Special forum: crisis and the future of global financial governance.

Introduction

Financial crises often act as a catalyst for important changes in global financial governance. We are currently living through such a crisis, one that is in fact the worst since the Great Depression. And true to historical pattern, it is generating very heated debates about the regulation of global financial markets. This special forum examines the politics of international regulatory responses to the present global financial crisis. What holes has the crisis revealed in international financial regulation? In what ways are regulators trying to fill those holes? Does the current crisis represent some kind of historic turning point in international financial regulation, as many are predicting? Will the regulatory response primarily rely on national institutions or on transnational ones?

Four leading scholars of the politics of international financial regulation address these questions in the contributions that follow. Each brings a distinctive perspective to the issue. Tony Porter thinks that significant transnational regulatory initiatives have already begun and will continue to advance in the context of increasingly dense and sophisticated global institutional frameworks, including private ones. In contrast, Layna Mosley argues that the crisis, far from strengthening global cooperation, is likely to undermine the ...