The G20 and Global Economic Governance: Lessons from Multi-Level European Governance?

Abstract

International cooperation is, in the long run, a necessary ingredient in the search for national prosperity. This should lead every country to look with a renewed sense of responsibility and discipline to the system as a whole. The G20 […] would be in a powerful position to promote the global common good, and to make it prevail, including, at times, against a narrow, short-term interpretation of national interests. 1 Just as the Eurozone is a microcosm of the global economy, the dysfunctional G20 is a macrocosm of the European Council. Its members, European Union leaders, also gather for high-profile summits. Each time they promise comprehensive solutions and fail to deliver. The parallels are remarkable. 2 It has been rightly observed that ‘[g]lobalization … contribut[es] to the transformation of ever more local and national goods into international public goods requiring new forms of governance, regulation and justification.’ 3 The present article aims to enrich the debate on multi-level governance of interdependent public goods with lessons drawn from the most advanced regional integration project, the EU. We discuss the insights gained from ‘multilevel European governance’ for global economic governance and, more specifically, for the collective action problems involved in procuring international public goods. Furthermore, we specifically reflect on the question whether, drawing on the European experience, it is expedient for the G20 to be institutionalized as a ‘global economic governance executive’.