G20 Presents Unique Opportunity to do Better

The Business Times

18 November 2014

Stephen Grenville

Despite the grouping’s unwieldy arrangement, it is the best we have to tackle the long list of global governance deficiencies.

THE world needs more global governance than it has at present. At the same time, sovereign countries are reluctant to cede power to a supra-national body. As a result, there are big differences of opinion about just what form this global governance should take.

When G-20 (Group of 20) leaders first met in 2008, it seemed that this grouping might be the key institution for global governance of economic issues, taking over from the unrepresentative G-7(Group of Seven). Its early years were promising. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, it helped coordinate global fiscal stimulus and pressured countries to resist the sort of protectionist measures that had caused the downward spiral of global trade during the 1930s depression. As the crisis diminished, however, so too did G-20’s relevance.

…The writer is NTUC professor of international economic relations at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He is also a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney and a former deputy governor and board member of the Reserve Bank of Australia.

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