ABSTRACT
During and after World War II, governments developed and enforced a set of rules, institutions, and procedures to regulate important aspects of international economic interaction. For nearly two decades, this order, known as the Bretton Woods Regime, was effective in controlling conflict and in achieving the common goals of the states that had created it. There were three political bases for the Bretton Woods system: (1) the concentration of power in a small number of states, (2) the existence of a cluster of important interests shared by those states, and (3) the presence of a dominant power willing and able to assume a leadership role. 1
