Abstract
Globalization, as already defined in this volume, describes dramatic changes in the transactions and interactions taking place among states, firms and peoples in the world. It describes not just an increase in the flow of goods, services, images, ideas, and people, but a change in the way production, distribution, consumption, and other activities are defined and undertaken. State borders no longer contain and define identities, products, and actors’ possibilities. Boundaries are still crucial, but so too are transnational opportunities both for politics and for commerce. As a result, an increasing range of activities require some form of management and regulation at the international level. For this reason, states create international institutions.
I am indebeted to Tony Porter, Macmaster University,for incisive and helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.
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Notes
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The G-10 comprises the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Japan and Switzerland — the countries which signed the General Agreement to Borrow (GAB) in 1962 which increased the resources available to the IMF.
Created in 1944 as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development: see Devesh Kapur, John P. Lewis and Richard Webb, The World Bank: Its First Half Century Volumes 1 & 2 (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1997).
Comprising the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Canada, who first met as the ‘Group of Seven’, in 1975. Since the 1986 Tokyo Economic Summit, finance ministers and central bankers from these countries have met (along with the managing director of the IMF) more specifically as an economic forum.
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The ‘Financial Stability Forum’ mentioned above has created three working groups to look into this. See Press Release, BIS, Ref No. 19/1999E, 11 May 1999.
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See website at http://www.iosco.org.
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Woods, N. (2000). The Challenge to International Institutions. In: Woods, N. (eds) The Political Economy of Globalization. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-333-98562-5_8
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