Much political science scholarship on supranational and global financial governance has treated the evolution of governing institutions by and large detached from the specific substance of the rules they promulgate. This de-linkage has been rooted in the view that global institutions have been solutions to coordination problems, harmonizing rules to the ultimate benefit of all parties (even if with uneven pay-offs). Rule harmonization itself, not the specific point of convergence, has been considered central. Post-crisis, the link between institutions and rule-substance has started to be appreciated: the effectiveness of institutions depends on the content of the rules they are supposed to generate or administer. The merits and demerits of reforming the former FSF, the G20, the IMF and the IASB have been debated in this vein. This paper argues that such scholarship fails to appreciate a more fundamental link between global governance institutions in finance and the substance of post-crisis reforms: the fragmentation of governance over roughly a dozen institutions was considered suitable for the guiding pre-crisis paradigm that stressed the benefits and superiority of unfettered markets. Intense across-institution cooperation was unnecessary; decentralized policy-making with an eye to ''unleashing market mechanisms'' was sufficient to govern global finance effectively. The guiding paradigm that has replaced pre-crisis regulatory liberalism (Gamble 2009) appreciates the [reflexivity] of financial markets and the complex interactions between the different standards that govern them (for example accounting standards, capital adequacy rules for banks or OTC derivatives-provisions). Many elements of this paradigm were laid out in the 2009 Turner review and enshrined, at least embryonically, in the G20 Pittsburg statement. In view of the [reflexivity paradigm], the interaction of financial rules requires a close coordination of reforms across the whole breadth of relevant standards - one that the current institutional patchwork without a strong pinnacle is unable to achieve. The mismatch between institutional fragmentation at the global level and the need suggested by the current guiding paradigm for close cross-standard coordination thus emerges as a key brake on far-reaching regulatory reform. Rather than arguing the case in favour of or against one or the other paradigm, this paper shows how current institutions for global financial governance are not effective or not per se, but how their effectiveness depends on the kind of rule-set they are supposed to implement.
