The Two Ways of Global Governance after the Financial Crisis : Multilateralism vs. Cooperation Among Governments

In a greatly interdependent world economy, the number of global and regional public goods, from financial stability to sustainable growth, quickly increase and call for greater global and regional collective action. This paper tries to understand which mechanisms, if any, have been adopted in order to achieve a proper degree of international cooperation after the 2008 financial crisis. The analysis displays that the move towards a new economic global governance is not the result of a single strategy, but rather an original mix or blend of different solutions enhanced by flexibility and experimentalism. Some of them are an effort to strengthen multilateral agreements and the effectiveness of supranational institutions and regulatory measures; others aim to develop new forms of cooperation among governments, through a «concerted practice» way of action. Informal contacts and meetings among political leaders and the G-20 summits became the preferred rooms to exchange points of view, to coordinate action without assuming legal obligations, to monitor voluntary compliance. The parallel approval of similar pieces of legislation at national level signaled the willingness of governments to effectively cooperate, though leaving space for opportunistic behaviors by some of them