Coauthored with Isabella Bennett, program coordinator in the International Institutions and Global Governance program.

Last month, IIGG and the Moscow-based Institute of Contemporary Development convened the second regional meeting of the Council of Councils—a network of twenty-four policy institutions based in established and emerging states—to exchange practical ideas and solutions regarding daunting transnational challenges. The conversations highlighted growing areas of systemic global risk and thinning solidarity within the so-called international community. These trends threaten to undermine multilateral cooperation in stabilizing the global economy and preserving international peace and security. Read more »

The new year is a time of hope. As 2013 dawns, optimists yearn for a period of sustained global economic growth after five years of recession, turbulence, and sluggish recovery. Achieving this scenario will require close policy coordination among governments of the world’s major economies. This places a heavy burden on the Russian Federation, which on December 1 assumed the rotating chairmanship of the Group of Twenty (G20). Read more »

If there’s one lesson observers have drawn from the “greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression,” it’s that our outdated system of global economic governance failed to respond and needs a major overhaul. A closer look at the performance of international institutions since 2008, however, paints a rosier picture. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Tufts professor Dan Drezner argues in a provocative new CFR working paper that “the system worked.” Despite dire predictions, major economic powers cooperated within multilateral institutions, both old and new, to prevent a global financial collapse, forestall a descent into tit-for-tat protectionism, adopt new rules of financial regulation, and adjust the governance structures of global bodies to reflect power shifts. Read more »

On CFR’s new Global Expert Roundup, I argue that the U.S. diplomatic push to install an American as the next World Bank president squandered a golden opportunity to promote a new era of global governance founded on contemporary economic realities, and not outdated Western prerogatives. The Obama administration could have thrown its weight behind either of the two outstanding alternatives–Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of Nigeria or José Antonio Ocampo of Colombia–and in doing so, would have signaled that global institutional reform requires integrating the dynamic developing world. Nevertheless, the first multi-candidate competition is a historic turning point. Read more »