The Globalizers: The IMF, the World Bank, and Their Borrowers - Hardcover

Ngaire Woods

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801444241 ISBN 13: 9780801444241

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2006

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

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.

From the Back Cover

"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."--Louis W. Pauly, Director, Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, author of Who Elected the Bankers?: Surveillance and Control in the World Economy

''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.''-Richard Higgott, University of Warwick, coeditor of Global Governance

"In the new global economy, do the IMF and the World Bank matter anymore? If so, why? Here is vital reading for scholars and practitioners of aid and development on what these institutions do and are meant to do, in addition to what's wrong and what's right about them today. Ngaire Woods is a careful scholar, calling on history, economics, politics, and law, as well as her own extensive interviews, to build a balanced yet compelling case for their reconstitution and revitalization. Anyone interested in what globalization is about should not miss her riveting tales of these global institutions' troubles and small victories in Mexico, Russia, and Africa."--Nancy Birdsall, President, Center for Global Development

Edition details

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801444241
• ISBN 13: 9780801444241
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272