Abstract
AbstractMultilateral Bretton Woods institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO are increasingly challenged by a rising number of bilateral, regional and plurilateral organizations. The mandates of global and regional organizations overlap and intersect when trade is being regulated, financial crisis lending is being provided or development is being financed. In this special issue we examine the forms, dynamics and implications of these global–regional realignments for global economic governance. By drawing on the analytical toolbox of regime complexity research, the authors address mechanisms of integration and disintegration in the regime complexes in trade, finance and development from the viewpoint of actors and particularly regional challengers. The papers discuss first, the motives and strategies to spur fragmentation or integration. Second, they examine to what extent actors seek to substitute or complement focal institutions on the global level. Third, the special issue evaluates the implications of a coexistence of integration and disintegration for global economic governance.
Highlights
Multilateral Bretton Woods institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO are increasingly challenged by a rising number of bilateral, regional and plurilateral organizations
Regime complexes are defined as sets of partially overlapping or nested elemental institutions that operate in a common issue area (Alter and Raustiala 2018; Henning and Pratt 2020; Raustiala and Victor 2004)
Do actors use regional institutions to functionally substitute the focal institutions on the global level? Or do they draw on regional institutions in order to complement the use of the WTO, the World Bank or the IMF?
Summary
Multilateral Bretton Woods institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank (WB) and the GATT (later the WTO) constituted the cornerstones of the post-Second World War liberal economic order. Studies of regional economic governance in finance, development and trade have weighed the risks and benefits of the new regionalism (Kahler, 2017), developed recommendations for ‘good governance’ in decentralized governance architectures (Rana and Pardo 2018; Kahler et al, 2016) or have considered the implications of regional arrangements for emerging market borrowers (Kring and Gallagher, 2019). While both literatures have generated important insights into the mechanisms of global or regional institutional change, they lack a particular analytical focus on the entanglement of global and regional arrangements, their governing forces and the implications for global economic governance
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
