In this era of globalization the concepts of global governance and good governance are hot on the lips of government officials, international financial institutions and civil society. The IMF and World Bank are part of the global governance infrastructure. They demand good governance at the national level while ignoring the need for good governance at the global level.
Global governance is a hotly contested issue.
As economies go global, economic decision making is largely happening within and between global financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. Other forums like G-8 summits, the Davos Forum, and the OECD also provide space for finance and trade ministers to get together and address the global financial regime. To date, the decisions and dialogues have taken place within the rubric of economic cooperation and thus have been limited to finance, trade and commerce ministers from nation-states and to economists and trade specialists at the international level. If economic decisions were limited unto themselves, the narrow scope of the dialogue and its participants would not be cause for concern. But economic decisions can and do have great impact on almost every facet of an ordinary person's life.