Читать книгу The Case for a New Bretton Woods - Kevin P. Gallagher - Страница 7

Efforts to reconcile the requirements of national governments with their international entanglements have a long history (Mazower 2013). What made Bretton Woods distinct from previous multilateral initiatives was a recognition that combining national economic goals with international peace and stability would require dedicated public institutions to ensure “the fullest and most effective use of the world’s resources.” The architects of these new institutions had to contend with three abiding and closely related challenges of global governance. First, how many resources and policy responsibilities could they procure from sovereign states to manage a supportive international environment (the sovereignty challenge)? Second, how would international policy priorities be set and responsibilities established across a diverse membership (the leadership challenge)? Third, how, if at all, would those who benefited the most from international cooperation compensate those who benefited the least (the distribution challenge)?

As will be further elaborated in the following chapters, there are four main takeaways from Bretton Woods that, we believe, remain relevant when thinking about governance in relation to contemporary global challenges:

1 Face up to failure. Austerity does not work; the gold standard and the outsized influence of financial interests had triggered widespread depression, insecurity, and conflict. A new order would require an ideological break with laissezfaire and adjustment through austerity.

2 Treat markets as means not ends. Economic security, personal safety, social justice, energy choices, and political representation should not be left to the dictates of markets. Prices and property rights can help to achieve more inclusive growth and development but require complementary institutions, effective regulation, and shared values that the market doesn’t itself provide.

3 Forge a set of shared national goals and common global interests. The international order was constructed to support the national goals of full employment and social welfare by providing five key global public goods: a stable monetary and exchange rate system; a global lender of last resort to provide liquidity to distressed nations; counter-cyclical and long-term lending; open markets’ including under recession; and a coordinated international economic policy.

4 Nurture cooperation. Rather than ad hoc summitry and bilateral policy negotiations, a set of permanent institutions is needed to monitor, coordinate, and guide the interdependent economic system into the future.

These ideas underpinned the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and their subsequent extensions and offspring. While far from perfect, this was a powerful attempt to globalize economic relations while maintaining sufficient policy autonomy for nation states to pursue a broad set of economic and social goals.

In this book we make the case that a spirit similar to that of Bretton Woods needs to be evoked if the twenty-first-century global economy is to become more stable, more equitable, and environmentally sustainable. At the same time, the practice of multilateralism must change profoundly to meet these objectives, and with respect not only to its recent neoliberal deviation, but also to the original post-war multilateral model which relied unduly on American hegemony and was never able to properly accommodate development goals.