The IMF and the World Bank have integrated a large number of countries into the world economy by requiring governments to open up to global trade, investment, and capital. They have not done this out of pure economic zeal. Politics and their own rules and habits explain much of why they have presented globalization as a solution to challenges they have faced in the world economy.—from the Introduction
The greatest success of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank has been as globalizers. But at whose cost? Would borrowing countries be better off without the IMF and World Bank? This book takes readers inside these institutions and the governments they work with. Ngaire Woods brilliantly decodes what they do and why they do it, using original research, extensive interviews carried out across many countries and institutions, and scholarship from the fields of economics, law, and politics.
The Globalizers focuses on both the political context of IMF and World Bank actions and their impact on the countries in which they intervene. After describing the important debates between U.S. planners and the Allies in the 1944 foundation at Bretton Woods, she analyzes understandings of their missions over the last quarter century. She traces the impact of the Bank and the Fund in the recent economic history of Mexico, of post-Soviet Russia, and in the independent states of Africa. Woods concludes by proposing a range of reforms that would make the World Bank and the IMF more effective, equitable, and just.
Ngaire Woods is a Tenured Fellow at University College, Oxford, and Director of the Global Economic Governance Programme at Oxford University. She is the editor of The Political Economy of Globalization and Explaining International Relations since 1945 and the coeditor of Inequality, Globalization, and World Politics.
Table of Contents
Introduction1. Whose Institutions? 2. The Globalizing Mission3. The Power to Persuade4. The Mission in Mexico5. Mission Creep in Russia6. Mission Unaccomplished in Africa7. Reforming the IMF and World BankReferencesIndex
What People are Saying About This
Louis W. Pauly
No other book provides such an elegant introduction to the principal lending operations of both the IMF and the World Bank. With exceptional clarity and grace, Ngaire Woods strikes a balance between analysis and constructive criticism. Her portrait of the contemporary evolution of the policies and practices of the IMF and World Bank seamlessly integrates an impressive range of research and journalistic coverage.
Richard Higgott
The Globalizers is an outstanding study of the relationships among the IMF, the World Bank, and their clients. Ngaire Woods presents rich empirical stories and strong analytical insights into the role and mission of these institutions and their relationships. This is a book for those with genuinely open minds about this most complex of subjects.