See Pascal Lamy's major speech on the "Geneva Consensus." Obviously, he is distinguishing the more focused market-oriented Washington Consensus. His Geneva Consensus involves a focus on adjustment:
We must create a new “Geneva consensus”: a new basis for the opening up of trade that takes into account the resultant cost of adjustment. Trade opening is necessary, but it is not sufficient in itself. It also implies assistance: to help the least-developed countries to build up their stocks and therefore adequate productive and logistical capacity; to increase their capacity to negotiate and to implement the commitments undertaken in the international trading system; and to deal with the imbalances created between winners and losers from trade opening — imbalances that are the more dangerous to the more fragile economies, societies or countries.
Lamy also points out the broader problem of governance in globalization. I have taken to referring to this problem, in progressive terms, as the "governance lag." Society has changed in response to changes in technology and commerce, but governance mechanisms have not kept up. I read Lamy's call for better governance as a call to remedy this "lag." However, it is by no means easy to determine the scope of the lag, and to ensure that local autonomy is not compromised inappropriately. This lag may be described in terms of the relationship between the Washington Consensus and the Geneva Consensus. The Washington Consensus helped to bring us globalization. In order to sustain and improve the results of globalization, Lamy's Geneva Consensus responds. This is the same idea, on a global scale, as that expressed in The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi, as updated by John Ruggie. See also my recent paper on the topic. It is clear that Lamy is right, but it is less clear what the details of action should be.
