New World New Rules

The need for collective action has never been greater, but geopolitics, structural changes and diverging preferences mean that existing global governance arrangements, devised at Bretton Woods in the 1940s, are either unravelling or outmoded. Reconciling this contradiction is today’s pressing global policy challenge.


In this short book, two of Europe’s most-experienced policymakers and analysts outline a new agenda for global governance. They examine governance practices across several key policy areas – climate, health, trade and competition, banking and finance, taxation, migration and the digital economy – and consider what works and what doesn't, and why. The global governance solutions they put forward are ambitious but pragmatic. They require complexity, flexibility and compromise. Attributes that global governments are demonstrably short of, but today’s global crises urgently demand.

George Papaconstantinou studied economics in the UK and the US, obtaining a PhD from the London School of Economics. After working for ten years at the OECD in Paris, he returned to Greece to serve in a policy advisory role for the Greek government. In 2007, he was elected to the Greek Parliament, and in 2009 to the European Parliament. In October 2009 he was appointed Finance Minister in the newly formed government of George Papandreou and in that position he played a key role in the Greek debt crisis, negotiating the first bailout with the EU and the IMF.

Jean Pisani-Ferry is Professor of Economics at Sciences Po, Paris, a Senior Fellow at Bruegel, the European think tank, and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute in Washington, DC.