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In an earlier world of formal colonies and imperial centres, the number of currencies used in international trade and finance was limited. Decolonization saw the widespread emergence of national monetary units, and also persistent and widespread current account deficits, which have to be financed through acquisition of internationally acceptable money or foreign exchange (Harrod, 1972a; Williamson, 1977; Grieve Smith, 1999). The balance of payments adjustment process routinely overwhelms democratic governance in weak or emerging economies. The efforts to meet human development goals (Sen) or even basic human needs are thwarted by a hostile world monetary order overseen by the International Monetary Fund. Could we not get closer to meeting the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations by adopting a world monetary unit? This question provides the focus for this chapter.

After years of discussion in working groups, competition policy became an official agenda item for world trade negotiations in November 2001 when the Doha Round of World Trade Organization (WTO) was launched. Less than two years later, competition policy was dropped from the negotiating table at the September 2003 Cancun WTO Ministerial. While most of the attention on the Cancun Ministerial had to do with North–South divisions on agriculture, the collapse of the ministerial had as much to do with the rejection by Southern countries of new disciplines in four areas (the Singapore issues), of which competition policy was one. For many trade observers, it may seem unusual for Southern countries to reject competition policy, an area of negotiations that would appear to be in their interest. Competition policy has historically been concerned with reining in the excessive market power of large corporations as manifested in cartels, restrictive business practices, and abuses of market power. Whereas international trade agreements to date have focused on restricting the capabilities of governments, competition policy could be seen as an important means of regulating the private sector at the international level. This is of particular interest given a wave of cross-border mergers and acquisitions in the 1990s.

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) completed its most ambitious round of multilateral trade negotiations (MTN), the Uruguay Round, in December 1993. The Uruguay Round resulted in a stronger dispute settlement system, multilateral trade rules for services and intellectual property, more multilateral discipline for agriculture and textiles, and the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The 2004 report of the Consultative Board to the Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), entitled , was bullish regarding the correlation between trade liberalization and human well-being: It is argued by some that freer trade is being pursued for its own sake and, instead, should be judged in terms of its impact in the quality of human life. In fact, the case for freeing trade is made very definitely in terms of enhancing human welfare – nowhere better than in the preamble to the Marrakesh Agreement that established the WTO.

Since 1961 the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has assisted states in managing intensified interdependence. The OECD spends the majority of its time engaged in prosaic, yet valuable, tasks including surveillance, providing a forum for policy dialogue, identifying and analysing emerging issues, and supporting government bureaucracies and other international organizations. However, the OECD and its predecessor, the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), have played a pivotal, if frequently unacknowledged, role at some of the critical junctures in post-war economic history. Initially the OEEC oversaw the implementation of the Marshall Plan while the OECD was a crucial intermediary in the resolution of the 1973 oil crisis. More recently, the OECD’s path breaking analytical work on agricultural subsidies was vital to the completion of the Uruguay Round (Cohn, 2002: 181–185) and it has played a major part in assisting the transition of the former communist countries of Eastern Europe from centrally planned to market oriented economies.

The contributors to this volume have attempted to demonstrate that the exercise of state power and the pattern of global governance that has developed during the era of the hegemony of neo-liberalism have not followed a single, ‘one-size-fits-all’ trajectory. On the contrary, far from institutional and policy convergence, in the face of an irresistible tide of neo-liberal globalization, there has been great diversity in the responses to the exigencies of the Washington Consensus.