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Notes
Ben Thirkell‐White, Department of Politics, University of Sheffield, Northumberland Road, Sheffield S10 2TU, UK.
I would like to thank the ESRC for funding some of the underlying research. I would also like to thank David Beetham, Simon Bromley and an anonymous reviewer for discussions and comments.
The Fund has recently published guidelines for staff relations with civil society—IMF, Guide for Staff Relations With Civil Society, 10 October 2003, available at http://www.imf.org. The document is helpful on operational issues, but still leaves the broader political strategy somewhat ambiguous.
IMF, Good Governance: The IMF's Role (IMF, 1997), paragraph 9.
The focus is on IMF relationships with middle‐income countries. The logic and rationale for poverty reduction and growth facilities is slightly different and, though the waters are slightly muddy, comes closer to an interest in governance for its own sake. Some of the analysis should be read in that light, but the principal theoretical point is also significant when thinking about poverty reduction strategy papers and IMF engagement with developed country civil society.
The word ‘political’ is italicised to emphasise that I am not talking about legitimacy in the more objective sense that is commonly used by philosophers. It is for that reason that I talk in terms of legitimacy problems (which result in different degrees of compliance), rather than illegitimacy which would be a much stronger claim. For an elaboration of this distinction, see David Beetham, The Legitimation of Power (Macmillan, 1991).
The discussion of the concept of legitimacy and its application to the IMF is necessarily slightly cursory here. For a fuller treatment, see Ben Thirkell‐White, The IMF and the Politics of Financial Globalisation (Palgrave, 2004).
Beetham, The Legitimation of Power.
Barry Eichengreen, Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System, 2nd edn (Princeton University Press, 1998); and John Ruggie, ‘International Regimes, Transactions and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Post‐war Economic Order’, International Organization, Vol. 36, No. 2 (1982), pp. 379–415.
On developed countries, see Louis Pauly, Who Elected the Bankers? Surveillance and Control in the World Economy (Cornell University Press, 1997). On the evolution of conditionality, see Margaret De Vries, Balance of Payments Adjustment 1945–1986: The IMF Experience (IMF, 1987).
See IMF, Good Governance: The IMF's Role (the quotation is from paragraph 9). On the relationship between governance and market confidence, see Pierre Dhonte, Conditionality as an Instrument of Borrower Credibility, IMF Papers on Policy Analysis and Assessment (PPAA/97/2), IMF, Washington DC, 1997. For an extended discussion and critique, see Ben Thirkell‐White, ‘The IMF, Good Governance and Middle‐Income Countries’, European Journal of Development Research, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2003), pp. 99–125.
Ibid.
Manuel Guitian, The Unique Nature and Responsibilities of the International Monetary Fund, International Monetary Fund Pamphlet Series No. 31, IMF, Washington DC, 1992.
For discussion of implementation problems, see Tony Killick, Ramani Gunatilaka & Ana Marr, Aid and the Political Economy of Policy Change (Routledge/ODI, 1998); and IMF, Strengthening Country Ownership of Fund‐Supported Programmes, paper prepared by the Policy Development and Review Department, 5 December 2001, available at http://www.imf.org.
Charles Taylor, ‘Invoking civil society’, in: Charles Taylor (ed.), Philosophical Arguments (Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 204–24.
IMF, Good Governance: The IMF's Role, p. 2.
Two particularly good selections are the special edition of The Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol. 26, No. 5 (1998); and Richard Robison, Mark Beeson, Kanishka Jayasuriya & Hyuk‐Rae Kim (eds), Politics and Markets in the Wake of the Asian Crisis (Routledge, 2000).
For an overview of the Fund position, see IMF, World Economic Outlook Supplement: Interim Assessment (IMF, 1997). For the Fund perspective on Korea, see Tomas Jose Balino & Angel Ubide, The Korean Financial Crisis of 1997—A Strategy of Financial Sector Reform, IMF Working Paper 99/28, IMF, 1999; and the various letters of intent reproduced in Chan‐Hyun Sohn & Jungsok Yang (eds), Korea's Economic Reform Measures under the IMF Program: Government Measures in the Critical First Six Months of the Korean Crisis (Korea Institute for International Economic Policy, 1998). On Indonesia, see IMF, IMF approves stand‐by credit for Indonesia, IMF Press Release No. 97/50; and Government of Indonesia, Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies, 15 January 1998 (both available at http://www.imf.org).
Bruce Cumings, ‘The Korean Crisis and the End of Late Development’, New Left Review, Vol. 231 (1998), pp. 43–72.
The literature on the developmental state is very large. For the concept in general, see Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle (Stanford University Press, 1982); and Meredith Woo‐Cummings (ed.), The Developmental State (Cornell University Press, 1999). On Korea, see particularly Alice Amsden, Asia's Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialisation (Oxford University Press, 1990); and Jung‐en Woo, Race to the Swift State and Finance in Korean Industrialisation (Columbia University Press, 1991).
See Samuel Kim (ed.), Korea's Globalization (Columbia University Press, 2000). See also John Oh, Korean Politics (Cornell University Press, 1999); and Lee Yeon‐ho, The State, Society and Big Business in Korea (Routledge, 1997).
Richard Robison, Indonesia: The Rise of Capital (Allen & Unwin, 1986); and Adam Schwarz, A Nation in Waiting: Indonesia's Search for Stability, 2nd edn (Westview, 1999).
Hal Hill, The Indonesian Economy since 1966: Southeast Asia's Emerging Giant (Cambridge University Press, 1996); and World Bank, The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy (World Bank, 1993).
Robert Hefner, Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton University Press, 2000); and Richard Robison, ‘Politics and markets in Indonesia’s post‐oil era', in: Gary Rodan, Kevin Hewison & Richard Robison (eds), The Political Economy of Southeast Asia (Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 29–63.
Compare reports in Business Korea, Vol. 12, No. 4 (1998) with the speeches reproduced in Sohn & Yang, Korea's Economic Reform Measures.
Kim‐Dae‐Jung, Mass Participatory Economy: A Democratic Alternative for Korea (Center for International Affairs, Harvard University and University Press of America, 1985).
See Financial Times, 14 January 1998.
See Tripartite Commission, ‘Second Statement by the Tripartite Commission’, reproduced in Sohn & Yang, Korea's Economic Reform Measures.
Ibid.
See the results of a Korea Development Institute survey reported in a government press release of 16 January 1998, reproduced in Sohn & Yang, Korea's Economic Reform Measures. On public perceptions of the crisis more generally, see Doh Chull Shin & Richard Rose, Responding to Economic Crisis: The 1998 New Korea Barometer Survey (Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, 1998).
Dong a Hbo, 5 December 1997.
On the negotiation process and US influence, see John Matthews, ‘Fashioning a New Korean Model Out of the Crisis: The Rebuilding of Institutional Capabilities’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol. 22, No. 6 (1998), pp. 747–59; and Cumings, ‘The Korean Crisis and the End of Late Development’.
James Cotton & Kim Hyung‐a Van Leest, ‘The new rich and the new middle class in South Korea: the rise and fall of the “Golf Republic” ’, in: Richard Robison & David Goodman (eds), The New Rich in Asia (Routledge, 1996), pp. 185–203.
See particularly Chung‐In Moon & Jongryn Mo, Economic Crisis and Structural reforms in South Korea: Assessments and Implications (Economic Strategy Institute, Washington DC, 2000).
For accounts based on extensive high‐level interviews, see Eva Riesenhuber, The International Monetary Fund under Constraint: Legitimacy of its Crisis Management (Kluwer Law International, 2000); and Paul Blustein, The Chastening: Inside the Crisis that Rocked the Global Financial System and Humbled the IMF (Public Affairs, 2000).
Riesenhuber, The International Monetary Fund under Constraint; and Schwarz, A Nation in Waiting.
The best available account of the politics of Suharto's fall is Hefner, Civil Islam; on the political economy of the crisis, see Richard Robison & Mark Rosser, ‘Surviving the meltdown: liberal reform and political oligarchy in Indonesia’, in: Richard Robison et al., Politics and Markets in the Wake of the Asian Crisis, pp. 171–91.
See Michel Camdessus, ‘Transcript of a Final Press Conference’, Washington DC, 8 February 2000, available at http://www.imf.org.
On the appeal of economic nationalism and its influence on the post‐crisis reform process, see Richard Robison, ‘The politics of financial reform: recapitalising Indonesia’s banks', Murdoch University, mimeo, 2000.
Jakarta Post, 21 May 1999.
Compare the reports of PDI‐P policy from a survey of party activists reproduced in the Financial Times, 13 May 1999 and Megawati's interview with the South China Morning Post, 19 May 1999.
See Ian Kearton, David Beetham, Erika Harris, Yulius Hermawan, J. Smookler & Ben White, A Desk Study on Governance in Indonesia, a report compiled for DFID Jakarta using the DFID governance assessment framework, October 2000.
Robison, ‘The politics of financial reform’, pp. 1 & 20.
See, for example, Michel Camdessus, The IMF and Human Development: A Dialogue with Civil Society (IMF, 2000).
Cumings, ‘The Korean Crisis and the End of Late Development’.
IMF, Strengthening Country Ownership of Fund‐Supported Programmes. The Fund's latest guidelines have moved away from that focus somewhat, but retain an injunction for staff to consider the ‘legitimacy’ of civil society organisations before any interaction. See IMF, Guide for Staff Relations With Civil Society.
Thomas Dawson II & Gita Bhatt, The IMF and Civil Society Organizations: Striking a Balance, IMF policy discussion paper PDP/01/2., Washington DC, 2001, p. 23.
The latest Fund guidelines are very explicit in discouraging staff from engaging in this kind of activity (see the executive summary that starts IMF, Guide for Staff Relations With Civil Society). Nonetheless, it may be difficult to draw a sharp line in practice between merely explaining what the Fund's preferred policy is to civil society groups that are inclined to approve of it and joining sides with civil society against the government.