Transparency at the World Bank

This seems like an unqualifiedly good move:

WORLD BANK GROUP OPENS DATA TO ALL

World Development Indicators, Global Development Finance, Africa Development Indicators, and Global Economic Monitor are now free, open, and easy to access at data.worldbank.org.

Recognizing that transparency and accountability are essential to development, the World Bank Group now provides free, open, and easy access to its comprehensive set of data on living standards around the globe—some 2,000 indicators, including hundreds that go back 50 years. The data is available in Arabic, French, and Spanish in addition to English.

“I believe it’s important to make the data and knowledge of the World Bank available to everyone,” said World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick. “Statistics tell the story of people in developing and emerging countries and can play an important part in helping to overcome poverty. They are now easily accessible on the Web for all users, and can be used to create new apps for development. ”

The open data announcement coincides with the launch of the World Development Indicators (WDI) 2010, the Bank’s popular statistical resource. Apart from giving open access to the WDI, with nearly 1000 indicators, the initiative also opens up the Global Development Finance (GDF), Africa Development Indicators (ADI), Global Economic Monitor (GEM), and indicators from the Doing Business report.

Access to these new resources is available at data.worldbank.org, a central web site that makes it easier to find, use, and manipulate data. A data catalog lists the available databases. The Bank will continue to add databases in the months ahead.

It is not, perhaps, the kind of transparency that we immediately think of in relation to the opening up of global administrative bodies (e.g. in terms of decision-making and dispute resolution), but this is nonetheless an important development. So-called "indicators" are becoming increasingly important as a tool of global governance, and the World Bank has been at the very forefront of this move. Opening up its data in this way will not only provide a hugely useful resource for those who want to incorporate it in their own projects; it will also give plenty to chew over for those who approach the "turn to indicators" from a more critical perspective, and seek to unmask the inevitable political choices and interests that lie behind the apparently neutral, technical façade.

Incidentally, the IILJ is leading its own Project on Indicators as a Global Technology, running in parallel to - and overlapping with - the GAL project more generally. Here's the blurb:

The use of indicators as a technique of global governance is increasing rapidly. Major examples include the World Bank’s Doing Business Indicators; the World Bank’s Good Governance and Rule of Law indicators; the Millennium Development Goals (which inform many indicators); many OECD indicators and rankings; the indicators produced by Transparency International, by Freedom House, and by consultancies specialized in advising investors on political risks; and, the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons indicators. Human rights indicators are being developed in the UN and regional and advocacy organizations. The burgeoning production and use of indicators has not been accompanied by systematic comparative study of, and reflection on, the implications, possibilities and pitfalls of this practice. What does it mean to use indicators as a technology of governance? How does the increasing use of indicators in global governance affect the distribution of power, and the power of the governed? How does it affect the nature of decision-making about the allocation of resources and efforts to monitor compliance with global standards? This project, directed by Kevin Davis, Benedict Kingsbury, and NYU legal anthropologist Sally Engle Merry, working closely with Meg Satterthwaite, Lewis Kornhauser, Richard Stewart, and other NYU faculty, examines this phenomenon. A framing paper and workshop series are in preparation.

Some papers are available at the link above; they are well worth a read for those interested (on the World Bank in particular, see Kevin Davis and Michael Kruse, Taking the Measure of Law: The Case of the Doing Business Project; on the project more generally, Kevin Davis, Benedict Kingsbury, and Sally Engle Merry, Indicators as a Technology of Global Governance).

The Sixth Viterbo GAL Seminar

And in the first post of the New Era, I return to a GAL Blog staple: the yearly Seminar in Viterbo, Italy. Unfortunately, the deadline for paper submission has, of course, already passed; however, given the importance and topicality of the theme this year, it's sure to be a cracker.

This year's event will take place, as always, at the University La Tuscia, Viterbo, and will be held on the 11th-12th of June 2010. Its theme is, in a sense, the only one it could be this year: "The Financial Crisis and Global Regulatory Governance" (as I have discussed before, one of the striking features of the debates on how to respond to the crisis is the apparent consensus that we will need more global administration). Here is the blurb:

The basic models of market regulation that have prevailed during the XX century had been forged in reaction to the crisis of 1929. The responses given to that economic emergency, initially conceived as transient, have deeply shaped the relations between the market and the State for more than fifty years. In the United States, the New Deal has immensely expanded the reach of the public regulatory powers in economic and social matters and has led to the introduction of new modes of interaction between the citizens and the agencies through the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act. Similarly, in Europe, the crisis has expanded the programs of public assistance and the instruments of central planning, thereby subjecting the market to a significant State control.

At the international level, the Bretton Woods institutions (IMF, WTO, World Bank) were created after WWII to address various structural aspects of the 1929 crisis as well as states’ “beggar thy neighbor” policy responses to it, and prevent a recurrence of a prolonged global depression.

In the last thirty years, widespread convergent processes of liberalization, privatization and internationalization have eroded the State control over the economy and altered the balance between the public and the private sphere. State authorities have begun to lose their centrality, to the advantage of private organisms and supranational institutions. Many aspects of state regulation have been regarded as ineffective or even counterproductive, and have been complemented or partially superseded by private law approaches, by private regulatory initiatives and/or by self-regulation.

However, the recent financial crisis has subverted the trend. States have reasserted enormous powers over the market and its actors. On one hand, the bailout of banks and financial institutions – considered “too big to fail” – has paved the way to the reintroduction of public tools to regulate and shape the economy. Some of the crucial developments concern specifically the financial sector, which is increasingly subject to regulatory scrutiny and expanded controls. . Are these tools comparable to techniques used earlier? Though designed for temporary purposes, are they destined to endure and live through the crisis, as happened after the Great Depression? What similarities are there between problems and remedies in earlier crises in different economies, including the general economic crisis which began in 1929, and the current epoch?

The crisis has also shown the limits of a State-centered regulatory model, inducing the national authorities to intensify their cooperation. At the same time, it has tested the ability of Bretton Woods institutions and other international and supranational consultative or regulatory regimes to deal with the crisis as such or to deal with measures taken by states to limit damage to domestic production and employment. At the global level, as in Europe and other regions, initiatives have been launched to reform the financial institutional setting and expand the reach of their powers. Just to mention one example, the Financial Stability Forum has been institutionalized as Financial Stability Group, in order to fill an evident gap in global regulatory governance. How successful will this and similar attempts be? Is it possible to “redeem” the financial sector from its “vices”? Is the lack of rules the real problem? And is the regulatory system ready to take a sustained statist turn?

The 6th Viterbo Gal Conference will provide the opportunity to present advanced research projects on the financial crisis and on global regulatory measures to deal with it, including states’ domestic policy responses.. A global administrative law approach will provide the main analytical tools: accordingly, the papers should focus on the structure of the global and regional regulatory governance relating to finance, trade (including questions of state aids) and related aspects of the crisis; on the powers thereby exercised; on their effectiveness and accountability, or on critical or conceptual perspectives on these issues. Given the complexity of the subject, an interdisciplinary exchange will be favoured. Papers may, thus, also address the topic by adopting an historical, economic and/or international relations approach, and/or a legal approach. Historical approaches could include an analysis of responses to past global economic and financial crises.

The papers that have been selected are as follows (I was on the selection panel this year, and these were among the best of a very good bunch of promising abstracts; we would gladly have taken more had financial and organisational constraints not dictated otherwise):

“Towards an Institutional and Legal Governance Structure in a Globalizing Securities Market”, Susan Yin (Ph.D. candidate at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London).

“Global Financial Standards and Regulatory Failure”, Maurizia De Bellis (Lecturer, University of Roma “Tor Vergata”)

“Credit Rating Agencies: Do We Need Draconian Oversight? A Critical Assesment of Current Reforms Initiatives”, Elisabetta Cervone (Ph.D in Banking and Financial Law at the University of Siena).

“Global risk management for transnational markets: developing an effective regulatory system for financial services”, Markus Glaser (Post-doctoral research fellow, Sciences Po Paris, Chair «Mutations de l’Action Publique et du Droit Public»)

“Towards a new Bretton Woods system or institutional fragmentation?”, Nikolaos Lavranos (Assistant Professor European Law and Senior Researcher International Law, University of Amsterdam).

“The Finance Good Shepherd: How legal intervention will serve the quest for global financial stability as a public good”, Chiara Orlandini (Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneve).

“Protection of Investors in Financial Crises: Lessons of 1929 and 1930”, Martins Paparinskis (Hauser Research Scholar, New York University).

“Accountability of China's Financial Governance: Moving Forward or Backward”, Miao Xinhao (Assistant Professor of International Law School of Southwest University of Political Science and Law, Xiamen University).

“The impact of the financial crisis on institutional transformation”, Myriam Senn (Swiss Federal Banking Commission).

“Banking Regulation in Mexico: Lessons from Financial Crises”, Karen B. Sigmond (PhD. Directora de Programa Tecnólógico de Monterrey, Campus Cd. de México).

It is unlikely - though not impossible - that I will be able to make it this year; something that I very much regret, as it is always an extremely worthwhile event with a sense of continuing community that is second to none.

Gordon Brown to lead the IMF?

Maybe; then again, maybe not...

On one hand, as Jackey Ashley writes in today's Guardian,

It starts with the 2 April London G20 summit. This will be an important moment, with lots of red carpet, as leaders queue to be photographed with President Obama. But as the world stares at full-blown depression, with countries such as China and Germany under huge pressure to do more to revive the global economy, it's a lot more important than that. What will actually come out of it? Well, there's one near-certainty: agreement about the need for a new global financial regulator, whether based inside or outside the IMF.

I'm told the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has a favourite candidate to head this new body - Gordon Brown. She is said to be quietly pushing the idea behind the scenes and getting quite a good reaction from other leaders. Obama can be won over, says my source, and even Sarkozy would be pleased to see the man he's been tussling with off the European stage.

While, on the other, as Martin Kettle responds in the same newspaper,

...would Brown really be the right man for the revamped IMF? Even if – and it's a big if – there is a successful G20 that reforms the global financial institutions in the way that the British would like, it does not follow that Brown would be the right choice to run it. For one thing, as Jackie says, he is one of the many authors of the failed financial regime that the new IMF would be replacing. For another, the French and Germans would be very reluctant to lose their existing control of the IMF managing directorship to a British candidate, while for yet another – and for me this is the clincher – Brown's style of working means he is simply not good at running large collegiate organisations.

One more reason to look forward to the next G20 meeting in London in April...

*** UPDATE ***

It's been officially denied. Then again, it's been officially denied (at 4 m 50 s in...)

Presentations from aid evaluation conference online

Following up on my post below on Prof Easterly's talk, a number of the presentations from the conference, entitled "What Would The Poor Say: Debates In Aid Evaluation", are available here, on Easterly's Aid Watch blog. Besides his own, I found the talks by Lant Pritchett and Ross Levine to be of most potential relevance from a GAL perspective - the former on, inter aliam, the dangers of deriving policy decisions from technocratic research, the latter on the perverse incentive structures that (may) distort the policies of major aid agencies such as the World Bank - and if I have time I may blog on them in a little more detail later. But they are all worth a look.

The World Bank, government procurement and corruption

An interesting little incident that slipped under the radar last month (thanks to my colleague Yunpeng Fan for bringing it to my attention): the World Bank, as a result of an internal investigation by its Integrity Vice Presidency (INT) (responsible for investigating allegations of fraud and corruption in Bank-financed operations), found evidence of "collusive practices" (price-fixing) by seven firms - including four State-owned Chinese companies - and one individual in a major Bank-financed public roads project in the Philippines. As a result, the World Bank Sanctions Board has debarred those involved from participating in future Bank-supported projects for varying lengths of time. According to the Integrity Vice President Leonard McCarthy,

This is one of our most important and far-reaching cases, and it highlights the effectiveness of the World Bank’s investigative and sanctions process. As the World Bank Group continues to ramp up its anti-corruption work, INT will remain vigilant in investigating allegations and holding wrongdoers accountable.

It is also interesting to note, however, that both the Governments of both China and the Philippines have made allegations of procedural irregularities within the procedures followed by the World Bank (although these, it should be added, seem to be very vague assertions of "lack of evidence", "not responding to the parties involved", and "not allowing key players to participate in the inquiry") - demonstrating an awareness of the Bank not simply as the source of administrative law rules (here relating to public procurement), but also as an administrative body in its own right, whose activities should thus in principle be subject to requirements of due process. For those interested in going further, the Bank's sanctions procedures can be found here.

Both Governments have also, it seems, requested that the details of the Bank's investigation be handed over, in order that they might either challenge it or launch judicial proceedings of their own, where appropriate. At present, I'm uncertain as to whether the Bank has furnished this information - although I can see no real reason why it should refuse... Will update on this more if and when I hear anything.

More on the G20 and the reform of the global financial system

A quick post to keep those interested in the ongoing development of the G20's plans to respond to the global financial crisis, and in particular the GAL-related elements thereof, updated. The Washington Summit of November 15 last year established five different priorities for reform:

- Strengthening transparency and accountability
- Enhancing sound regulation
- Promoting integrity in financial markets
- Reinforcing international cooperation
- Reforming the International Financial Institutions

Although the 1st and the 5th of these are of the obvious relevance from a global administrative law perspective, there will likely be elements of interest in each. From IFIWatchnet, we learn that the G20 has established a set of Working Groups charged with the tasks of evaluating steps that have been taken and making recommendations for future reforms in their respective areas:

As Chair of the G20 in 2009 the UK, working closely with Brazil and Korea 2008 and 2010 Chairs respectively, has established four working groups to advance this work for the next Leaders’ Summit on 2 April in London. Each working group is co-chaired by two senior officials from the G20, one from a developed and one from an emerging market economy. Each G20 country is represented on each working group. Experts from relevant international financial institutions, standard setting bodies, non G20 countries, business and academia have also been invited by co-chairs to input into the work of the groups.

(Interesting to note here the participation of relevant private and civil society actors in the Working Groups).

Working Group 1 is to focus on "Enhancing sound regulation and strengthening transparency", and will, inter alia, "make... recommendations to strengthen international standards in the areas of accounting and disclosure, prudential oversight and risk management" (As an aside, I wonder what the relation of these recommendations to the work of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) might be).

Working Group 2 is to deal with "Reinforcing international co-operation and promoting integrity in financial markets", including "the regulation and oversight of international institutions and financial markets", and proposals to "protect the global financial system from illicit activities and non-co-operative jurisdictions" and "strengthen collaboration between international bodies".

Working group 3 will look at the specific issue of "Reforming the IMF", and will "review the appropriateness of the IMF’s lending instruments and the effectiveness of its surveillance function, and will consider the sufficiency of its resources, and its general arrangements and accountability; and will look at the issue of reform of the governance structure so that it more adequately reflect changing economic weights in the world economy".

Lastly, Working Group 4 will perform a very similar function to Working Group 3, but with a broader remit to investigate the activities of "The World Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs)" - including their mandates, governances structures and policy instruments.

Plenty of GAL there, then - although mostly, it should be noted, based upon an "efficacy-driven" rather than a "justice-driven" governance logic. The Working Groups are to report to the Finance Ministers and Governors of the Central Banks of G20 States on march 14th, ahead of the next summit in London on April 2 of this year.

GAL at the World Economic Forum?

An interesting short post over at the Guardian politics blog on the forthcoming World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, entitled "shaping the post-crisis world". Under normal circumstances, the glitzy, invitation-only event might not seem to be a particularly promising place to be looking for improvements in increased participation, transparency and accountability; as the Guardian post points out, however, these are not normal circumstances:

Last year's co-chairman of the forum, the Indian software tycoon B Ramalinga Raju, was arrested earlier this month in connection with allegations that company accounts were falsified. And among the names on the steering committee for the WEF's keynote report on economic prospects was the Merrill Lynch chief executive, John Thain, who resigned last week – shortly after his stricken bank was taken over by Bank of America – amid allegations of hiring celebrity decorators to revamp his office at a cost of $1.2m (£880,000).

The mighty are definitely fallen, and Davos will be debating how hard they should be kicked: the future of international banking regulation is expected to be the dominant theme...

If a new economic world order is going to be built from the ruins, the horse-trading will not come until later – starting with the meeting of the G20 industrialised nations in April – but the foundations could well be worked out here. Even the major corporate delegates are talking about the need for tighter regulation, more transparency and accountability.

As always, it remains a case of waiting-and-seeing for the time being; but this is, once again, yet more proof that the demand for GAL - in some form - is increasing across the fields of global governance, and amongst all of the various actors involved.

Opinion piece on Africa and the global financial crisis

Just a quick post to flag (with hat tip to Opinio Juris) a short opinion essay by Daniel Bradlow - a law professor at the American University Washington College of Law, and one of the chairs/discussants in our sessions at the GAL IV Seminar in Viterbo in June of this year - on what approach African countries should adopt towards the global financial crisis and the international efforts to resolve it. Professor Bradlow suggests four main issues that should be confronted; and his familiarity with the emerging field of global administrative law comes through clearly in the following:

Enable African countries to engage in the institutional reform process: There's general agreement that the institutions of global financial governance, including the IMF, World Bank, and the Financial Stability Forum, need to be reformed. However, less attention is being paid to making the reform process itself transparent and participatory. Given the G20's central role in this process, it needs decision-making procedures that are responsive to the concerns of non-G20 stakeholders in its decisions. Thus, Africa should advocate for the creation of formal channels through which they can submit position papers and voice their concerns to the participants in the G20. They should also call for the G20 to establish a "notice and comment" period prior to all actions and decisions that are likely to have a substantial impact on the poor. This will ensure the views of all interested stakeholders on the proposed action or decision are considered in the G20 decision-making process. In addition, Africa should create regional institutions that focus more specifically on African concerns, and can interact with global institutions and other regional institutions to promote African interests. The African Union's efforts to create an African Monetary Fund and an African Investment Bank are noteworthy in this regard.

The entire piece can be found here, and contains a number of interesting insights from the financing development perspective, amongst other things; it's well worth a read.

The G-20 statement from the Washington Summit

As expected, not much in the way of significant progress was made at last weekend's meeting of the G-20 Head's of State in Washington DC. At least, none that can be discerned from the joint declaration issued at the end of the summit. Again, however, it is worth stressing that GAL mechanisms do play a prominent role in the rhetoric; increasingly, it seems accurate to state that one of the key questions in reforming the institutions of global governance is over which administrative law rules and principles should be applied in each context, not whether administrative law constraints are applicable at all. This can be taken as evidence of the emergence of a generalised "culture" of administrative law within global regulatory governance - which, as I have suggested in some detail elsewhere, should be viewed as one of the crucial elements of the "emergence" of GAL. Here are the key excerpts from the summit declaration:

We commit to implementing policies consistent with the following common principles for reform.

- Strengthening Transparency and Accountability: We will strengthen financial market transparency, including by enhancing required disclosure on complex financial products and ensuring complete and accurate disclosure by firms of their financial conditions. Incentives should be aligned to avoid excessive risk-taking.

- Enhancing Sound Regulation: We pledge to strengthen our regulatory regimes, prudential oversight, and risk management, and ensure that all financial markets, products and participants are regulated or subject to oversight, as appropriate to their circumstances. We will exercise strong oversight over credit rating agencies, consistent with the agreed and strengthened international code of conduct. We will also make regulatory regimes more effective over the economic cycle, while ensuring that regulation is efficient, does not stifle innovation, and encourages expanded trade in financial products and services. We commit to transparent assessments of our national regulatory systems.

- Promoting Integrity in Financial Markets: We commit to protect the integrity of the world's financial markets by bolstering investor and consumer protection, avoiding conflicts of interest, preventing illegal market manipulation, fraudulent activities and abuse, and protecting against illicit finance risks arising from non-cooperative jurisdictions. We will also promote information sharing, including with respect to jurisdictions that have yet to commit to international standards with respect to bank secrecy and transparency.

- Reinforcing International Cooperation: We call upon our national and regional regulators to formulate their regulations and other measures in a consistent manner. Regulators should enhance their coordination and cooperation across all segments of financial markets, including with respect to cross-border capital flows. Regulators and other relevant authorities as a matter of priority should strengthen cooperation on crisis prevention, management, and resolution.

- Reforming International Financial Institutions: We are committed to advancing the reform of the Bretton Woods Institutions so that they can more adequately reflect changing economic weights in the world economy in order to increase their legitimacy and effectiveness. In this respect, emerging and developing economies, including the poorest countries, should have greater voice and representation. The Financial Stability Forum (FSF) must expand urgently to a broader membership of emerging economies, and other major standard setting bodies should promptly review their membership. The IMF, in collaboration with the expanded FSF and other bodies, should work to better identify vulnerabilities, anticipate potential stresses, and act swiftly to play a key role in crisis response.

Both more global administration, then, and more global administrative law. Each paragraph here contains clear evidence of the emerging culture of administrative-law-as-regulatory-common-sense that I have referred to previously: commitments to strengthen accountability, oversight, information-sharing and - perhaps most strikingly, as it is the only point at which the rhetoric seems to go beyond the technocratic governance logic that otherwise is clearly dominant - the participation of even the poorest countries in formulating international standards, are all clear indicators of this shift. Talk, however, although clearly important, remains relatively cheap; and action is unlikely to be particularly rapidly forthcoming. Deadlines for taking initial actions have been set for the end of March 2009, with the likelihood of a further meeting just afterwards. For the next six months at least, then, it seems unlikely in the extreme that a radically reformed global governance structure will influence the manner in which the financial crisis plays out.

GAL and the "New Bretton Woods": Unrealistic expectations and conflicting governance logics

With the heads of the "G-20" States meeting in Washington DC tomorrow to discuss a global response to the current financial crisis, calls for treating these talks as a new "Bretton Woods" conference, in which the institutional framework of global financial governance would be radically restructured, have grown. As I posted previously, two things are striking about the current debates: firstly, that there appears to be a significant degree of consensus that increased global administration is required to deal with the crisis; and secondly, that almost all of the reforming voices, be they governmental or from civil society, explicitly endorse at least some form of administrative-law type regulation of the reformed administration. It is worth, however, making a couple of more cautionary points in this regard, relating in particular to the unrealistic expectations of major progress being made in Washington over the weekend; and the second, mroe conceptual, relating to the importance of differentiating the demand for global administrative law in function of the governance logic that lies behind it.

Unrealistic expectations
The folks over at Opinio Juris have a couple of posts cautioning that, whatever the desires of certain - in particular European - leaders, it is extremely unlikely that any radically or even major restructuring of the current institutional setup for governing international finance will be agreed upon this weekend. The Washington Post has more detail on precisely why this might be:

Different leaders bring to the meeting different perspectives and expectations.

"That's the dangerous part in trying to achieve a common agenda. They'll try to push their own perceptions of what a global architecture should look like and who should be the dominant players," said Charles Freeman, a former Bush administration trade official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"I'm not sure that even an Obama team wants to see the United States' style and method of capitalism and financial markets converted. We value our flexibility here, and I don't think we're willing to capitulate to as much regulation as the Europeans are suggesting, particularly the French."

Sarkozy and other European leaders are proposing an early warning system to watch for imbalances in financial markets. They also want an expanded role for the International Monetary Fund as the world's financial watchdog, improved supervision of financial players and action to close loopholes that let some institutions avoid regulation.

"We need monetary and fiscal policy coordination across the world," said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in outlining his own broad proposals for the summit to address. Among other suggestions, he wants China to use its nearly $2 trillion in reserves to help top up an IMF emergency loan program.

But China indicated on Tuesday that its focus is on its own economy. Beijing unveiled what amounted to a $586 billion two-year economic stimulus package that includes more spending on construction, tax cuts and social programs in China - but no mention of efforts abroad to lift other economies out of the ditch.

Russia, meanwhile, doesn't want to expand the IMF's powers as European leaders propose. Instead, Moscow wants the IMF's role reduced to make way for entirely new international financial institutions.

Amid high-flying but dueling rhetoric, prospects for major breakthroughs at the summit seem scant.

This is before we even get to the desires of those not invited to Washington this weekend - which include, it should be recalled, the vast majority of the world's States. Moreover, as the IFIWatchnet and Bretton Woods Project websites amply demonstrate, global civil society actors are taking more than a passing interest in the outcomes of any talks. For example, in parallel to the G8(+) moves to deal with the problem, Miguel D'Escoto, the President of the UN General Assembly, has established a task force to review the global financial system, arguing that any efforts to deal with the crisis should be "inclusive, not exclusive", and noting further that "The place to discuss is neither the G8, nor the G20, nor the G25 or the G63. It is the G192, which is the General Assembly of the United Nations".

Given the vast array of different views, even amongst powerful actors, as to what the correct course of action should be, not to mention the Presidential situation in the most powerful actor of all, it is not in the least surprising that prospects of any lasting progress at all in Washington seem slim. At present, it would appear that we have universal consensus on only the major premise of what the classic British comedy series Yes Minister memorably referred to as the "politician's fallacy": "some thing must be done; this is something, ergo this must be done". It seems that it may will take some time and much negotiation before a sufficient amount of agreement exists on the minor premise for any actual action to be taken...

Conflicting governance logics
These, then, are the practical reasons why we should not expect a huge amount of GAL-signifcance to emerge from this weekend's summit. As I have suggested previously, however, one of the most striking features of the buildup has been the near-ubiquity of global administrative law-type rules and principles in the various reform proposals that have been put forward - further evidence, perhaps, of the emergence of GAL culture or sensibility as part of an increasing regulatory common sense. In the remainder of this post, however, I want to begin the necessary task of nuancing this claim a little, as it seems abundantly clear that, although there may be increasing convergence on a few key slogans (Accountability! Transparency! Participation!), it is equally clear that these do not mean the same thing to all of those rallying around. Rather, their meaning - and, crucially, the ways in which these abstract principles will "cash out" into concrete rules and mechanisms - will varying according to the dominant governance logic driving the claim.

For the sake of argument, I will identify two such broad logics here (there may well be good grounds for disaggregating these further, but they will serve to illustrate my point): a technocratic efficacy logic (which aims at simply securing the most effective way of dealing with a problem) and a justice logic (which posits that certain procedures or mechanisms - foten rights-based - should be observed, regardless of their effect on governance outcomes, for reasons of fairness, etc.). Consider, firstly, the following excerpt from the common position of the EU States for tomorrow's summit:

The new international financial system must be based on principles of accountability and transparency.
- Transparency of financial transactions must be ensured by means of a more comprehensive information system, which no longer omits vast swathes of financial activity from auditable, certifiable accounts.
- Arrangements conducive to excessive risk-taking must be overhauled, particularly debt securitisation procedures and pay policy.
- Both prudential and accounting standards applicable to financial institutions will have to be revised to ensure that they do not contribute to creating speculative bubbles in periods of growth and make the crisis worse at times of economic downturn.
- Standards bodies, in particular in the area of accountancy, will have to be reformed to allow a genuine dialogue with all the parties concerned, in particular prudential authorities.

And compare it to, for example, the following common proposal launched by IFI-watching and debt activist NGOs:

The statement supports the fundamental and far-reaching transformation of the international financial and economic system and a major international conference convened by the UN to review the international financial and monetary architecture, its institutions and its governance, but only if the meeting follows a process that:

- is inclusive and participatory of all governments of the world;
- includes representatives from civil society, citizen's groups, social movements and other stakeholders;
- has a clear timeline and process for regional consultations, particularly with those most affected by the crisis;
- is comprehensive in scope, tackling the full array of issues and institutions;
- is transparent, with proposals and draft outcome documents made publicly available and discussed well in advance of the meeting.

The civil society statement further lists among its goals for the architecture of the new system

- To create a new set of principles in which finance should be aimed at, and linked to, strengthening national and local real economies to meet the requirement of sustainable and equitable development.
- To move away from the market fundamentalism driving the recent past.
- To curb the power of the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO, and to enhance the accountability of global, regional and national economic governance institutions.
- A call for governments to take immediate action to develop a new international regulatory architecture with democratic checks and balances that is aimed at promoting the interests of workers, small-hold farmers, consumers, and the environment and preventing future financial crises, in which the United Nations should play a central role in its development.

Same words (accountability, transparency); really quite different meanings when we dig a little deeper. On the one hand, we have the apparent idea that all we need is "effective" technocratic regulation, and the powerful states more committed to holding financial institutions to account in terms of these standards. On the other, a whole host of substantive concerns - about fairness, sustainability, equity, inclusion, and, indeed, a direct challenge to the technocratic orthodoxy - are presented as absolutely central. Of course, these different logics cash out in various different answers to the recurring "to whom, for what?" questions that invariably (should) accompany discussions of accountability; however, they are by no means exhausted by this. Indeed, it seems arguable that almost all administrative law mechanisms will have qualitative differences in function of the governance logic that was dominant in their establishment. In order to illustrate this, I'll take a brief excursion into the transparency/participation mechanism - very prominent within US administrative law - of the "notice and comment" procedure.

A brief(ish) excursion: competing logics in notice and comment
At the beginning of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a group of aliens from the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council come to Earth, and announce that, in order to encourage the development of the outlying regions of the galaxy, the planet will be destroyed in two minutes’ time to make way for a new hyperspatial express route through the solar system. When the howls of complaint begin from the understandably aghast earthlings, the aliens reply:

There's no point acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now.

The serious point to take from this vignette is, of course, that, where major development projects involve significant implications for both human rights and substantive justice, the bare elements of a notice-and-comment procedure may simply not be sufficient. Something more is required.

In many ways, the Aarhus Convention, with its explicitly provides us with an illustration of what a human rights driven administrative procedure might look like in such a case. Consider, for example, Article 5(1)(c), which deals with the collection and dissemination of environmental information. It states that

In the event of any imminent threat to human health or the environment, whether caused by human activities or due to natural causes, all information which could enable the public to take measures to prevent or mitigate harm arising from the threat and is held by a public authority is disseminated immediately and without delay to members of the public who may be affected.

Article 5(8) provides that

Each Party shall develop mechanisms with a view to ensuring that sufficient product information is made available to the public in a manner which enables consumers to make informed environmental choices.

Lastly, Article 7(2), which deals with public participation in decisions on specific activities, provides that

The public concerned shall be informed, either by public notice or individually as appropriate, early in an environmental decision-making procedure, and in an adequate, timely and effective manner, inter alia, of:
(a) The proposed activity and the application on which a decision will be taken;
(b) The nature of possible decisions or the draft decision;
(c) The public authority responsible for making the decision;
(d) The envisaged procedure…

These provisions give us some useful insights into what a notice-and-comment procedure intended to further or respect human rights might resemble. Crucially, the obligation to provide notice is framed as a positive obligation to disseminate, rather than merely publish (a proposition further bolstered by the requirement in Article 7(2) that the public be informed in an effective manner); moreover, Article 5(8) suggests that not only should steps be taken to ensure that potentially affected members of the public receive such information, but also that it is imparted to them in terms that they can understand. Given the overwhelmingly technical nature of much global regulatory governance, it is difficult to overstate the importance of this last point; without it, even stringent positive dissemination obligations are often likely to prove utterly ineffective.

By way of comparison, consider the notice-and-comment procedure initiated by the Basel Banking Committee in its preparation of the Basel II regulations. In order to take advantage of this procedure, concerned members of the public simply had to go to the Committee’s website – which is, I suspect, for the average citizen a fairly exact functional equivalent of the planning department in Alpha Centauri – and read, digest and reflect on a set of documents totaling a “mind-numbing” five hundred and forty-one pages of highly technical and complex banking and financial regulations.

It seems fairly clear, given the foregoing, that it is not a justice logic that has driven the establishment of notice-and-comment procedures within the Basel framework; rather, it is that of technocratic efficacy – designed, in particular, to head of increasing dissatisfaction with the main targets of the regulation (banks and banking regulators) with the previous arrangements under the 1988 accord. Of course, whether or not the Basel regulatory processes actually requires a human rights-driven administrative law framework is debatable; many feel that this is a prime example of a field in which technocratic processes should be allowed full reign, although some authors have suggested that more effort to engage with the general public and developing countries could improve the process (and, of course, whether the establishment of this notice-and-comment procedure did in fact lead to a gain in terms of the technocratic efficacy of banking regulations seems, given the current situation, at best an open question).

The important lesson to draw from this context, however, is how the meanings of transparency and participation differ depending upon the basic normative logic that is driving them, and how this change is embodied in the obligation to give “notice” intended to embody them. It is also worth noting that, were steps to be taken to introduce a human rights element by imposing a positive obligation to disseminate the relevant information in a generally digestible form, this would almost inevitably involve a loss in terms of technocratic efficacy – the very base upon which the administrative law mechanism was founded in the first place. Thus, not only do the different logics lead to different administrative law mechanisms, the they are also - often - mutually incommensurable.

Conclusion
The point is not to suggest that one logic is necessarily "better" than another in all contexts; simply to emphasise that, even if I am correct in my claim that we are witnessing the emergence of a culture of administrative law within global governance as part of a regulatory common sense, this common sense itself - the field of GAL - must be the subject of a whole set of different and complex distinctions and classifications. Not all of those currently rallying around the slogans of accountability and transparency in the reform of the global financial infrastructure are on the same side; often, indeed, it is quite the opposite.

Not much hope, then, despite the noise, for significant GAL-related developments at this conference, although "something must be done" at some point, and one suspects the eventual "something" will have some elements of (likely technocratic efficacy-driven) GAL incorporated within it. Of course, by this time tomorrow, I might have been proved wrong...

New website: IFIWatchnet

... Well, perhaps not exactly new, but the website IFIWatchnet is certainly of great interest from a GAL perspective; never more so than now, of course, when the financial crisis seems to have generated significant momentum for major change within the major international financial institutions. Here's what they have to say about themselves:

IFIwatchnet is a groundbreaking initiative in international NGO networking, currently in its sixth year of operation. It connects organisations worldwide which are monitoring international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank, the IMF, and regional development banks. Formed in response to a call by civil society groups to maximise the effectiveness of their communications and networking efforts, it is rapidly developing into a key tool for ever increasing degrees of collaboration between IFIwatching groups at national, regional and international levels. With nearly 60 organisations from 35 different countries in every region of the world, it has huge potential to increase the ability of civil society to make global governance institutions accountable to the people they serve.

Once again, this website demonstrates the extent to which the application of an administrative law sensibility to the institutions of global governance is rapidly coming to form part of the "common sense" of global civil society. I'll be blogging on these - potentially hugely significant - developments from a GAL perspective later in the week; in the meantime, have a poke around the IFIwatchnet site - there's a lot of great stuff on there...

A new Bretton Woods?

As a quick p.s. to my last post, I wanted to flag a post by Julian Ku over at Opinio Juris in which he suggests that we should not expect - as some leaders such as Brown and Sarkozy are suggesting - that the G-2) meeting in Washington on November 15th will lead to a complete restructuring of the world financial system - to a "new Bretton Woods". His view is that the IMF and the WTO have fared rather badly since their inception; that the successes of the WTO cannot be attributed to Bretton Woods; and that, in any event, although "no doubt global cooperation is needed..., new international institutions are a highly doubtful mechanism for such cooperation".

Unfortunately, Ku does not consider the - eminently more likely - possibility of a fairly radical reform of existing institutions, which seems to be more along the lines of what Brown at least is proposing. The Telegraph notes that

It is understood that the Prime Minister wishes to see the IMF reformed to become a "global central bank" closely monitoring the international economy and financial system. There may also be global rules to prevent conflicts of interest and to boost transparency in the financial system.

Just a case of waiting-and-seeing for the time being, then; although it is worth recalling that Brown has received some fairly strong plaudits - notably in the US - for his handling of the financial crisis thus far...

How do we solve the global financial crisis?

With more global administration, according to the leaders of European and Asian States.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in particular is at the forefront of these issues, with loan agreements already in place for Iceland and Hungary, and with others requested by States such as Turkey, South Africa and Brazil (according to The Guardian at least; although see here for the suggestion that Brazil has been wrongly included in that group). In a sign of the shifting contours of global economic power, China and Russia have been approached as potential donors to these loan funds.

The central question, however, remains: will we see, in conjunction with this increased scope and reach of global administration, a comparable increase in the - until now sadly lacking - accountability measures? These seem particularly important given the fact that the IMF is sticking to its guns regarding loan conditionality - a fact that some have suggested is dissuading other States in trouble from seeking help there. In Iceland, the consequence of accepting IMF assistance has been a 6% interest rate hike, to 18%; in Hungary, it has been a commitment to introduce austerity measures, and to significantly curtail public spending.

The key thing to realise here is that this is not merely technocratic governance - apolitical decision making based upon the uncontested consensus among experts - but rather highly contested political choices that are being forced upon those States that accept these loans (it has not escaped The Guardian's attention, for example, that the IMF is demanding cuts in public spending while the US and the UK are proposing, at a domestic level, to take precisely the opposite path and attempt to spend their way out of recession). Of course, even ostensibly technocratic governance can fail (I wonder, for example, if the Basel Committee might be tempted to revisit its capital adequacy requirements in the wake of recent events in the world of banking...), raising questions about the accountability for expert error, and, indeed, giving the lie to the suggestion that any governance is ever purely "technocratic". However, when such overtly political questions are in play, the issues of accountability, participation and legitimacy more generally are brought even more dramatically to the fore.

The problem is that the IMF does not seem to have much in the way of administrative law type mechanisms ensuring participation or accountability to anyone other than the dominant (western) States among its membership. The Global Governance Watch website provides one fairly technical example of this, in which the IMF and the World bank have failed to incoporate benchmarks set within the context fo the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which provide global standards for corporations and governments to disclose fully what has been paid and received for the right to extract natural resources. More generally, Aaron Shaw has noted that

The U.S. and Europe still retain a ridiculous share of the voting power within the IMF, World Bank, and the WTO, virtually guaranteeing that they will strong arm through whatever solutions they deem fit. While Ambassadors, Trade Representatives, and their ilk may talk a good game about promoting equality through increased multilateral liberalization, the bottom line is that truly equitable trade will not come about without a substantial sacrifice by the traditional “Great Powers” of the West. The recent trend of the U.S. and E.U. pursuing absurd schemes to evade accountability and transparency by undermining global forums also belies any rhetoric of good will.

It is encouraging to see, then, that with the call for increased global administration, we are also witnessing from many different sources calls for global administrative laws to regulate this. Whether or not these will be sucessful depends in large part on the willingness of major western States to accept some measure of control over their influence and activities within global financial institutions. If they do, it will represent another hugely significant step forward in the emergence of global administrative law; in any event, however, the fact that the debate alone is so prominent is testament to the extent to which the logic of administrative law is being increasingly applied to the institutions of global governance. Further evidence, I suggest, that we are moving towards an measure of GAL as part of a global regulatory "common sense".