Reconsidering global governance in Europe
Global economic governance is currently at a crucial crossroads – it is unclear how such international cooperation will be organised in the future and by whom. To prepare for this challenge, Europe must help in the reform and reinforcement of global governance mechanisms. With this in mind, the EU-funded 'Politics, economics and global governance: The European dimensions' (PEGGED) project was set up. The project's main objective was to help Europe construct and project a vision of how such a global system should evolve. Based on four research areas, the PEGGED project was designed to make integration across disciplinary boundaries unavoidable, and to institutionalise these research practices over time. These overlapping research areas include macroeconomics, finance, trade and migration. However, the current financial crisis has highlighted the need to rethink global economic governance in all the areas covered by PEGGED. Indeed, the project's researchers have proved particularly proactive in responding to the urgent needs of those European and global policymakers responsible for dealing with the global financial crisis. The crisis has provoked a significant amount of research during the project on international economic cooperation and new proposals for restoring international financial stability. The policy findings to date in these and other project areas have already been published. In the next phase of PEGGED, political scientists and economists will work together to develop practical, real-world policy solutions. Once completed, this collaborative research project will help Europe put its international cooperation experience to good use in areas such as the economic crisis. A vision as to how this can be done will help optimal evolution of the global system.
