IMF conditionality and development policy space, 1985–2014
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Authors
Kentikelenis, AE
Stubbs, TH
King, Lawrence
Publication Date
2016-07-03Journal Title
Review of International Political Economy
ISSN
0969-2290
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Volume
23
Issue
4
Pages
543-582
Language
English
Type
Article
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Kentikelenis, A., Stubbs, T., & King, L. (2016). IMF conditionality and development policy space, 1985–2014. Review of International Political Economy, 23 (4), 543-582. https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2016.1174953
Abstract
In recent years, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has re-emerged as a central actor in global economic governance. Its rhetoric and policies suggest that the organization has radically changed the ways in which it offers financial assistance to countries in economic trouble. We revisit two long-standing controversies: Has the policy content of IMF programmes evolved to allow for more policy space? Do these programmes now allow for the protection of labour and social policies? We collected relevant archival material on the IMF's lending operations and identified all policy conditionality in IMF loan agreements between 1985 and 2014, extracting 55,465 individual conditions across 131 countries in total. We find little evidence of a fundamental transformation of IMF conditionality. The organization's post-2008 programmes reincorporated many of the mandated reforms that the organization claims to no longer advocate and the number of conditions has been increasing. We also find that policies introduced to ameliorate the social consequences of IMF macroeconomic advice have been inadequately incorporated into programme design. Drawing on this evidence, we argue that multiple layers of rhetoric and ceremonial reforms have been designed to obscure the actual practice of adjustment programmes, revealing an escalating commitment to hypocrisy.
Sponsorship
The authors gratefully acknowledge funding by the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET Grant INO13-00020: ‘The Political Economy of Structural Adjustment’), the Cambridge Political Economy Society Trust, and the Centre for Business Research at the University of Cambridge.
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2016.1174953
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/255016
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