The Struggle for International Financial Standards

Abstract

This chapter analyses the construction of relations between ‘bodies of norms’ in contexts of global financial governance from the perspective of ‘entanglement’. It examines how entanglements were discursively construed from the 1990s until the period of post-global financial crisis reforms. In the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis, officials at the Bank for International Settlements, International Monetary Fund and United Nations disagreed on how to order relations between multiple norms and institutions deemed to be relevant for global financial stability. Different ordering projects struggled to manage institutional pluralism in global finance. The move to ‘international standards’ authorized actors to shape and order relations between a growing multiplicity of bodies of norms. The construction of the ‘Compendium of Standards’ sought to order relations between a growing number of international financial standards. Other proposals sought to create a more permanent institutional framework, including via legalization. As the challenge of governing multiplicity in contemporary global financial governance persists, none of the different ordering projects has imposed itself as a common frame of reference.