Michael Den Tandt suggested recently in a CIGI blog post that the international moment called for a high-level mobilization of the best minds in a multilateral venture aimed at guaranteeing a stable information regime at a global level. The parallel Den Tandt mentioned historically is the Bretton Woods conference that set up the postwar international economic order at the end of the Second World War. It is interesting, it should be observed in passing, that contemporary discussions of bold internationalist projects tend to use economic regime creation as an archetype, rather than the arguably more universalist political settlements that bracketed them (you rarely hear calls for a new Dumbarton Oaks…).

There are, prima facie, two fundamental problems with the proposal. The first is that the call for a new round of regime building fundamentally misinterprets the historical moment: Bretton Woods was made possible by the imminence of Allied victory in WWII, while our own time is seeing the rise, not (yet) the dénouement, of fundamental antagonisms and Great Power rivalries. The type of lasting settlement Den Tandt envisions will be up to the victor in these struggles. The second problem concerns the balance of power not among States but between the public and the private sector. The framework of international economic development that was set up by the Bretton Woods system –which has been described by John Gerard Ruggie as embedded liberalism– was decisively smashed by the currency crises of the early 1970s. Many see that passage as the birth of neoliberalism, a new paradigm of public policy that has become hegemonic in the past half century. Under this current dispensation, the State, even the internationally hegemonic State, does not possess the ability to guide macroeconomic development, or to steer technological innovation decisively. Even if the political will for an international consensus at the highest level could be found, it is highly improbable that it could be implemented on a recalcitrant global market.

The disfunctions in the information sphere that Den Tandt decries are undeniable; such problems, however, will not be resolved by simply conjuring into existence a global regulatory regime for which the historical preconditions do not currently exist.