"The IMF and the World Bank have integrated a large number of countries into the world economy by requiring governments to open up to global trade, investment, and capital. They have not done this ...out of pure economic zeal. Politics and their own rules and habits explain much of why they have presented globalization as a solution to challenges they have faced in the world economy."-from the Introduction
The greatest success of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank has been as globalizers. But at whose cost? Would borrowing countries be better off without the IMF and World Bank? This book takes readers inside these institutions and the governments they work with. Ngaire Woods brilliantly decodes what they do and why they do it, using original research, extensive interviews carried out across many countries and institutions, and scholarship from the fields of economics, law, and politics.
The Globalizersfocuses on both the political context of IMF and World Bank actions and their impact on the countries in which they intervene. After describing the important debates between U.S. planners and the Allies in the 1944 foundation at Bretton Woods, she analyzes understandings of their missions over the last quarter century. She traces the impact of the Bank and the Fund in the recent economic history of Mexico, of post-Soviet Russia, and in the independent states of Africa. Woods concludes by proposing a range of reforms that would make the World Bank and the IMF more effective, equitable, and just.
Rising economies including China, the United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Korea, India, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are subtly changing the rules of foreign aid with profound consequences for the role of ...multilateral institutions and conditionality. Fears abound that this new aid is bolstering rogue states, fuelling corruption, and increasing the debt burdens of poor countries. This article critically assesses these arguments before dissecting the attractions of emerging donors' aid against a background of established donors' failure to deliver on promises to increase aid, reduce conditionality, better coordinate and align aid efforts, and reform the aid architecture. It argues that a silent revolution is taking place whereby the emerging donors are not overtly attempting to overturn the rules of multilateral development assistance, nor to replace them. Rather, by quietly offering alternatives to aid-receiving countries, they are weakening the bargaining position of western donors. The resulting tensions underscore the urgency of reforming the multilateral aid system.
Regulation by public and private organizations can be hijacked by special interests or small groups of powerful firms, and nowhere is this easier than at the global level. In whose interest is the ...global economy being regulated? Under what conditions can global regulation be made to serve broader interests? This is the first book to examine systematically how and why such hijacking or "regulatory capture" happens, and how it can be averted.
Abstract The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is entering a period of unprecedented challenge. Countries need its assistance to deal with debt distress, the post-Covid development crisis, new ...threats of financial instability, and the fallout of a decade of unconventional monetary policy. But the IMF faces two challenges of its own. As powerful countries ‘reset’ the rules on which the IMF’s work proceeds, it must build a new paradigm for advising its borrowers. Equally, as those same powerful countries show less willingness to cooperate with each other in international organizations, the IMF must keep them involved and working together within the institution.
IMF surveillance is typically thought to have effect because it provides useful information to member countries, because it engages countries in cooperative behaviour or because it piggy-backs the ...bargaining power the IMF enjoys in some countries. This article explores IMF surveillance by bringing to bear theoretical explanations as to why and how these effects might work. The simplest explanation is a rationalist-realist one that the IMF has impact in countries over whom it has bargaining power: this is borne out by the evidence regarding IMF surveillance in aid-dependent countries. However, this is not the only condition under which surveillance might work. Rationalist-institutionalists point to the role information plays in shaping competition and cooperation among states, and this effect is borne out to a limited degree by the impact of IMF-supported international standards and surveillance activities on the other economies. Finally, constructivists would describe the possible impact of surveillance in terms of learning or socialization, focusing on the social organization and impact of the IMF's activities. The evidence, however, suggests that neither bilateral nor multilateral surveillance is structured or organized in a way that promotes learning or socialization. The implications are that for IMF surveillance to be more effective across all its members would require restructuring the way the organization engages with its members, as well as a greater delegation of authority by countries to the organization.
International Relations scholars have long neglected the question of leadership in international organizations. The structural turn in International Relations led to an aversion to analysing or ...theorizing the impact of individuals. Yet, empirical studies suggest that different leaders affect the extent to which international organizations facilitate cooperation among states and/or the capacity of a global agency to deliver public goods. It is difficult to study how and under what conditions leaders have an impact due to the challenges of attributing outcomes to a particular leader and great variation in their powers and operating context. We offer a starting point for overcoming these challenges. We identify three different types of constraints that executive heads face: legal-political, resource and bureaucratic. We argue that leaders can navigate and push back on each of these constraints and provide illustrations of this, drawing on existing literature and interviews with executive heads and senior management of international organizations. Executive heads of international organizations may operate in a constrained environment but this should not stop scholars from studying their impact.
The Globalizers Woods, Ngaire
2006, 2007-10-18, 20060101, 20070101
eBook
The greatest success of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank has been as globalizers. But at whose cost? Would borrowing countries be better off without the IMF and World Bank?.
The IMF's Unmet Challenges Eichengreen, Barry; Woods, Ngaire
The Journal of economic perspectives,
01/2016, Volume:
30, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The International Monetary Fund is a controversial institution whose interventions regularly provoke passionate reactions. We will argue that there is an important role for the IMF in helping to ...solve information, commitment, and coordination problems with significant implications for the stability of national economies and the international monetary and financial system. In executing these functions, the effectiveness of the IMF, like that of a football referee, depends on whether the players see it as competent and impartial. We will argue that the Fund’s perceived competence and impartiality, and hence its effectiveness, are limited by its failure to meet four challenges—concerning the quality of it's surveillance (of individual countries, groups of countries, and the global system); the relevance of conditionality in loan contracts; the utility of the Fund’s approach to debt problems; and the Fund’s failure to adopt a system of governance that gives appropriate voice to different stakeholders. These problems of legitimacy will have to be addressed in order for the IMF to play a more effective role in the 21st century.
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