The G-20 and the reform of the international financial institutions after the subprime crisis

Résumé

The topic of this article is the G-20, an arrangement where states coordinate political efforts in favor of the global economic governance. The aim of the article is to understand who the relevant actors are and which political disputes developed from the G-20 negotiations to reform the mechanisms of representativeness and the decision-making processes in the multilateral financial institutions, especially the IMF and World Bank, after the subprime crisis had been unleashed in the United States in 2008. The article reaches the conclusion that despite the occurrence of an improvement in voice power and representativeness of the emerging economies, especially from BRIC, the U.S. conducted the negotiations to legitimate the Bretton Woods Institutions as functions of its hegemonic power. In fact, after the reform the United States kept on and reinforced its control over those institutions, maintaining itself as the sole country with veto power over them and thus as the most powerful state in the conduction of the international financial architecture.