Since mid-2007, the world scenario has been dominated by the US sub-prime mortgage crisis and its repercussions on global financial markets and economic growth. As banks around the world wrote down their losses and governments intervened to rescue domestic financial institutions, financial distress severely hit the real economy leading to what has been widely defined as the worst recession since the 1930s. Under these conditions, along with the immediate concern for stemming the effects of the crisis, policy-makers around the world have been debating the long-term measures that have to be adopted in order to reduce the likelihood of future crises and to ensure stable economic growth. Although this debate has not yet produced significant transformations, it indicates a renewed concern about the institutional architecture that is meant to govern the global economic and financial system. This book tackles the issue of what the governance of the global economic and financial system looks like and what the prospects for its reform are. Specifically, the book will address the following three main themes: Governance: What is governance in the international economic system? What forms does it take? How did it come about? How can we study it?; Functions of governance: What are the functions of global economic governance? Who performs them? What are the rules and mechanisms that make global governance possible? Problems and prospects of governance: What are the problems in global economic governance? Is there a trade-off between legitimacy and efficiency? What are the prospects for reform of global economic governance in the aftermath of the global financial crisis? This book will: Provide a thorough analysis of the issues at stake in designing international rules and institutions able to govern the global economy; illustrate and analyze virtually all the main institutions, rules, and arrangements that make up global economic governance, inscribing them within the function these institutions, rules, and arrangements are meant to perform; discuss the problems that affect today's global economic governance and assess alternative proposals to reform the international financial architecture.

The book gathers together a set of lively, provocative essays by leading voices in International Political Economy to debate the evolution of the field, its current state and its future directions.

Prompted by recent commentaries on the existence of a transatlantic divide in IPE between an American school and a British school, the essays provide a wide-ranging discussion of whether it is useful to think of the field in these terms, what the American and British schools look like, what their achievements and shortcomings are, and what are the desirable future directions for IPE scholarship. The diverse responses to these questions reflect the ongoing vibrancy and diversity of the field of IPE, and open up an imaginative and engaging discussion about where we need to go from here.

Featuring contributions from the most influential scholars in the field from North America, Canada and the UK, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in the cutting edge debates in contemporary international political economy.

The book gathers together a set of lively, provocative essays by leading voices in International Political Economy to debate the evolution of the field, its current state and its future directions.

Prompted by recent commentaries on the existence of a 'transatlantic divide' in IPE between an 'American school' and a 'British school', the essays provide a wide-ranging discussion of whether it is useful to think of the field in these terms, what the 'American' and 'British' schools look like, what their achievements and shortcomings are, and what are the desirable future directions for IPE scholarship. The diverse responses to these questions reflect the ongoing vibrancy and diversity of the field of IPE, and open up an imaginative and engaging discussion about where we need to go from here.

Featuring contributions from the most influential scholars in the field from North America, Canada and the UK, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in the cutting edge debates in contemporary international political economy.

""Hypocrisy Trap" provides a fresh look at a long-standing problem: Why do international organizations such as the World Bank so often say one thing but do another? Weaver combines an impressive array of interviews and secondary sources with organizational sociology to show why there is a trap and why it is not easy to avoid or escape. The resulting analysis will be of interest to scholars concerned with how international organizations actually operate--and to practitioners who want to operate them more successfully. Unfortunately, it turns out that good governance is easier to say than to do."--Duncan Snidal, University of Chicago

"When institutional pressures and bureaucratic goals collide, hypocrisy is almost inevitable. The contradiction between talk and action is built into the very fabric of the World Bank. The outcome, as Catherine Weaver argues in this timely and compelling study, is systemic rather than sporadic hypocrisy."--Peter J. Katzenstein, Cornell University

"An excellent book: theoretically sophisticated, empirically rich, and refreshingly accessible. This is the best book I have seen about the World Bank in a long time."--Martha Finnemore, George Washington University

"While others have examined dysfunction and pathology more generally in international organizations, Weaver's book is the first to offer a theoretically sophisticated analysis of hypocrisy specifically. Weaver casts a broad net and aims high."--Paul J. Nelson, University of Pittsburgh