Highlights Developing countries require $2.5 trillion to meet immediate Covid-19 financing needs. New data on IMF and regional financial arrangement activities since pandemic onset show the global financial safety net is not meeting these needs. IMF and regional financial arrangements provided $90.11 billion in Covid-19 financing in the immediate aftermath of the crisis. Datasets available for scholars and analysts to track trends and evaluate the impact of the global financial safety net on development outcomes.

The 21st century has ushered in the emergence of alternative institutions for liquidity provision and development finance, many of which are Southern‐led. The special issue that follows this Introduction assesses the extent to which existing theoretical perspectives and tools are sufficient for evaluating the implications of these alternatives for the global financial architecture. Our analysis finds that while an increasingly varied landscape of diverse institutions designed to foster financial stability and development comes with inherent risks, these new forms of finance bring real benefits to an architecture that has long been deemed insufficient. Larger and more capable Southern‐led institutions not only mean additional sources of financing for emerging market and developing countries, but also could increase their voice in an international financial architecture long dominated by the most advanced economies. That said, the variation in the landscape could create inequities and fault lines between new and existing institutions, which will be difficult to overcome through the coordination of a fragmented and diverse system. Finally, despite the increases in capital for liquidity provision and development made available by these new institutions, significantly more financing and coordination will be needed to achieve financial stability and economic development on a global scale.

We call for strengthening the Global Financial Safety Net (GFSN) to manage the economic effects of COVID‐19, in particular the massive capital outflows from emerging market and developing economies EMDEs and the global shortage of dollar liquidity. Both the United Nations (UN) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimate that EMDEs need an immediate $2.5 trillion, yet the financing available to them is just $700 to $971 billion. To meet these immediate needs we propose to: (1) broaden the coverage of the Federal Reserve currency swaps; (2) issue at least $500 billion of special drawing rights through the IMF; (3) improve the IMF’s precautionary and emergency facilities; (4) establish a multilateral swap facility at the IMF; (5) increase the resources and geographic coverage of regional financial arrangements; (6) coordinate capital flow management measures; (7) initiate debt restructuring and relief initiatives; and (8) request that credit‐rating agencies stop making downgrades during the emergency. It argues that leaders should swiftly move to address these structural gaps in the GFSN: (1) agree on a quota reform at the IMF; (2) create an appropriate sovereign debt restructuring regime; (3) expand surveillance activity; and (4) adopt IMF governance reform and strengthen its relations with all agents of the GFSN. All of these reforms must be calibrated toward a just transition to a more stable, inclusive, and sustainable global economy.

This chapter traces the evolution of the ideational research agenda in historical institutionalism. The relationship between ideas as an analytical concept and historical institutionalism as a body of work has varied over time. While there was an opening to ideas in historical institutionalism in the mid- to late 1990s, less attention was paid to ideas as core analytic variables in the decades that followed. The chapter points to the materialist ontology employed by the majority of historical institutionalist scholars, their engagement with rational choice scholars, and the work of ideational scholars themselves as the major sources behind an ‘unconscious uncoupling’ between ideationalists and materialists within historical institutionalism. Following a network analysis of citation patterns, the chapter suggests that a ‘conscious re-coupling’ of ideational and institutional research agendas holds great promise for future historical institutional work.