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BRINGING BALANCE TO THE IMF REFORM DEBATE
I. Proposal
summary:
"Balancing the IMF Reform Debate" is a project
designed to organize regional workshops, a culminating global conference,
and high-level roundtable meetings in Washington. All of these events are
designed to provide opportunities for leading voices from developing-country
governments, academics, and civil society organizations to propose their own
agenda for the IMF -- both in reformed policies and in how it should
be governed. Bringing Balance promotes greater participation,
transparency and accountability of a global institution noted for its secrecy.
It brings Southern voices to the table to influence the agenda for the Fund’s
policies and governance. A reformed Fund will be more democratic in form and
more effective in improving the lives of the poorest people and countries.
The following meetings took place: September 2007 in Beijing for Asia, March
2008 Jordan for the Middle East and North Africa, and
April 2008
Washington, DC for Latin America and Caribbean.
The recommendations fed back from these workshops
will be pulled together and reviewed in the spring and presented in the summer
at a Centre for International Governance Innovation
(CIGI)/New Rules conference on July 19, 2008 in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, site
of CIGI headquarters. This culminating conference will consider both the
feedback from the regional events as well as issues that transcend national and
regional issues. The outcome of the Waterloo conference will be presented at
high-level roundtables in Washington aimed at U.S. policymakers, at the
Executive Board of the IMF, and in October 2008 at the Governors of the IMF and
World Bank during their annual meetings. New Rules’ work along with
others will bring leading voices together to:
1)design the
content of IMF reform for their countries and regions
2) plan a global
conference where regional recommendations and global, systemic recommendations
are shared and shaped
3) execute the
global conference itself, with its follow-on implementation strategy
II. Background
There is wide
consensus that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) requires reform. Its
governance reflects the political powers of 1944; its largest “customers,” the
emerging market economies (EMEs), have taken out expensive self-insurance rather
than submit to its policy requirements, leaving only the low income countries (LICs)
subject to its oversight and policy requirements. Indeed the new Managing
Director (MD), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, begins his Interim Work Program by
assuring the Executive Board that “I have aimed to impart a renewed sense of
urgency to the reform of the Fund.” (14 December 2007). Despite this broad
consensus, the debate on IMF reform has been shaped largely by conversations
within and among OECD countries and orthodox or mainstream economists. Largely
absent have been the views, interests and priorities of developing countries,
the IMF’s “customers.”
Before detailing
the specific strategy and processes of this project, it is important to address
two important questions:
1) Is the Fund
needed?
Yes. Financial
crises harm the poorest people and countries the most. The poorest countries
face a regular cycle of financial crises, often linked to commodity prices,
crises that wipe out years of growth within months and require many years to
rebuild up to the level when the crisis struck. There is no other global
institution designed to address global financial crises, and the world needs
one.
2) Is the Fund
reformable?
Yes. It will
require a lot of work, involving outsider and insider pressure, governance
reform, clarification of functions, and commitment by all member countries to
use it to promote the common good of global financial stability that supports
equitable and sustainable growth, rather than to protect narrow, short-term
national interests.
III. Design &
Implementation
The Bringing
Balance project process and content will be characterized by academic rigor and
excellence, but its outcomes will be designed to change reality, not just to
analyze it. This project provides arenas where the Fund’s “customers,” the
developing countries, can speak of their countries’ and their regions’ needs and
priorities. The partner organizations of this project—New Rules for Global
Finance Coalition, the CIGI, Oxford University Global Economic Governance (GEG)
program—are facilitators and rapporteurs of these conversations.
Regional events and
their corresponding partners include:
-
September 2007: Beijing, China,
for Asian Emerging Market Economies, organized by Center for Economic
Governance Programme, Oxford University, and Peking University
-
March 2008: Amman, Jordan, for
North Africa and the Middle East, organized by Centre for International
Governance Innovation at the UN University
-
April 10,2008:
Washington, DC, for Latin America
and the Caribbean, organized by New Rules for Global Finance Coalition
and Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University, in collaboration
with Global Economy and Development Program, Brookings Institution
-
May 20-21, 2008: Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan,
for Central Asia, Turkey and Mongolia, organized by New Rules, Center for
Social and Economic Research (CASE), Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic, Public Policy
Research Center (PPRC), Almaty, Kazakhstan, with the Open Society
Institutes’ Central Asia Program
-
May 16, 2008:
Maputo, Mozambique for
Sub-Saharan Africa, organized by New Rules, African Economic Research
Consortium, and Debt Relief International
The culminating
event in June 2008 at CIGI headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, will be a
global conference, bringing together all the regional voices with their
recommendations, along with a few additional experts in global finance, who
together will consider ways to prevent, or at least predict and ameliorate the
impact of, global financial crises. New Rules and CIGI will co-edit
policy-relevant papers for use in advocacy work, including to share US
presidential campaign advisors, journalists, the IMF’s Board of Governors and
Executive Board, and within the Financing for Development follow-on process
ending in Doha, Qatar on November 29 through December 2, 2008. CIGI and
Oxford’s GEG will use the materials from this project to produce an edited
academic book.
Additional work by
New Rules will take the conclusions of this process to: 1) the Washington
policy arena for a seminar for presidential campaign advisors, congressional
staff, financial journalists, 2) an informal seminar for the IMF Board of
Directors, 3) to the IMF Board of Governors and the International Monetary and
Finance Committee (IMFC) prior to the 2008 Annual Meetings of the IMF and World
Bank, and 4) into the broader arena of the International Conference on Financing
for Development scheduled for November 29-December 2, 2008 in Doha, Qatar. |
