The Role and Limits of Multilateral Surveillance

This chapter first reviews the failures of the OECD, the IMF, and the BIS to provide early warnings about the outbreak of the global financial and economic crisis between mid-2007 and early 2009 and the lessons to be drawn from them. It then discusses the failures of regional surveillance within the European framework as well as global surveillance by these international institutions to prevent the outbreak of the euro-area crisis that occurred a few years after the global financial and economic crisis. It also discusses the role of inter-governmental institutions in public opinion formation, drawing from their experience in the campaign against the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union prior to its referendum.