Should big developing countries like China, India, and Brazil represent the developing world?
Regional or sub-regional arrangements provide an alternative as they can be used to facilitate stronger voice and sense of ownership among smaller countries. Regional arrangements also include a mix of developed, emerging market, and less developing countries. The new global economic governance structure will need to be based on representative institutions. There are demands to reform existing institutions to reflect the changing economic weight of emerging economies in the global economy. There is also the idea that these reformed institutions (the IMF and the World Bank) should be supervised by an over-arching and inclusive global institution, such as the UN global economic and social council as proposed by Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel. But such a global organisation is likely to become rather unwieldy. The better alternative would be to have networks of regional arrangements play into the global forums. East Asia’s emergency fund, namely the multilateralised CMI, for instance,
