Multilayered Governance and the International Financial Architecture: The Erosion of Multilateralism in International Liquidity Provision

Abstract We analyze the ‘plurilateralization’ of global financial governance, defined as the proliferation of bilateral, regional and global governance arrangements, exploring how these have shaped international monetary and financial relations. We argue that the added layers of governance are the outgrowth of four factors: the demand for an international lender of last resort, the need to manage cross‐border financial and monetary policy spillovers, the desire for policy ownership and flexibility in an increasingly globalized world, and the confluence of bilateral liquidity provision policies with countries’ strategic foreign economic policy goals. Despite the desire to rationalize and streamline an increasingly complex international financial architecture, we argue that plurilateral governance is here to stay. We therefore offer some guidelines for living with this complexity.