Calls for a new Bretton Woods elide considerable disagreement. There are many competing views of the post-1945 international economic order, and each generates alternative understanding of how Bretton Woods should guide today’s proposed reforms.
Carnegie’s Global Order and Institutions Program identifies promising new multilateral initiatives and frameworks to realize a more peaceful, prosperous, just, and sustainable world. That mission has never been more important, or more challenging. Geopolitical competition, populist nationalism, economic inequality, technological innovation, and a planetary ecological emergency are testing the rules-based international order and complicating collective responses to shared threats. Our mission is to design global solutions to global problems.
With global order in flux, the future of international cooperation depends on the choices governments make today. We shape global policymaking by designing novel but practical approaches to collective action that reflect the rise of new powers, bridge divides between global North and South, and leverage the capabilities of non-state actors in solving transnational challenges. Our vision is of a world in which peace prevails, international law is respected, fundamental rights are protected, the global economy delivers for all, and humanity lives in balance with nature.
Zachary D. Carter
Nonresident Fellow, Global Order and Institutions Program
Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar
President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Federica D’Alessandra
British Academy Global Innovation Fellow, Global Order and Institutions Program
Oona A. Hathaway
Nonresident Scholar, Global Order and Institutions Program
Stewart Patrick
Senior Fellow and Director, Global Order and Institutions Program
Minh-Thu Pham
Nonresident Scholar, Global Order and Institutions Program
Calls for a new Bretton Woods elide considerable disagreement. There are many competing views of the post-1945 international economic order, and each generates alternative understanding of how Bretton Woods should guide today’s proposed reforms.
Rapid advances in bioscience and bioengineering hold immense promise for human betterment. But as these disruptive technologies become more widely distributed, their inherently dual-use nature and susceptibility to unintended consequences could create unprecedented dangers.
With the addition of new members in BRICS+, the group of emerging powers will be more globally representative—but also face more internal divisions.
A new paper, Trade Intervention for Freer Trade, Michael Pettis, a nonresident senior fellow in at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Erica Hogan, a research assistant in the Carnegie Global Order and Institutions program, assess policies that could create a new global trading system that preserves the freedom of nations to direct their economies while harnessing the benefits of trade. Please join Stewart Patrick, director of the Global Order and Institutions Program, for a conversation with Michael Pettis on these and other issues.
By targeting specific trade violations rather than balanced flows, global trade policy has been focusing on the wrong outcome. New trade rules are needed to create an international trading system in which comparative advantage allocates production.
The vast majority of UN member states still support multilateral cooperation, but disagreement over the scope of reform has been a major flashpoint.
Join Stewart Patrick, senior fellow and director of Carnegie’s Global Order and Institutions program, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Richard Gowan, and Minh-Thu Pham for a deep dive into the rationale behind the Summit and what is—and is not—likely to be included in the Pact that emerges from it.
Demand is growing for more representative and equitable global institutions that are capable of managing the risks and opportunities of interdependence—such as accelerating climate change and rapid technological innovation.
The policy makes some procedural improvements, but overall it’s a missed opportunity.
The time is ripe to transform global economic governance. Policymakers must seize this opportunity to overhaul development financing, reform the international monetary system, restructure sovereign debt, and improve global tax cooperation.