Owning Development: Creating Policy Norms in the IMF and the World Bank

Cambridge University Press, 10/7/2010
EAN 9780521198950, ISBN10: 052119895X

Hardcover, 306 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm
Language: English

As pillars of the post-1945 international economic system, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank are central to global economic policy debates. This book examines policy change at the IMF and the World Bank, providing a constructivist account of how and why they take up ideas and translate them into policy, creating what we call 'policy norms'. The authors compare processes of policy emergence and change and, using archival and interview data, analyse nine policy areas including gender, debt relief, and tax and pension reform. Each chapter traces the policy norm process in order to shed light on the main sources and mechanisms for norm change within international organizations. Owning Development details the strength of these policy norms which emerge, then either stabilize or decline. The book establishes valuable insights into the strength of current development policies propounded by international organizations and the possibility for change.

Part I. Introduction
1. Owning development
creating policy norms in the IMF and the World Bank Susan Park and Antje Vetterlein
Part II. Norm Emergence
2. Internal or external norm champions
the IMF and multilateral debt relief Bessma Momani
3. From three to five
the World Bank's pension reform policy norm Veronika Wodsak and Martin Koch
4. The strategic social construction of the World Bank's gender and development policy norm Catherine Weaver
Part III. Norm Stabilization
5. Lacking ownership
the IMF and its engagement with social development as a policy norm Antje Vetterlein
6. Stabilizing global monetary norms
the IMF and current account convertibility André Broome
7. Bitter pills to swallow
legitimacy gaps and social recognition of the IMF tax policy norm in East Asia Leonard Seabrooke
Part IV. Norm Subsiding
8. The IMF and capital account liberalization
a case of failed norm institutionalization Ralf J. Leiteritz and Manuela Moschella
9. The World Bank's global safeguard policy norm? Susan Park
10. The new public management policy norm on the ground
a comparative analysis of the World Bank's experience in Chile and Argentina Martin Lardone
Part V. Conclusion
11. Do policy norms reconstitute global development? Susan Park and Antje Vetterlein.