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

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 organisations. Owning Development details the strength of these policy norms which emerge, then either stabilise or decline. The book establishes valuable insights into the strength of current development policies propounded by international organisations and the possibility for change.

Susan Park is a Senior Lecturer of International Relations at the University of Sydney. She is the author of World Bank Group Interactions with Environmentalists (2010). Dr Park has published widely on change in international financial institutions.