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What Governments Want from International Economic Institutions and How they Get It

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Nicholas Bayne
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MANY INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS, FOUNDED DURING OR JUST AFTER the Second World War, are passing their fiftieth anniversaries, which have become the occasions for reviewing their past performance and looking into the future. This has already happened for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, launched at Bretton Woods in 1944; and for the United Nations (UN), inaugurated in 1945. The fiftieth anniversary of the Marshall Plan, the origin (at one remove) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), falls in the summer of 1997. The anniversary of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is not till 1998. But the end of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations and the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have already prompted some backward looks.

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Government and Opposition , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , July 1997 , pp. 361 - 379
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Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1997

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References

1 Government and Opposition, as so often, was ahead of the field in such reviews. A series of articles in 1991–93 looked at the GAIT, the IMF and the OECD. These were: Bayne, Nicholas, ‘The Uruguay Round of International Trade Negotiations’ [the GATT], Government and Opposition, Vol. 26, No. 3, Summer 1991, pp. 302–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crockett, Andrew, ‘The International Monetary Fund in the 1990s’, Government and Opposition, Vol. 27, No. 3, Summer 1992, pp. 267–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Henderson, David, ‘International Economic Cooperation Revisited’ [the OECD], Government and Opposition, Vol. 28, No. 1, Winter 1993, pp. 11–35 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This series was the idea of Ghita lonescu, to whose memory this article is dedicated.

2 For reviews of these institutions see: James, Harold, International Monetary Cooperation Since Bretton Woods, Washington, International Monetary Fund, 1996 Google Scholar; Kenen, Peter B. (ed.), Managing the World Economy: Fifty Years After Bretton Woods, Washington, Institute for International Economics, 1994 Google Scholar; Croome, John, Reshaping the World Trading System, Geneva, World Trade Organization, 1995 Google Scholar; Roberts, Adam and Kingsbury, Benedict, United Nations, Divided World, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2nd ed., 1993 Google Scholar; Brian Urquhart and Erskine Childers, A World in Need Leadership ‐ Tomorrow’s United Nations; Towards a More Effective United Nations; and Renewing the United Nations System, Uppsala, Dag HammarskjÖld Foundation, 1990–94. Reviews of the UN have tended to concentrate on political and organizational matters rather than economic issues – but see note 7 below.

3 The IMF and the World Bank are the only global bodies with this weighted voting structure. But it also occurs in regional development banks, including the EBRD.

4 Central Banks are also represented at the IMF, though in a supporting rather than a leading role. Some north European countries, including the UK, involve their development ministries in their World Bank delegations.

5 This detachment of the European Community from the IMF cannot persist once the euro is in use. Michel Camdessus, the IMF Managing Director, has expressed concern at the impact of the euro on the IMF, while Yves de Silguy, the responsible European Commissioner, has recognized that more work needs to be done on this; Financial Times, 19 March and 24 April 1997.

6 The rule applies strictly for negotiations on trade in goods, where Article 113 of the European Union Treaty applies. It is less clear for trade in services; in practice the member states allow the Commission to remain the chief negotiator, but take more of a part themselves.

7 For a critique of the UN’s economic programmes, see Arnold, Tim, Reforming the UV: Its Economic Role, London, Royal Institute of International Affairs, Discussion Paper No. 57, 1995 Google Scholar. Five years after the UN Conference on Environment and Development of June 1992, the record of meeting commitments made there is disappointing. Although all EC countries undertook to stabilize their omissions of greenhouse gases at 1990 levels by 2000, only Germany and the UK are likely to meet that target. See Financial Times, 9 and 27 January, 3 March 1997.

8 This is an example of the ‘two‐level games’ first analysed by Robert D. Putnam in his influential article, ‘Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two‐Level Games’, International Organisation, Vol. 42, 1988, pp. 427–60.

9 Single sector negotiations can succeed, however, as shown by the conclusion of WTO agreements on liberalizing telecommunications services in February and on abolishing tariffs on information technology products in March 1997, Financial Times, 17 February and 27 March 1997.

10 The annual G7 summits also provide an opportunity for mutual encouragement among their members. Thatcher, Margaret, The Downing Street Years, London, Harper Collins, 1993, p. 290 Google Scholar, records her decision to leave the 1983 election campaign to attend the Williamsburg summit, because it would ‘lend international endorsement to the sort of policies we were pursuing’. She did the same in 1987 to go to the Venice summit –Downing Street Years, pp. 586–7.

11 No Western government has had to negotiate a programme with the IMF since the 1970s. Thus this paragraph essentially applies to developing and former communist countries. The IMF is often criticized as giving too much priority to restrictive, anti‐ inflationary fiscal and monetary policies in these countries, at the expense of growth and development. This criticism comes more often from academic writings and from NGOs (as in a recent OXFAM report) than from Western governments themselves; and Michel Camdessus has vigorously defended the IMF’s record, Financiul Times, 18 and 25 April 1997. But the new Labour government in the UK may be more sympathetic to these arguments.

12 The UN’s chronic financial problems are the first preoccupation of Kofi Annan, the new UN Secretary‐General. At the OECD, Donald Johnstone has been obliged to bring in budget cuts of 10 per cent, with perhaps more to follow. Neither institution could contemplate a programme such as proposed by James Wolfensohn at the World Bank, which initially proposed spending $250 million on restructuring, since cut back by about a half. See Financial Times, 9 January and 18 March 1997 (UN); 27 November 1996 and 21 February 1997 (OECD); 20 February and 14 March 1997 (World Bank).

13 The IMF and World Bank now have over 180 members, almost as many as the UN itself. The WTO has 129, with a queue of some 30 more wanting to join, including China, Russia, Taiwan and Saudi Arabia. (WTO membership is not limited to sovereign states, so that Hong Kong can remain a member after its absorption into China, while Taiwan can join once China itself is in.) Even the OECD, which remained stable at 24 members for three decades, has added Mexico, the Gzech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Korea.

14 Labour Party views on international institutions generally, drawn from the Labour Party Policy Guide, October 1996, are summarized in New Labour: Because Britain Deserves Better – the 1997 Manifesto, pp. 38–39. Views on the WTO are given by Stuart Bell MP, in New Labour and a Strategy for Exports, February 1997, pp. 10–11 and by Lord Clinton‐Davis, Minister for Trade, as reported in Financial Times, 27 May 1997.

15 As for other governments, the US and France also regard themselves as insiders at the IMF and the World Bank but have more mixed views of the WTO. Klaus Engelen, in Kenen (ed.), Managing the World Economy, pp. 75–79, gives a contrastihg downbeat, German view of the IMF and the World Bank, quoting a German participant in the 1988 Berlin meeting as saying, ‘The Americans have all the power, the French get the top jobs and the Germans and Japanese come up with the money’. But Engelen is not speaking for the German government.

16 You can only be Sure with the conservatives – the Conservative Manifsto 1997, pp. 46–47. New Labour – Because Britain Deserves Better, pp. 4–5 and 37. Only the Liberal Democrats are prepared to say ‘Britain has much to gain from EU membership’–Make The Difference ‐ the Liberal Democrat Manifesto 1997, p. 57.

17 Hogg, Sarah and Hill, Jonathan, Too Close to Call, paperback edition, London, Warner Books, 1996, p. 236 Google Scholar and Plate 24. What the authors call ‘still the best summary yet produced of what John Major stands for and believes in’ contains the phrase: ‘and a Government that stands up for Britain in Europe.’

18 Howe, Geoffrey, Conflict of Loyalty, London, Macmillan, 1994, p. 447 Google Scholar, records the reaction of his ministerial colleagues in Europe. ‘“Your British people”, they would say, “are like the Kremlin. They all always say the same thing”.’

19 British preference for voluntary cooperation over supra‐nationalism in economic institutions goes back a long way. Britain’s resistance to any supra‐national elements in the post‐war Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), precursor of the OECD, stimulated France and others to launch the European Economic Community – without Britain. See Bayne, Nicholas, ‘Making Sense of Western Economic Policies – the Role of the OECD’, The World Today, Vol. 43, No. 2, 02 1987, p. 27 Google Scholar, based on Franks, Oliver, ‘Lessons of the Marshall Plan Experience’ in From Marshall Plan to Global Interdependence, Paris, OECD, 1978.Google Scholar

20 Thatcher, Downing Street Years, pp. 743–6. Howe gives his reaction in Conflict of Loyalties, pp. 537–8: ‘the speech veered between caricature and misunderstanding.’

21 Hogg and Hill, Too Close to Call, pp. 78–9. The authors note: ‘Cooperation ‐ already an important codeword for doing business outside the Brussels institutions – was the way forward for members of the European Community…. There was nothing of substance in the speech that could not have been said by Margaret Thatcher.’

22 See note 16 above for the manifesto references. Labour and Conservative statements during the election campaign reinforced this view, notably when reacting to a speech by Jacques Santer, President of the European Commission, arguing for greater European integration, Financial Times, 22 April 1997. The FCO mission statement is given in full in Financial Times, 13 May 1997.