Grimes Publishes Journal Article on RFA’s and Global Governance
William Grimes, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of International Relations and Political Science at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, co-wrote an article in a special issue of the journal Development and Change.
Grimes co-wrote the article, entitled “Leaving the Nest: The Rise of Regional Financial Arrangements and the Future of Global Governance,” with GDP Center Assistant Director and Research Fellow William Kring.
From the abstract of the article:
This article examines the impact of regional financial arrangements (RFAs) on the global liquidity regime. It argues that the design of RFAs could potentially alter the global regime, whether by strengthening it and making it more coherent or by decentring the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and destabilizing it. To determine possible outcomes, this analysis deploys a ‘middle‐up’ approach that focuses on the institutional design of these RFAs. It first draws on the rational design of institutions framework to identify the internal characteristics of RFAs that are most relevant to their capabilities and capacities. It then applies these insights to the interactions of RFAs with the IMF, building on Aggarwal’s (1998) concept of ‘nested’ versus ‘parallel’ institutions, to create an analytical lens through which to assess the nature and sustainability of nested linkages. Through an analysis of the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) and the Latin American Reserve Fund (FLAR), the article demonstrates the usefulness of this lens. It concludes by considering three circumstances in which fault lines created by these RFAs’ institutional design could be activated, permitting an institution to ‘leave the nest’, including changing intentions of principals, creation of parallel capabilities and facilities, and failure of the global regime to address regional needs in a crisis.
Grimes, who has taught at Boston University since 1996, is a leading scholar of East Asian financial regionalism. His 2008 book Currency and Contest in East Asia: The Great Power Politics of Financial Regionalism won the 2010 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize and received Honorable Mention for the 2009 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award. More recently, in conjunction with the Pardee School’s Global Economic Governance Initiative, he led a research project for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) to develop a guide to best practices for regional liquidity arrangements.