They are currently free-floating global actors which frequently adhere to local laws for the portion of their activity within a given nation state, for as long as they choose to operate in that nation state. Their mobility can set state against state, competing to attract them. At present no government body, or bodies acting in unison, monitor, regulate, or tax their overall behavior. Other global issues not adequately addressed by current global institutions include the environment, labor standards, and the movement of peoples-whether as laborers, refugees, or simply migrants. Institutions which have mandates in these areas lack the authority to require compliance.
Implementation generally is decentralized among the various sovereign states.
Those reforms which Northern governments regard as important for Southern governments to implement are increasingly assigned to the Bank and the Fund. Southern governments have no comparable fora where they can require changed behavior of Northern governments. All of this points to a formidable task ahead facing those for whom the inward journey of personal conversion is inseparable from the outward journey of working towards the transformation of unjust structures. Jo Marie Griesgraber is Director of the Rethinking Bretton Woods Project at the Center of Concern.