Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The IMF and international financial architecture: solvency and liquidity
- 2 Progress towards greater international financial stability
- 3 International coordination of macroeconomic policies: still alive in the new millennium?
- 4 The Report of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission: comments on the critics
- 5 Reforming the global financial architecture: just tinkering around the edges?
- 6 The IMF and capital account liberalisation
- 7 How should the IMF view capital controls?
- 8 The resolution of international financial crises: an alternative framework
- 9 Whose programme is it? Policy ownership and conditional lending
- 10 The IMF and East Asia: a changing regional financial architecture
- 11 The role of the IMF in developing countries
- 12 Argentina and the Fund: anatomy of a policy failure
- 13 Countries in payments' difficulties: what can the IMF do?
- 14 Accountability, governance and the reform of the IMF
- 15 The IMF at the start of the twenty-first century: what has been learned? On which values can we establish a humanised globalisation?
- Index
- References
14 - Accountability, governance and the reform of the IMF
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 December 2009
By
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The IMF and international financial architecture: solvency and liquidity
- 2 Progress towards greater international financial stability
- 3 International coordination of macroeconomic policies: still alive in the new millennium?
- 4 The Report of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission: comments on the critics
- 5 Reforming the global financial architecture: just tinkering around the edges?
- 6 The IMF and capital account liberalisation
- 7 How should the IMF view capital controls?
- 8 The resolution of international financial crises: an alternative framework
- 9 Whose programme is it? Policy ownership and conditional lending
- 10 The IMF and East Asia: a changing regional financial architecture
- 11 The role of the IMF in developing countries
- 12 Argentina and the Fund: anatomy of a policy failure
- 13 Countries in payments' difficulties: what can the IMF do?
- 14 Accountability, governance and the reform of the IMF
- 15 The IMF at the start of the twenty-first century: what has been learned? On which values can we establish a humanised globalisation?
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
To be effective, the IMF and its activities must be transparent to the public, accountable to its members, and responsive to the lessons of experience and outside evaluation.
(G7 Communiqué, 15 April 2000)Over the 1990s, in an effort to improve both its effectiveness and its public image, the IMF began to take steps to make itself more transparent, more accountable and more participatory. This chapter investigates how accountable the institution has become and what ‘accountability’ might and should mean for an international institution such as the IMF. Curiously, although great strides have been made in improving transparency and in better understanding concepts of participation and ownership in the implementation of the institution's programmes, a rigorous definition and concept of ‘accountability’ has been slow to emerge. Indeed, most contemporary proposals for the reform of the institutions use the term regularly without ever developing who should be accountable to whom and for what.
Section 2 of the chapter discusses why accountability is now so prominently on the agenda and why the traditional structure of the IMF no longer meets expectations as to how accountable the institution should be. Section 3 examines the demands of new actors to hold the institution better to account, focusing in particular on the rise of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and their engagement with the IMF. Section 4 critically examines the role of the United States in reforming the Fund and evaluates the recommendations of the Meltzer Commission.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The IMF and its CriticsReform of Global Financial Architecture, pp. 396 - 416Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
References
Abugre, C. and N. Alexander (1998). ‘Non-Governmental Organisations and the International, Monetary and Financial System’, International Monetary and Financial Issues for the 1990s, IX. Geneva, UNCTAD, 107–25
(2001). ‘Stuffing New Wine into Old Bottles: The Troubling Case of the IMF’, Journal of International Banking Regulation, 3(1), 9–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collier, P. (1999). ‘Learning from Failure: The International Financial Institutions as Agencies of Restraint in Africa’, in A. Schedler, L. Diamond and M. Plattner, The Self-Restraining State: Power and Accountability in New Democracies. Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner
De Gregorio, J., B. Eichengreen, T. Ito and C. Wyplosz (1999). An Independent and Accountable IMF. London, ICMB and CEPR
Dubash, N. K., M. Dupar, S. Kothari and T. Lissu (2001). ‘A Watershed in Global Governance?: An Independent Assessment of the World Commission on Dams’. Lokayan, World Resources Institute
Gold, J. (1972). Voting and Decisions in the International Monetary Fund. Washington, DC, IMF
G7 (2000). ‘Statement of G7 Finance Mininsters and Central Bank Governors’, Washington, DC, 15 April, LS-556
Horsefield, K. J. (1996). The International Monetary Fund, 1945–1965: Twenty Years of International Monetary Cooperation, 1. Washington, DC, IMF
IMF (1999). ‘External Evaluation of IMF Surveillance’, Report by a Group of Independent Experts, Washington, DC, IMF
‘Report to the IMF Executive Board of the Quota Formula Review Group’, Washington, DC, IMF, 28 April
IMF/World Bank (2001). ‘Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers – Progress in Implementation’, Annex 2: Guidelines (paper prepared by the staffs of the IMF and the World Bank, Washington, DC, 20 April
IMF/World Bank (2001), Review of Experience with Evaluation in the Fund (Prepared by the Evaluation Group of Executive Directors). Washington, DC, IMF
International Financial Institution Advisory Commission (IFIAC) or Meltzer Commission Report (2000). Final Report and Transcripts of Meetings and Hearings. Washington, DC; available at http://phantom-x.gsia.cmu.edu/IFIAC
Jadhav, N. (2000). ‘IMF Quota Formulas and Mechanisms: A Developing Economy Perspective’, paper prepared for G24 Technical Group Meeting, Lima, 1 March
Kahler, M. (2001). Leadership Selection in the Major Multilaterals. Washington, DC, Institute of International Economics
Kohn, D. L. (2000). ‘Report to the Non-Executive Directors of the Court of the Bank of England on Monetary Policy Processes and the Work of Monetary Analysis’, Bank of England, 18 October
(2000). ‘Funding the IMF: The Debate in the US Congress’, Finance and Development, 3, 56–9Google Scholar
Maravall, J. M. (1999). ‘Accountability and Manipulation’, in A. Przeworski, S. Stokes and B. Manin, Democracy, Accountability, and Representation. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 154–96CrossRef
Przeworski, A., S. Stokes and B. Manin (1999). Democracy, Accountability, and Representation. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
Raffer, K. (1999). ‘Introducing Financial Accountability at the IBRD: An Overdue and Necessary Reform’, Department of Economics University of Vienna, unpublished manuscript
Schedler, A., L. Diamond and M. Plattner (1999). The Self-Restraining State: Power and Accountability in New Democracies. Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner
SGTS & Associates (2000). ‘Civil Society Participation in PRSPs’, Report to the Development for International Development, 1: Overview and Recommendations. London, SGTS, October
Van Houtven, L. (2001). Governance of the International Monetary Fund: Decision Making, Institutional Oversight, Transparency and Accountability, Washington, DC, Per Jacobssen Foundation
Viera da Cunha, P. and M. Valeria Junho Pena (1998). ‘The Limits and Merits of Participation’, World Bank Working Paper, 594; available at http:/econ.worldbank.org/docs/594.pdf
Wade, R. (2000). ‘A Defeat for Development and Multilateralism: the World Bank has been Unfairly Criticised over the Qinghai Resettlement Project’; full manuscript unpublished, short version published in Financial Times, 4
- 4
- Cited by