ABSTRACT
The debate about globalization is fundamentally a debate about who’s running the global economy, and in whose interests. It is about politics and power as much as about the technical questions of currency regimes, prudential standards and the financial underpinning of global economic stability. Most economists, finance officials and central bankers agree that the benefits of global, market-based integration can more than offset the costs for the poorest countries and the poor within countries. Most social activists, in contrast, emphasize that so far potential has not been realized. The more pragmatic among them advocate moving well beyond the current reform agenda for the international financial architecture to broader and deeper reform of the system of global economic governance. Those activists see the Financial Stability Forum, the Bank for International Settlements, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization as undemocratic. They see the overall system as controlled by corporate and financial insiders, not by the world’s median income voter; by the United States Treasury and Wall Street not middleincome consumers; by Ministers of Finance and Governors of Central Banks not Ministers of Health, Labor, nor Social Affairs.2 They are suspicious of the Bretton Woods institutions, where country votes reflect economic power, compared to the more democratic United Nations, where in the General Assembly at least, every country has a single vote.3
