Book contents
- The Contested World Economy
- The Contested World Economy
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction and Overview
- Part I The Three Orthodoxies in a Global Context
- Part II Beyond the Three Orthodoxies
- Part III Ending at a Beginning
- 14 The Embedded Liberalism of Bretton Woods
- 15 The Case for a Wider History
- Works Cited
- Index
14 - The Embedded Liberalism of Bretton Woods
from Part III - Ending at a Beginning
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 April 2023
- The Contested World Economy
- The Contested World Economy
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction and Overview
- Part I The Three Orthodoxies in a Global Context
- Part II Beyond the Three Orthodoxies
- Part III Ending at a Beginning
- 14 The Embedded Liberalism of Bretton Woods
- 15 The Case for a Wider History
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
This chapter examines the embedded liberal perspective of the Anglo-American thinkers who played a lead role in designing Bretton Woods order, including John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White. These thinkers endorsed the broad liberal goals of boosting global prosperity, international peace, and individual freedom, but they argued that these goals could only be met with a new kind of institutionalized liberal multilateralism that would make an open world economy compatible with various kinds of active public management of the economy. The roots of embedded liberalism can be found in efforts to reformulate the international side of classical economic liberal thought earlier in the twentieth century, including by thinkers such as Jehangir Coyajee.and John Hobson. The promoters of embedded liberalism at Bretton Woods sought to accommodate not just new ideas of domestic social security and activist macroeconomic management in Western Europe and North America but also the Soviet Union’s commitment to central planning and neomercantilist views prominent in many less industrialized regions. At the same time, they made much less effort to engage with the perspectives discussed in the second part of this volume.
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- The Contested World EconomyThe Deep and Global Roots of International Political Economy, pp. 239 - 258Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023