the regulatory problems facing financial systems at both the national and international level. (2) My intention, however, is to evaluate systematically neither the causes of Asia's financial turmoil nor the many policy proposals arising out of this debate. Rather, I focus on the formal decisionmaking mechanisms that produce and leg itimate these policy decisions, in order to ask how far they advance or retard the prospect of achieving a more effective and legitimate international financial architecture. The underlying argument here is that resolving the technical aspects of global financial governance will not by itself be sufficient to establish an effective international financial architecture until the political aspects are sorted out, and embracing the politics of inclusion constitutes a necessary first step in this process. Inclusion, Participation, and Ownership: Underpinning an Effective International Financial Architecture On the occasion of his first major speech outlining the work of the G-20, Paul Martin--Canada's minister of finance and the first chair of the new group--made a remarkable admission. He declared that the international community had finally learned a fundamental truth about policies to promote development: "They will work only if the developing countries and emerging markets help to shape them, because inclusiveness lies at the heart of legitimacy and effectiveness. …