Multilateral Meltdown: It’s Time for Another Walk in the Bretton Woods
Author(s)
Moore, Mike
Abstract
No nation can survive, prosper, and be safe without the cooperation of others. On its own, no country can guarantee its citizens clean air and water, and none can manage its tax systems, its markets, or even its airline schedules without global and regional agreements and institutions. Challenges that must be globally managed keep popping up: genetic engineering, AIDS, and global terrorist networks. Yet the extent of these borderless forces has exploded faster than the institutional, moral, and political capacity to cope with them has. The global landscape has dramatically changed in the last 50 years, but the institutions serving the world have not. I would like to suggest one concrete step toward reform. It’s time for a small group of national leaders to take on the challenge of reforming and rebuilding global governance. They should build this effort around the issue of the democratic deficit in multilateral institutions. This leadership must come from the top.
