Regime Complexity and the Institutions of Crisis and Development Finance

Abstract

The theory of regime complexity offers a useful lens through which to analyse the increasing density of international institutions and the patterns of conflict and cooperation among them. Scholarship on crisis and development finance would benefit from more fully employing this approach to explain the emergence of overlapping institutions and offer recommendations for designing regime complexes. The theory advanced here emphasizes the strategies of key states to use institutional overlap to limit agency ‘drift’ away from their preferences. Prioritizing control often comes at the cost of conflict among the institutions, however, and can thus impede the achievement of financial stability and development goals. The regime complexity approach is distinct from the rational design of institutions, institutional experimentalism and theoretical realism. Drawing on lessons from the euro crisis, this article offers informed conjectures on financial arrangements in the regions of Latin America and East Asia and their interaction with global multilateral institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund.

Legacies and innovations in global economic governance since Bretton Woods

“…Dissatisfaction with its neoliberalism and good governance commitments in the 1990s led emerging powers to engage in practices of 'counter-multilateralism' and establish organizations like the New Development Bank (NDB) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) as alternative sources of funding. 3 Observers have inquired whether this development threatens to displace the World Bank from its position in the development domain (Henning, 2019;Weaver, 2015). Heldt and Schmidtke (2019) compare the institutional design of multilateral development banks and find that the NDB and AIIB do not fundamentally challenge Bretton Woods institutions.…”

The Enlarged Global Financial Safety Net

“…A joint report by RFAs and the IMF (RFA Joint Staff, 2018) notes the possibility of further strengthening the potential complementarity of the instruments of the RFAs and the IMF. In Henning’s (2019) view, healthy competition among different systems for crisis management and prevention also has comparative advantages. For example, a variety of approaches to gathering economic information, analysing, and making estimates and forecasts can be useful in itself.…”

Policy Norms, the Development Finance Regime Complex, and Holding the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to Account

“…Scholars argue that the proliferation of institutions is being driven in part by coalitions contesting multilateralism, or ‘when states and/or nonstate actors either shift their focus from one existing institution to another or create an alternative multilateral institution to compete with existing ones’ (Morse and Keohane, 2014, p. 387). Contested multilateralism is evidenced by regime shifting between institutions to better enable actors to achieve their interests, for example as states move between global and regional institutions in response financial crises (Henning, 2019). It may also be evident through competitive regime creation or establishing new institutions to challenge the status quo.…”

“…The rise of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and other development finance institutions driven by rising powers have been viewed as competitive regime creation arguably because they were borne of discontent with Western dominated institutions (Wang, 2015), and challenged their dominance (Weaver, 2015). The new institutions create competition that could encourage forum shopping (Henning, 2019), and fragmentation through inconsistent rules and obligations (Cooper et al, 2008). Yet the governance of the AIIB and New Development Bank reveals complementarity with the World Bank and the IMF (Held and Schmidke, 2019), and their operations demonstrate that they are engaging in ‘healthy’ competition (Rana and Pardo, 2018).…”

“…A regime complex is as ‘an array of partially overlapping and non‐hierarchical institutions governing a particular issue area’ (Raustiala and Victor, 2004, p. 279). The literature on the development finance regime complex has focused how states facilitate regime shifting for their own interests (Held and Schmidke, 2019; Henning, 2019), with some arguing that ideas, networks, and endogenous feedback loops within the regime reinforce its coherence (Fioretos and Heldt, 2019). Supporting the latter argument, this article shows how states spread policy norms within the regime complex and work with nonstate actors to solidify it.…”