“Governing Global Finance” Jan Aart Scholte CSGR Working Paper No. 88/02 January 2002 Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation (CSGR), University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, United Kingdom. URL: http://www.csgr.org 1 Governing Global Finance Jan Aart Scholte Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick CSGR Working Paper No 88/02 January 2002 Abstract This paper examines the regulation of global finance. It first identifies the forms and extents of contemporary financial globalization: that is, how monetarily denominated savings and investments now increasingly move in transworld spaces. A range of evidence is cited to indicate that finance has acquired a very substantial global character. The second section of the paper reviews the various institutional mechanisms that currently serve to govern global finance. This regulation is shown to be multilayered and diffuse: across local, national, regional and global levels; and across public and private sectors. The third section considers the effectiveness of present regulatory arrangements, with reference to criteria of efficiency, stability, social equity, ecological integrity and democracy. Current frameworks are found to be seriously wanting on all of these counts. Finally, the paper assesses future challenges and prospects in the governance of global finance. It is argued here that considerably more proactive and socially progressive public regulation of global finance is possible and desirable. Keywords: globality/globalisation, finance Address for correspondence: Jan Aart Scholte Department of Politics and International Studies University of Warwick Coventry CV4 7AL United Kingdom Email:
[email protected] 2 Introduction* In contemporary history, ‘global crisis’ has as often as not referred to the field of finance.