Producing a volume on financial governance just at the outbreak of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression proved to be both a daunting and exciting task. While the onset of crisis raised the salience of work on financial governance considerably, both editors and contributors might be forgiven for a sense of exhaustion related to the hot pursuit of a moving target. This has meant that the purpose of the volume has evolved rather rapidly over the past three years. The ­volume began life as an analysis of the record and historical experience of the ‘new international financial architecture’ developed in the wake of the emerging market crises of the 1990s and early 2000s. The analysis yielded the conclusion that not all was functioning as effectively as the architects believed. The aim was to challenge the apparent complacency of the period of calm following the Argentine default, and to stimulate new thinking based on the understanding and reading of the evidence that all was not well and that fundamental flaws in global financial governance required urgent attention.

By August 2007, when an early version of the manuscript was ready and much of the research findings had been discussed in workshops, it became clear that the usual crisis rumblings but of unusual force were beginning deep below the fine edifice constructed by the architects.