ABSTRACT
This chapter develops the core theoretical argument of the book. Decisions of global economic governance bodies often have redistributive effects across groups and individuals within the states: they create domestic winners and losers. This is the case for reasons both exogenous (as described e.g. in classical trade theory) and endogenous (the need for issue-linkages) to the negotiations that lead to these decisions. Yet, the design of the main international organizations does not reflect that. Most key global institutions operate inter-governmentally. It is only one actor, the executive, that is expected to represent the variety of conflictive domestic interests. This results in a mismatch between the design of the institutions and the nature of their task. This mismatch leads to important dysfunctions as, for domestic political reasons, the state representations are likely to refrain from engaging in the global negotiations in ways that are necessary for the negotiations to succeed.
