Global Economic Governance at a Crossroads: Is the Bretton Woods System Unravelling?

This year marks the 75th anniversary of one of the most famous international economic meetings of all time: the 1944 Bretton Woods conference. The conference outlined innovative principles for the postwar system of global economic governance and established the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. This lecture examines the innovations and legacies of the Bretton Woods conference in the context of current challenges to its core principles at this time of global economic upheaval.

Eric Helleiner is currently Professor in the Department of Political Science and Balsillie School of International Affairs at the University of Waterloo. He has authored and edited eleven books, including most recently Governing the World’s Biggest Market: The Politics of Derivatives Regulation After the 2008 Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2018). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and has received many awards, including the Killam Research Fellowship, the Trudeau Foundation Fellows Prize, the Francesco Guicciardini Prize for Best Book in Historical International Relations, the CPSA Prize in International Relations, and the Donner Book Prize. He is presently co-editor of the book series Cornell Studies in Money.