50

The objective of the new architecture of the international financial system is to master the international financial instability by improving the transparency and the supervision of markets, and by arousing a greatest sense of responsibility in the prevention and management of crises, of both private and public actors. But it is very improbable for the new architecture to take the form of rules of law whose combination would open on a new system forced upon the international community, to the image of the creation of the IMF in 1944. It is likely to be a pragmatic reply to the international financial instability rather than an institutional evolution of the modes of international monetary and financial governance. The ambition to consolidate the international financial architecture marks already a real change of doctrine, close to a new neo-liberal compromise and partially nearing the postwar embedded liberalism recommended by Keynes. But this compromise appears all both ambiguous and unfinished, as much in its foundations that in its functioning. The object of this analysis is precisely to surround the political economy of this architecture. One examines first the official contours of the new architecture, by showing that this program is first a political reply, managed by the American diplomacy and piloted by the G 7, to the systemic contagion of the 90’s. One shows then how the project of architecture, considering the theoretical underlying foundations as well as the adopted method, can be analyzed as a pragmatic compromise whose application remains at present unfulfilled, and which cannot be considered as a full reply to the challenges of systemic risk. Classification JEL: F33, G15