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The rise of geostrategic rivalry between the United States and China is changing international cooperation. As China seeks new influence and the United States seeks to contain China and to reduce its own international obligations, three dimensions of multilateralism are becoming particularly important. The first is the management of the superpower rivalry, through formal treaties, informal arrangements among states, and international institutions. The second is the capacity of the leadership of any international institution to foster cooperation beyond the immediate preferences of one or another of the most powerful member states. The third dimension is the legitimacy on which the authority of international institutions rests. The evolution of these three elements will shape the future of multilateralism, by which I refer to the arrangements created and agreed by states which facilitate cooperation by enshrining commitments to diffuse reciprocity and peaceful dispute settlement.
The analysis of history and of variations in current practice in international cooperation underscores several ways in which international cooperation could be sustained even as the US-China rivalry strengthens. Global agencies can play a crucial role finding and highlighting areas where cooperation and competition can coexist, and where their own capacities to pool information, to reduce transactions costs, and to broker and monitor agreements can assist. This, in turn, requires high-quality leadership by people who can effectively broker agreements among countries, persuade countries to pool resources, and attract and organize an effective and highly motivated staff. Such leadership requires positive ongoing action by member states, to define what is required for effective leadership of the institutions they collectively create, to seek proven competence in each domain before appointing leaders, and to monitor ongoing performance. Finally, international institutions can buttress their legitimacy by finding better ways to ensure the participation of all stakeholders, and to respond rapidly and effectively to global crises and to provide global public goods.

The 2008 banking failures in the UK and the United States reshaped global economic governance. The aftershocks of the financial crisis exposed the need for global agencies which could rapidly allocate resources to prevent countries collapsing. Equally highlighted was the need for more inclusive institutions, drawing in major emerging economies to provide resources and agree upon institutional reform. Five years after the global financial crisis, the promise of better capacity to manage a global crisis is slipping out of sight. Not emerging are well-resourced, globally-reaching, rapidly-acting international institutions. The IMF still waits the doubling of its capital, currently stalled for want of US approval, and its existing resources are heavily tied-up in Europe. The World Bank's increase in resources was more modest, and it has yet to build capacity to lend rapidly and globally and to expand lending and its exposure beyond existing borrowers and loan arrangements. Equally missing is a successful engagement of new emerging economies at the core of global economic management. The IMF still awaits implementation of the voice and vote reforms which would raise emerging economies' stakes in the core of the institution. The World Bank has not seen emerging economies rushing to increase their contributions to IDA, nor to double the Bank's resources, nor even to borrow from the Bank. The new global institution, the Financial Stability Board, is still woefully short of the legal mandate and inclusive processes which would draw each region of the world into its standard-setting process. This paper lays out recent transformations at the IMF, World Bank, and FSB, and examines how a number of core principles of global governance - legitimacy; representation; responsiveness; flexibility; transparency and accountability; and effectiveness - could be furthered in these institutions. In so doing, it lays out a new action plan for the reform of global economic governance.

Ngaire Woods talks to Juncture about the 'new world order', why predictions of China eclipsing the US are overstated and why the increasing power of emerging nations needn't mean the end for multilateralism.

Should aid be better coordinated? And if so, how? The case for aid coordination is a powerful one. As aid poured into Haiti in the wake of a massive earthquake in January 2010, television coverage around the world broadcast two different realities. One story was about well-organized aid-givers collecting record donations and dispatching food and medical equipment by the tonne to Haiti. The other was a story about aid stymied by a lack of coordination. Television crews depicted Haitian families and children complaining that none of the food, medical assistance, or shelter was reaching them. The President of Haiti soon spoke out: "I am not in a position to criticize anybody, not in the least people who have come here to help me," Preval said. "What I am staying is, what everybody is saying is, that we need a better coordination."

AbstractIn the wake of the global financial crisis, three G20 Summits have reinvigorated global cooperation, thrusting the International Monetary Fund centre stage with approximately $1 trillion of resources. With China, Brazil, India, Russia and other powerful emerging economies now at the table, is a new more multilateral era of governance emerging? This article examines the evidence. It details the governance reforms and new financing of the IMF but finds only very limited shifts in the engagement of major emerging economies – insufficient to position the IMF to address the global imbalances, to set new multilateral rules, to operate as an alternative to self‐insurance or indeed to provide a more multilateral response to the development emergency. The IMF is shifting between: borrower dependence (relying on fee‐paying borrowers for income); independence (with its own investment income); and lender dependence (relying on wealthy members to extend credit lines to it). The result is an ambiguous set of forces restraining the IMF to stay as it is, and only weakly driving reform. A new order may emerge in which multilateral institutions – such as the IMF – end up with only a limited role to play alongside emerging national and regional strategies, unless a more radical transformation begins.Policy Implications IMF governance (decision‐making majority, location, management and staffing) needs to transform fast if it is to address the tasks assigned to it by the G20. The IMF's dependence on loans from its wealthiest members (for its new $600 billion) restrains the institution from serious reform, only weakly offering a driver for further change. There has been a failure to mandate and resource the IMF (and its sister institution the World Bank) so as to ensure a multilateral response to the 'development emergency' that has resulted from the financial crisis.

This paper presents a short, analytical history of the G20 Leaders group. It examines the impact of the G20 on outcomes in international cooperation, and its impact on processes and institutions of global governance. The first part of the paper traces the trajectory of the G20 across its first four meetings, highlighting that after the initial "crisis committee" phase of the G20, the cooperation achieved by the grouping waned dramatically. The second part of the paper examines whether the global agenda has been broadened or influenced by the inclusion of emerging economies. The third and final part of the paper examines the prospects for the G20 looking forward, sketching out four major areas in which the G20 needs to act as an agenda-setter and orchestrator of global governance. To foreshadow the conclusions, the G20 is uniquely placed as an informal agenda-setting group, to push forward global cooperation in four key areas: financial regulation, development assistance, exchange rates, and international institutional reform.

In the wake of the global financial crisis, three G20 Summits have reinvigorated global cooperation, thrusting the International Monetary Fund centre-stage with approximately $1trillion of resources. With China, Brazil, India, Russia and other powerful emerging economies now at the table, is a new more multilateral era of governance emerging? This article examines the evidence. It details the governance reforms and new financing of the IMF but finds only very limited shifts in the engagement of major emerging economies - insufficient to position the IMF to address the global imbalances, to set new multilateral rules, to operate as an alternative to self-insurance, or indeed to provide a more multilateral response to the development emergency. The IMF is shifting between borrower dependence (relying on fee-paying borrowers for income); independence (with its own investment income); and lender-dependence (relying on wealthy members to extend credit lines to it). The result is an ambiguous set of forces restraining the IMF to stay as it is, and only weakly driving reform, creating a new order in which multilateral institutions - such as the IMF - may end up with only a limited role to play alongside emerging national and regional strategies, unless a more radical transformation begins.