Introduction and Overview

The relatively centralised global economic governance architecture created after the historic Bretton Woods conference of 1944, comprising the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), is decentralising. One of the manifestations of the decentralisation process is the rise of regional economic institutions that operate alongside their “senior” global counterparts. Regional financial arrangements, regional development banks and reciprocal trade agreements have become increasingly important in global economic governance. The conventional view of the relationship between regional and global economic institutions, or that between regionalism and multilateralism more generally, has been coloured by the “contested multilateralism” theoretical paradigm which predicts conflictual, competitive, and fragmenting dynamics between regional and global economic governance bodies. We reject such views and adopt a “benefit-risk” analysis method to examine whether the move from a centralised to decentralising global economic architecture entails net gains or net losses for global financial, monetary, trade and development governance. It is argued that complementarity and division of labour between regional and global institutions can be cultivated to advance global economic governance. Towards the end of the chapter, the main arguments and findings of the other chapters of the edited volume are summarised and highlighted. The role of Asia is identified.