ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the concepts of power and authority in global financial governance. The four-dimensional framework attempts to overcome two-level games’ shortcomings by considering Group of Seven (G7) relations with a wider range of settings, thus locating the G7 in a wider world context and by drawing attention to the shared beliefs, understandings and social practices of elites involved in the G7 process. Once again this observation emphasizes the importance of situating any analysis of G7 authority in a wider context and that wider context is the diffusion of authority and power represented by the structures of decentralized globalization. Decentralized financial globalization involves both interconnectedness and decentralization. Keohane and Nye’s view that a high level of conflict of interest among sub-units is a necessary pre-condition for transgovernmentalism is consequently a narrow and overly mechanistic one. The chapter argues that understanding the G7 process and the patterns of authority and power surrounding it requires multi-spatial analysis.
