Politics and IMF Conditionality

Axel Dreher, Jan Egbert Sturm, James Raymond Vreeland

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

85 Scopus citations

Abstract

Bailouts sponsored by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are famous for their conditionality: in return for continued installments of desperately needed loans, governments must comply with austere policy changes. Many have suggested, however, that politically important countries face rather weak stringency. Obstacles to testing this hypothesis include finding a measure of political importance that is not plagued by endogeneity and obtaining data on IMF conditionality. We propose to measure political importance using temporary membership on the UN Security Council and analyze a newly available data set on the level of conditionality attached to (a maximum of) 314 IMF arrangements with 101 countries over the 1992–2008 period. We find a negative relationship: Security Council members receive about 30 percent fewer conditions. This suggests that the major shareholders of the IMF trade softer conditionality in return for political influence over the Security Council.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)120-148
Number of pages29
JournalJournal of Conflict Resolution
Volume59
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 19 2015
Externally publishedYes

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Business, Management and Accounting(all)
  • Sociology and Political Science
  • Political Science and International Relations

Keywords

  • IMF
  • United Nations Security Council
  • conditionality

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Politics and IMF Conditionality'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this