BRICS, G20 and global economic governance reform

The article reviews cooperation between the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and their collective efforts to promote reform of international financial institutions, shape global financial regulation and improve financial cooperation. The authors focus on the BRICS–G20 engagement for global economic governance reform. To assess the progress so far, the study employs original quantitative data on the BRICS and G20 commitments and compliance, and qualitative analysis of the BRICS and G20 discourse and the transformation of the international economic architecture. The results suggest that, contrary to the common perception of the BRICS as a challenger of the traditional western-dominated international monetary and financial system, it acts in a cooperative manner, seeking to make the international financial architecture and global regulation more representative and responsive to emerging markets and developing economies needs, and strengthen the stability and resilience of international and domestic financial markets.

Transnational planning

This chapter is dedicated to non-liberal varieties of technocratic internationalism. The focus is on two largely forgotten authors who represent technocratic internationalism in the fascist and socialist context. I first consider the international theory of Giuseppe De Michelis, a Geneva-based Italian diplomat who developed a fascist approach to international cooperation. What he proposed in the early 1930s was a system of global economic governance coordinated by a powerful international organization. Projecting Italian corporativism to the international level, De Michelis envisaged a global scheme to allocate capital, labour, and raw materials, with a united ‘Eurafrica’ as avant-garde. The second part of the chapter considers the work of Francis Delaisi, a French political economist and journalist of the same generation. Delaisi was a syndicalist who late in his life came to sympathize with the way the Nazis re-organized the German economy. He was the author of the so-called ‘Delaisi plan’, a scheme of transnational public works intended to unite the European continent. The idea behind this plan, presented in 1931, was to bring together the ‘two Europes’ that he found to co-exist on the same continent: the industrial core in the North-West on the one hand and the far less developed areas in Eastern and Southern Europe on the other.

Commons, Global (Economic) Governance, and Democracy: Which Way Forward for International Law?

Millions of people have been depending on commons such as forests, pastures, grazing lands, and fisheries to meet their basic needs for centuries. Because these commons are often left unrecognized, they face the threat of enclosure, which risks depriving peoples in the Global South from their most basic access to essential resources. Legal scholars are therefore called upon to rethink the prevailing system of global governance. Very little has been said about the role that international law could play in the empowerment of communities in the self-management of their resources and in the resistance against enclosure. It remains unclear to what extent international law can require states to recognize the commons as a democratic practice of its own and protect marginalized populations from enclosure and dispossession. This chapter asks the question as to whether international law can be rethought as part of the solution in saving the commons from enclosure.

The Persistence of Suicides in G20 Countries between 1990 and 2017: an SPSM Approach to Three Generations of Unit Root Tests

Suicides represent an encompassing measure of psychological wellbeing, emotional stability as well as life satisfaction, and they have been recently identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a major global health concern. The G20 countries represent the powerhouse of global economic governance and hence possess the ability to influence the direction of global suicide rates. In applying the sequential panel selection method (SPSM) to three generations of unit root testing procedures, the study investigates the integration properties of suicides in G20 countries between 1990–2017. The results obtained from all three generations of tests provide rigid evidence of persistence within the suicides for most member states of the G20 countries, hence supporting the current strategic agenda pushed by the WHO in reducing suicides to a target rate of 10 percent. In addition, we further propose that such strategies should emanate from within G20 countries and spread globally thereafter.

G20 Contributions to Global Economic Governance in the Post–Covid-19 Digital World

The article investigates the future role of the G20 in a post-pandemic digital world. The transformation of the world order and global governance is interconnected with three main trends: fragmentation, digitalization and socialization. The author underlines that these trends pose challenges for states both at the national and global levels. To effectively solve the accumulated problems, the joint work of international institutions and non-state actors is required.

Between hyperglobalization and national policy. Is there a way to mitigate populist risks for global economic governance in the post-Covid-19 world?

Some scholars of global governance advocate rebalancing from global to national governance. They underline the incompatibility of global economic governance with democracies, which have the right to protect their social arrangements. They discern the fact that global (economic) governance is under heavy fire from a new vox populi, underscoring the socio-economic and cultural sources of their resentment and opposition to the liberal international order. While pointing at the timeliness of such argumentation, this article examines the fundamental problem with a sovereignty-related solution to the populist challenge. It lies in the fact that reconstituting global economic steering with a stronger emphasis on sovereignty may open the door for pursuing distinct national policies, which have blossomed during the Covid-19 pandemic and which not only overlap with populism but dismantle the benefits of international cooperation in the post-Covid-19 world. By asking about the role of the fragmented system of economic governance in inspiring populist resentment, this article creates an opportunity not only to address the challenges to global economic governance, but more specifically to reflect upon: the justification of decisive shifts toward national governance; risks which remain hidden for those discontented with economic globalization; and drafting an alternative solution, namely taking the middle way between hyper globalization and a more national policy.