Policy space and the origins of the multilateral economic system

The challenge of reconciling the requirements of national policy sovereignty with the imperatives of an interdependent world economy may seem today to be relatively new - an outcome of advances in information and communications technologies (ICTs) and the spread of global market forces. In fact, it is a long-standing challenge that has been discussed extensively, and from many different angles, for almost two centuries (Mazower, 2012). This chapter takes a historical look at some of the debates around this issue in the mid-twentieth century, when much of the current multilateral economic architecture was being constructed.

Related Subject(s): Economic and Social Development