Paper

Beyond Business as Usual: G20 Leaders and Post-Crisis Reconstitution of the International Economic Order

This 2009 policy brief proposes an agenda for deep reform of international economic governance, taking at face value the commitments expressed by G20 leaders during the Great Financial Crisis to render economic growth more inclusive, sustainable and robust.

Outlet: Center for American Progress (CAP)

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Author: Richard Samans

Download the 40-page PDF from: CAP or this site

Executive Summary

Leaders taking part in the G-20, G-8+5, and G-8 summits over the past year have pledged in effect to reconstitute the international economic order to render global growth more inclusive, sustainable, and robust. The agenda for fundamental reform they have articulated in these communiqués is sound and can be summarized as follows:

  1. Construct a new doctrine of global economic growth and integration that enables much more inclusive and sustainable outcomes.
  2. Rebalance and strengthen global aggregate demand for goods and services through deeper macroeconomic and structural economic cooperation.
  3. Elevate employment and social protection to a top priority of international economic policy and cooperation.
  4. Shift economies onto a low-carbon economic growth path.
  5. Make major progress in the both the coordination and resourcing of the fight against global poverty.
  6. Fundamentally reform and strengthen financial system regulation.
  7. Renovate the primary institutions of international economic cooperation as necessary to achieve the foregoing objectives.

But for these objectives to be achieved—that is, for the world economy to avoid a return to business as usual after the crisis recedes—they will need to be translated into major structural improvements in the corresponding multilateral and national institutions…. (continues)