ABSTRACT
In a speech given at the Brookings Institution in April 1998, Robert Rubin, then Secretary of the US Treasury, stressed the need to strengthen the ‘architecture’ of the international fi nancial system. Rubin’s speech has been identifi ed as the fi rst (offi cial) use of the term ‘international fi nancial architecture’ (Kenen 2001). The emergence of this new nomenclature signalled a new way of thinking about international fi nance and its regulation, addressing a perceived need for reforms that “aimed at preventing future crises and resolving more effectively the crises that do occur” (Kenen 2001: 1). In the aftermath of the East Asian crisis, both political and academic discourse increasingly subscribed to the notion that there was a need for regulatory reforms with regard to international fi nance, and that such reforms would entail a work of construction-as opposed to the emphasis on deregulation in the preceding decade.1 The term ‘architecture’ was widely adopted in the debate, but often without explicit defi nition. In the academic debate, use of the term said little about the policies proposed in the name of reforming, or ‘strengthening’, it. In the political arena, however, the architecture metaphor was soon invested with substantial regulatory content. The IFA marked the emergence of a new approach to the regulation of international fi nance by emphasising the upgrading of fi nancial regulation and the supervision of individual countries and individual fi nancial institutions.2
