Woods: The Globalizers: The IMF, The World Bank, and Their Borrowers

Woods, N. 2006. The Globalizers: The IMF, The World Bank, And Their Borrowers. Cornell University Press.

"The IMF and World Bank are targets of endless criticism. Left-wing groups denounce them as tools of US imperialism. Antiglobalization websites accuse them of enforcing global capitalism. Right0wing think tanks accuse the Fund and Bank of supporting corrupt elites and governments that cripple their economies, maul their environments, and oppress their people. In 20045 it was revealed that even the terrorist group Al Qaeda may have planned an attack on the institutions" (1).

There are three reasons that these IOs do not successfully carry out their ostensibly noble mandates: Firstly, they do not stand in isolation and are influenced by powerful governments; secondly, the technocrats who make up these institutions are shaped by a certain kind of institutional milieu which goes on to shape the ethos of the institution; finally, they have to contend with the governments that they work with on a level of equality, and they cannot impose their will. These all lead to obvious problems. The author refers to this with the chapter sub title "Riding Three Horses at Once".

"There is no incontrovertible evidence that the IMF and World Bank know what is good for their borrowing countries. More important, there is even less evidence that what they know translates into what they require of governments. Overall, powerful states set the boundaries within which the IMF and World Bank work. Within those parameters, professional economists and staff draw up the details. They work with an eye on the political masters of the institutions and equally with a view to promulgating their own and institutions interests. They express their solutions in the language of professional economists. Once solutions are defined, staff take their mission into the field. There they must coerce or persuade borrowing governments to undertake prescribed measures. Their influence in the short term depends on local conditions and whether politicians have an interest in using Fund or Bank resources or conditionality to bolster a particular position or policy" (6).

Grabel: Policy Coherence or Conformance?

Grabel, I. 2007. Policy Coherence or Conformance? The New World Bank International Monetary Fund World Trade Organization Rhetoric on Trade and Investment in Developing Countries. Review of Radical Political Economics 39, no. 3: 335.

Policy coherence is explored in this article. It is argued that the term has been abused, and that much of what it is referred to would be better suited by the term "conformance".

"This article has three objectives: (a) to define the concept of coherence and trace its usage in policy debates historically and up to the present; (b) to explore how the concept is being institutionalized or codified through cooperation among the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade organization...and through recent bi-and multilateral trade agreements; and (c) to offer the beginnings of a critique of what I see as the use and abuse of the concept. I will argue that the concept of coherence today is code for another and altogether different goal: policy conformance" (336).

These three institutions have worked together to promote trade liberalization in such a coherent way that they may end up working against their original mandates. This is completed partially through the at least tacit, if not explicit, approval of the US.

Coherence should be a concept with no explicit telos, but the policies implemented by these institutions have all ended up moving in a very explicitly direction. "Properly understood, policy coherence should entail an understanding of the uniqueness of diverse national contexts; of path dependence, institutional embeddedness, and stickiness; recognition that there exists multiple paths to development; and respect for national policy space" (340).