Coping with the challenges of global economic governance is a topical issue of the current international agenda, and the object of a vivid debate among scholars and policy-makers. The international financial and economic crisis that erupted in 2007 reveals the fallibility of the neoliberal paradigm that has dominated the world economic landscape for the last quarter of a century; regulatory and supervisory institutions have disclosed their weaknesses, and markets have shown their limits in dealing with the rational allocation of risks, and their lack of resilience to shocks. This book offers a comprehensive view of this matter, examining the dialectic and fluid relations between State sovereignty, supranational rules and the role of markets. The opportunity to deal with economic and regulatory challenges through the lens of legitimacy and effectiveness is the fil rouge of the co-authors’ original contributions and the inner-sense of the book. This critical perspective results particularly in investigating gaps and ambiguities of the institutional framework currently underpinning the major international economic organisations (IMF, WTO, G20, EMU), in re-discussing the State’s regulatory role in coping with the challenges of the global economy, and in studying the contradictory interactions between financial paradigms and sustainability with regards to economic development policies.