This chapter examines China’s role and approach in the reforms of global financial governance. It investigates both the reforms of the traditional Bretton Woods institutions that the United States dominates, and the initiation and development of the new financial institutions that China leads, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the New Development Bank (NDB) and the Multilateral Cooperation Center for Development Finance (MCDF). It finds that China, by walking on two legs, commits to correcting and improving the unsustainable elements of the existing world order, rather than decoupling from it. The success of China’s multilateralism lies in its advocating for the principle of ‘extensive consultation, joint contribution, and shared benefits’, its adherence to high and feasible standards, and its use of a teleological perspective in legal interpretation. As a major driving force behind Chinese multilateralism, China needs to maintain the image of a self-restrained and benign power in international cooperation, while being assured that only an appropriate norm-taker makes a respected norm-maker.

This chapter considers the theory’s implications for the significant issue of accountability in global governance. My reasoning may appear to suggest a fundamental tension between performance and accountability: If avoiding the thorniest obstacle to performance requires curtailing state influence in the policy process, international institutions presumably cannot be both effective and accountable. I argue, however, that if we embrace a more expansive understanding of how accountability may be institutionalized, no such tradeoff arises. This is because the same factors that nurture policy autonomy make institutions more likely to adopt a variety of modern accountability structures – what I call second-wave accountability (SWA) mechanisms – that primarily benefit and empower non-state actors. Once in place, moreover, SWA mechanisms can themselves deliver performance gains by revealing operational problems, improving the quality of decision-making, and boosting policy compliance. I provide two forms of empirical support for these claims: (1) statistical evidence based on novel data on the spread and strength of SWA mechanisms; and (2) a qualitative plausibility probe focusing on institutions in the issue area of economic development, where many SWA mechanisms were pioneered.

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.

This chapter examines the role of international finance for post-war transitions and its relationship to international law. That relationship is considered in two respects: first, the international legal norms relevant to ‘who should pay?’; and second, the relevance of international aid to the development of international law. Section 2 tracks the evolution of post-conflict funding for settlement implementation and reconstruction in light of historical transformations in peace-making practice; and addresses the financial demands on conflict-affected states. Urgent needs for international aid to finance settlement implementation and peacebuilding, raises questions about whether third states might have a duty to provide finance. Thus, Section 3 evaluates prospects for international legal duties to provide that aid. The relevance of post-conflict finance and aid conditionality to the development of international law is considered in Section 4 to shed a different light on debates about an emerging law of peace-making or lex pacificatoria.

This chapter discusses the transformation of the Bank for International Settlements from a predominantly European organisation into a truly global one. This transformation coincided with, and was the result of, the rapid rise in prominence of the emerging-market economies, particularly from the 1990s. Until the mid-1990s the BIS, although serving the global central banking community, was in terms of governance and organisation strongly dominated by the Group of Ten advanced industrial countries. Because of history and statutory constraints – but also because the G10 very much valued their close cooperation – this changed only gradually. The chapter outlines in detail how and why the BIS first expanded its shareholding membership and only then its internal governance structure to become truly representative of the global economy. The great financial crisis of 2007–8 further accelerated this process, which was basically concluded by the end of the 2010s, with all major central banks being represented on the BIS Board of Directors.