This chapter explores the role of three global economic institutions (GEIs) in contemporary economic governance: the International Monetary Fund, (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). GEIs are key components of global economic governance, and their activities are central to the pursuit of accountability, efficiency and equity in the global economy. The impact of GEIs on states and societies is complex and widely varying assessments of the performance of these organisations can be found in the literature. Given the absence of theoretical consensus on the roles and functions of GEIs, the first part of the chapter examines competing perspectives on international organisations.

Australia’s extraordinary economic boom continued throughout the period covered by this volume. By the end of 2005, the economy had enjoyed fifty-seven quarters of consecutive economic growth: Paul Keating’s ‘recession we had to have’ was a distant memory. Unemployment fell to slightly more than 5 per cent, the lowest rate for three decades. The government’s budget was enjoying record surpluses. Australia’s economic growth rate in the period was substantially above that of the average for the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the grouping of leading industrialised economies. Australia’s ranking in the OECD on per capita income rose from eighteenth in the early 1990s to eighth by 2005. Astute intervention by the Reserve Bank of Australia through the imposition of a marginal increase in interest rates in early 2005 appeared to have succeeded in deflating the housing bubble and in ensuring a soft landing for the economy.

Just over a century old, John Maynard Keynes’s The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) remains a seminal document of the twentieth century. At the time, the book was a prescient analysis of political events to come. In the decades that followed, this still controversial text became an essential ingredient in the unfolding of history. In this essay, we review the arc of experience since 1919 from the perspective of Keynes’s influence and his changing understanding of economics, politics, and geopolitics. We identify how he, his ideas, and this text became key reference points during times of turbulence as actors sought to manage a range of shocks. Near the end of his life, Keynes would play a central role in planning the world economy’s reconstruction after World War II. We argue that the “global order” that evolved since then, marked by increasingly polarized societies, leaves the community of nations ill prepared to provide key global public goods or to counter critical collective threats.

The rule of law (ROL) is invoked by multinational institutions, Western governments and in China as a political expectation of what legitimate governance looks like. Chinese leaders regularly make claims that are translated into commitments to uphold the ROL, and they generalize this rhetoric to the international level. Constrained by top-down conceptions, China’s idea of an international ROL becomes a hypothetical yet coherent and attractive possibility. Western legal scholars and political scientists are significantly more diverse and sceptical; most do not speak about an international rule of law, for a variety of reasons. This does not mean that there is no role for international law, but it does mean that for many Western scholars and practitioners, domestic conversations about an ROL ideal do not travel to the international level. Ideals can be useful even if they remain elusive. Yet the very different Western and Chinese understandings of the ROL ideal and its international implications may limit China’s international efforts to build international support for the vision that Chinese leaders are intentionally and assiduously creating.

For the past forty years China has been developing its network of international investment agreements. While initially China followed the template set by contracting partner countries, it has increasingly adopted its own approach towards investment protection in treaty negotiations, in an attempt to translate its rapid economic growth into greater political and negotiating power. This aspiration is also visible in China’s domestic policy initiatives concerning inward investment, in particular its enactment of the Foreign Investment Law and its implementation of related measures, including exemptions from tax liability for certain reinvestments. China’s continued shaping of investment treaties in accordance with its own bespoke needs has the potential to influence the future development of international investment law worldwide. This chapter first summarizes the history of China’s investment treaty practice and its domestic policies concerning inward investment. It then looks at issues that have arisen in investment treaty arbitrations involving China (as a respondent) or its nationals (as claimants). Finally, it analyzes China’s proposals for international investment law reform.

Chapter 4 reconstruct how the zeitgeist, the political and economic practices, and the geopolitical and societal circumstances of the war times guided Western Europe to a path of deeper international and regional cooperation focused on free trade and valuta convertibility. During exile and occupation, European governments fleshed out plans and schemes for post-war cooperation, primordially in the domains of socio-economic and the financial-economic planning, in greater (practical) detail. Initially, however, the step from grand designs and lofty models for a post-war Western order that could ‘win the peace’ to the practices of policies of cooperation was taken via the institutional engineering in the Atlantic world, most prominently through the ‘system’ envisioned in Bretton Woods. However, the original ideas behind Bretton Woods soon proved a bridge too far in practice, which complicated global ambitions as well as the proper build-up of Atlantic-wide institutions—and pushed Western Europe to think and act ‘beyond Americanisation’.

The chapter gives a detailed account of inter-state corporations in combatting cybercrime and its limitations. The chapter situates the current negotiations of a new legal instrument to counter cybercrime within the UN’s historical framework of efforts to enhance co-operation against general organised crime and cybercrime. In particular, it analyses the main issues that have held back progress in enhancing co-operation. It then proceeds to examine the current negotiation process and the prospects for effective co-operation once the negotiations come to an end, highlighting the potentially impactful legal implications of the work of the UN ad hoc committee on cybercrime.

The chapter analyses how trade agreements balance liberalisation of digital trade with cybersecurity concerns. The chapter identifies the strengths, weaknesses, and ambiguities facing digital trade regulation in these agreements. As a way to address the tension between international trade law and cybersecurity, it examines security exception clauses in different trade agreements. It also analyses the efforts found in recent regional trade agreements to direct state parties to have regard to international standards concerning cybersecurity issues. It concludes that harmonisation of such standards would suggest the possibility of a greater coherence in cybersecurity governance.

This chapter considers the current foreign policy debate among elites and between elites and public, the prospect of a new policy consensus, and three possible alternative directions for the future.

When China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) more than twenty years ago, it positioned itself as a partner of the developing world. This chapter assesses the role that China has played vis-à-vis the Global South in WTO negotiations. The existing scholarly literature tends to portray China either as a development partner, given ideological South-South ties, or as an economic competitor, given its own economic transformation. Based on an analysis of China’s negotiation behaviour and other WTO members’ perceptions of its role, the chapter argues that China plays an increasingly ambiguous role vis-à-vis the Global South. China’s political intention to support a broader development agenda is increasingly undermined by the way in which its larger economic size leads to competition with other developing countries. The specific conflict lines that emerge reflect in part the increasing heterogeneity of the Global South. Perceptions of China’s role are moreover linked to the political agenda of Special and Differential Treatment (S&D) for developing countries. Other developing countries increasingly see China also as a competitor for development-related flexibilities and exemptions in the multilateral trade regime.

Since its accession to the WTO twenty years ago, China’s image has shifted from a good student aspiring to assimilate itself into the multilateral trading system to one that is increasingly alienated from key WTO principles. How has China’s perspective on WTO been evolving? What are the reasons behind China’s changing perspective? This chapter addresses these questions from the Chinese perspective with a comprehensive analysis of the key moments in China’s first two decades in the WTO, followed by practical suggestions on how to engage China more constructively in the WTO and beyond.

This book is designed as a guidebook to the multilateral trading system, its past, its present, and a look toward its potential future. It includes taking the reader on a virtual walk through the corridors of the WTO, the Italianate Centre William Rappard, after hearing of the history of trade and trade negotiations, to sit in on some of the working sessions of delegates. The book’s objective is to convey an understanding of the value of the WTO, as well as the values that it promotes, to have a first-hand feel for what the WTO is all about, to understand its importance and its shortcomings, and to join with it in celebrating its successes. The look to the future includes in these pages some ideas upon which to start a discussion of how to obtain the oft-pledged “WTO reform.”

An isolated approach to climate action hinged on nationalism and built on the superiority complexes of countries in the Minority World will not be enough to address the climate emergency. Climate multilateralism, despite its imperfections, remains a potent tool for addressing the tragedies of our commons.

Global governance entails a “transnationalization” of what is conventionally described as international authority, vested in multilateral organizations such as the UN. This process entails an increased reliance on private or non-state actors, and on voluntary and marked-based mechanisms of governance. In many cases, so-called “private” authority is central to global governance arrangements. This aspect of contemporary global governance raises questions about how the authority to govern is established. If authority is not delegated by states, but seized by private actors, our theories for explaining its emergence becomes important. I develop an argument about how authority can be established from scratch, without prior authority, by virtue of the sheer facticity of political rule. In this conception, authority is not the basis for political rule, but a result of it. I explore this dynamic with regards to different issue-areas in multilateral settings.

The First World War precipitated a crisis in power politics in the creation and maintenance of the post-war international order. Peacemaking after 1918 revealed the difficulties in accommodating traditional practices of power politics within the new normative environment that prevailed in the aftermath of the Great War. This environment emphasised the importance of international law, the principle of self-determination and the creation of international institutions to manage conflicts and promote cooperation. This chapter explores the influence of these norms on territorial claims and settlements in Europe, East Asia and the Middle East, and the different strategies adopted by victors and vanquished. It highlights a fundamental paradox: power politics were marginalised in the creation of a settlement that owed its existence and future viability to a preponderance of power on the part of the victorious allies. The American Senate’s rejection of the Treaty of Versailles, compounded by the onset of the global economic crisis at the end of the 1920s, deprived the international order of the combination of power that had delivered victory in 1918. This would have far-reaching consequences when that order was challenged by revisionist powers that rejected the norms underpinning the Paris peace settlement in Europe.

The organizational backbone of the post-First World War international order was the League of Nations and the bureaucratic backbone of the League of Nations was its permanent Secretariat. The Secretariat was a radically novel invention in international politics. For the first time a permanent, autonomous international body had been created that managed international affairs and was populated with a multinational staff loyal only to that body. This chapter explores how the Secretariat managed to establish and develop this role for itself. It does so through two analytical steps. First, it explores the early, principled decisions regarding the Secretariat’s organization taken by its first Secretary-General, British diplomat Sir Eric Drummond, to ensure the Secretariat became a genuinely international body with substantial institutional autonomy. Second, it maps what we may, with a conceptual loan from Caterina Carta, term the metadiplomatic activities of the Secretariat, i.e. the activities carried out by the Secretariat leadership in order to develop close and productive relations to its main stakeholders: member states, other League institutions and international public opinion with the overall aim of establishing and expanding its legitimacy

Chapter 8 summarises the main findings from the preceding chapters, and discusses the best way to deal with the China challenge. Contrary to those who prefer unilateral and plurilateral approaches, we argue that the potential of multilateralism has yet been fully explored. As we have documented, it was the desire to normalise its trade relations within the multilateral framework that prompted China’s initial decision to return to the multilateral trading system. While China did pursue unprecedented market-oriented reform, the potential of the multilateral rules in taming China’s state capitalism has not been fully unleashed since China’s accession. Of course, recognising the potential of multilateralism does not mean that multilateralism is perfect. Instead, we believe that multilateralism is the most promising compared with unilateral measures and bilateral and plurilateral negotiations outlined above. In addition to making fuller use of the existing rules under the WTO, this book has also put forward some approaches for the negotiation of new rules at the multilateral level where such rules are needed and suggested ways to engage China in a more constructive manner.

This chapter is concerned with Germany’s perspective on the foundations and functions of international law. It is structured in two parts: international law in general and sources of international law. The first part deals with the notion of ‘rules-based order’ as brought forward by Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. The term is understood to be broader than ‘international law’. It is argued that the same is putting at risk the principle of sovereign equality, while ultimately undermining the credibility of international law. Secondly, the first part focuses on Germany’s criticism of the United States’ approach to international law with respect to Israel’s occupation of certain Palestinian territories. The third topic addressed in the first part is Germany’s concept of an ‘Alliance for Multilateralism’, which is assessed as a rather loose and incoherent network of primarily European States. The second part discusses a ruling of the German Federal Constitutional Court concerning the state of necessity as a general principle of international law. The decision is grounded in the context of Argentina’s debt crisis. It is argued that the German Constitutional Court did not seize the opportunity to offer a substantive contribution to the question of State bankruptcy.

This chapter reviews the first six years of implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a major Chinese foreign policy initiative introduced in 2013. The authors explain how China’s transition from benefactor to banker, in con- junction with its push for expanded influence on the global stage, led to the adoption of the BRI. They then consider whether and why China might choose to ‘multilateralize’ the BRI. The authors conclude that if Beijing wants to multilateralize the BRI, it will need to either comply with—or help redesign— international development finance rules and standards. At the same time, the establishment of an inclusive and revitalized development finance regime does not rest solely on the shoulders of Beijing. If OECD-DAC and multilateral donors and creditors wish to avert a crisis of confidence and relevance, they will need to rewrite international development finance rules and norms in ways that accommodate Beijing’s interests and more effectively account for the preferences of low-income and middle-income countries.