Global Governance and the Public Domain : Collective goods in a "Post-Washington Consensus Era"

As a consequence of the financial crises of 1997-9, the question of "global governance" appears to have come into its own as as "agenda" for thinking about the rules and norms which underpin the present global order. One of the dominant understandings of the public domain, especially in Asian and Latin American countries, is of its essenctial revitalisation or utilisation as a mechanism for the provision of a range of public goods crucial to the socioeconomic sustainability of markets. This has found its way into the policy debates currently dominating the agendas of the international financial institutions, couched broadly in the emerging language of the "Post-Washington Consensus".