ABSTRACT
The obverse of looking askance at global governance is to look favourably at the nineteenth-century model. This chapter describes a very sceptical eye at the general arguments in favour of global governance, and at concrete manifestations of policy co-ordination in international organisations and intergovernmental fora such as G8 summits. It examines the core logic of the leading classical economic theorists of the past some centuries. The chapter reviews the different forms of global governance offered by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the United Nations socioeconomic agencies and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, and the G8. The alliance of global governance and anti-liberal sentiment, on markets in general and globalisation in particular, finds vocal support in many circles, and perhaps most noticeably within the UN family.
