Ebook: Global Governance Reform: Breaking the Stalemate

The current system of international and financial institutions is proving inadequate to meet many of today's most important challenges, such as terrorism, poverty, nuclear proliferation, financial integration, and climate change. The International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and United Nations were founded at the end of World War II, and their structures of voting and representation have become obsolete--they do not reflect today's balance of economic and political power.

Reform of these international institutions is critically important but is currently in stalemate. A new push is needed from the leaders of major countries, acting together through a reformed G-8 that includes emerging market economies such as China, India, Brazil, and others. Moreover, since global challenges are interrelated, they demand integrated approaches, with greater coordination among international institutions. Editors Colin Bradford and Johannes Linn argue that without reconstituting the G-8 summit into a larger, more representative group of leaders, with a new mandate to provide strategic guidance to the system of international institutions, the world will fall further behind in addressing global challenges. The path to global reform is defined by the need to act in connected, congruent, and combined ways on summit reform and international institutional reform if either is to increase the capacity to meet those challenges.