Governing Global Finance
Jan Aart Scholte
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: scholte@warwick.ac.uk
