The Asian crisis, which began in1997, triggered ongoing controversy over an appropriate role for the IMF in managing financial globalisation in emerging markets. This book argues for a more political approach to this debate. It places the crisis, and subsequent debates about a new international financial architecture, in the context of the political economy of financial governance since Bretton Woods. It draws out the links between domestic debates about IMF policy in Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea and the United States and the broader politics of IMF decision-making. It argues that the IMF's technocratic, decision-making arrangements help to forge and internal consensus on financial governance. However, they fail to give the IMF the political authority in needs to drive through the politically and socially sensitive, 'good governance' policies that are central to its new role.