ABSTRACT
When in 1948 U.S. Congressional representatives insisted upon a permanent organization to underpin George Marshall’s eponymous plan, nobody foresaw that these arrangements would endure for over 60 years, outliving (and eventually enveloping) some of their communist foes to become a cornerstone of the liberal democratic order. If the confinement of the OEEC and OECD were products of specific historical junctures, their survival is no accident. Under the umbrella of U.S. hegemony, leading states sought to build a new liberal democratic order. This order aimed to reap the benefits of market exchange while
maintaining the autonomy states needed to deliver domestic welfare policies and protect their citizens from the worst excesses of free market capitalism. In the febrile postwar atmosphere, parenting a liberal democratic order was not a straightforward undertaking. One of the keys to its success was institutions like the IMF, GATT, OEEC, and OECD where states agreed on rules, norms and principles to guide, within certain limits, the liberalization of their economies. As responsible parents, states did not desert their offspring but sought through these international organizations to screen it from infection and disease (such as trade protectionism and restrictions on the circulation of capital), tame its teenage tantrums (the oil crises and stagflation), and imbue it with suitable values for adulthood (democracy, capitalism, and the rule of law). Pundits of a “hyperglobalist” disposition extend this analogy, claiming that with the reintegration of national economies and the ascendancy of neo-liberalism the international order has flown the nest and pays little heed to the rules laid down by the states or international organizations that conceived it.1
Most commentators deride this view however, and think that states, individually or collectively, are vital players with the power, returning to the definition of global governance offered in the introductory chapter, to “manage our collective affairs.”2
