The United States and the International Financial Institutions: Power and Influence Within the World Bank and the IMF (original) (raw)

The United States enjoys a special position in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. When the institutions were created, their structure, location, and mandate were all pretty much determined by the United States. 1 The United States had just over a third of the voting power in each institution. 2 No drawing from the IMF was approved without US agreement first being made clear. 3 These observations suggest that the US was set to play a dominant role in the institutions. Yet neither the Fund nor the Bank can be cast as a mere instrument of US policy. To some extent the institutions were created in order to propound and enforce US-supported aims and policies around the world. It is also true that the Fund and the Bank exist because their 'neutral and apparently technical advice may be less offensive to national sentiments than direct intervention by the United States', in the case of the World Bank 'sparing the USA the unsavory epithets of. .. "aid with strings", "arm-twisting political pressures" etc.'. 4 However, if the organizations had absolutely no autonomy, they would be redundant, for they would have no greater legitimacy or mobilizing power than government agencies of the US. The very creation of multilateral organizations reflects the fact that, in order to propound a vision of the global economy, the participation of a large number of states in the world is required. Such participation in turn requires that a wide range of countries believe in the institutions' legitimacy: that they perceive the institutions to proffer a particular technical expertise as well as a certain degree of independence, a genuinely international character, and actions which are rule-based rather than reflecting US discretionary judgements. Susan Strange once described multilateral institutions serving either as 'instruments of the structural strategy and foreign policy of the dominant state or states' or to provide necessary public goods: 'allowing states to enjoy the political luxury of national autonomy