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the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, not to mention a number of ad
hoc financial institutions such as the Basel Committee on Banking
Supervision (founded in 1974, as a direct response to the possible
deleterious effects of cross-border banking bankruptcy), and the Financial
Stability Forum (founded in 1999 after widespread concerns over the
possible negative effects of the East Asian financial crisis).
In the area of security we have the UN Security Council as the only
organization that can legally authorize the use of force across borders.
However, it is conditioned by the voluntary provision of security
assistance by individual countries and by the development of a number of
regional institutions such as NATO, the EU, CIS, the OSCE in Europe,
etc. that are able to contribute to the preservation of the world peace. Of
course, nowadays, humanitarian organizations such as the UNHCR,
UNICEF, and many other international non-governmental organizations
and even private security companies are part of security training.
It is interesting and worrying to note that the current regime of global
governance over global challenges lies in the activities of a large number
of entities whose roles are largely uncoordinated. An obvious example is
the treatment of environmental problems of the modern world, where we
have: the UN Environmental Protection Programe, Global Environmental
Protection, Department of Environmental Protection Management, the
OECD Directorate for Environmental Protection, the Commission on
Sustainable Development, ECOSOC, etc.^21 Although we have named only
a few of the known organizations, it is clear at first sight that there are a
large number of institutions and people who can hardly produce optimum
results in their work.
Analyzing this institutional divide, we can see that the problem is that
most of these institutions are intergovernmental and therefore responsible
to the national governments to function, and not to those to who are truly
essential, that is to say, citizens. At the same time, among them we can see
the tendency of being under the dominant influence of the most powerful
countries, especially the United States. This is especially clear in the field
of global financial governance. Despite the broad membership of the IMF,
its decision-making rules directly point to the key position occupied by the
United States.^22 All this has far wider implications than is often assumed,
especially due to the fact that it has been shown that a particular interest of
the United States is to influence IMF politics through lobbying within
(^21) See: Mabey, “Sustainability and Foreign Policy.“
(^22) See: Rapkin and Strand, “Reforming the IMF’s Weighted Voting Systém“, 305-
324; Broz and Hawes, “Congressional Politics of Financing the International
Monetary Fund“, 367-399.