(Page 28 of 28) - Getting a Seat at the IMF Executive Board Table: Strategic, Economic, or Bureaucratic Politics? authored by Momani, Bessma.

the purposes of the Fund's quota calculations including: missing time series of data, communist
measures of GDP (which did not include services and were based on artificial prices), inflated
Soviet exchange rates used in data sets, and, of course, inter-republican trade data. Similarly, the
Swiss position as a financially important country did not fit neatly into the quota calculations
without distorting numbers and quotas of other states. The staff wanted to work through these
difficulties to achieve the appropriate, technical numbers. The staff insisted, particularly in the
case of Switzerland, on being universal and fair across the membership.

The Executive Board- led by the G7, and most notably the United States who all wanted

burden-sharing in the case of Russia, had appeared relieved when the Russians fabricated the
data needed. Again, for the Board this politicization was for the greater good of the institution
and, arguably in their eyes, for the long-term economic and political stability of the world. The
Board accepted that when it comes to getting a seat at the board and determining quota allocation
a political, in their words ‘qualitative’ or ‘judgmental’, factor was an acceptable part of IMF
tradition. Indeed, as Mikesell’s tale of the history of IMF quota allocation first noted, despite the
presence of quantitative and technical formulas, the IMF worked backwards: ranking members’
relative power position at the board and then using the technical figures to justify the received
stature. Getting Russia a seat at the IMF table took considerable politicking and bending the
variables used in technical formulas to produce a quota allocation commensurate with the
prestige of its sole constituency-free seat at the Executive Board. The Swiss, on the other hand,
could not get the numbers to justify its sole seat at the board, because it would have disrupted an
existing balance created at the board and would have opened up a significant amount of debate
on how to measure global economic importance.

Finally, the cases of Russia and Switzerland getting a seat at the board helps enrich

existing debates among bureaucratic organization theorists, realists, and delegation theorists on
determinants of IO decision-making. Both cases support bureaucratic organization theorists’
findings that the IMF is a self-proclaimed technical and quantitatively-modeling institution.
However, the staff’s ideational power was no measure to the heavy politicization by the
Executive Board and, more important perhaps, to the outer political pressure from G7 capitals
and the United States. It was difficult, although still possible, for the Executive Board to
politicize the institution’s technical mandate when geostrategic interests were deemed to be at
risk. To suggest, as many realists do, that the IMF staff are pawns of the Executive Board greatly
underestimates their intellectual and technical autonomy in the institution. It is clear that there is
a need for better appreciation of the impact of the IMF staff’s technocratic character on IMF
decision-making. To this end, delegation theory indeed provides a useful bridge between the
constructivist-rationalist divide. Delegation theory accepts the possibility for autonomous staff
behaviour, particularly when IO staff are delegated technical tasks, but correctly notes that
principals will rein in IO staff when powerful members’ interests are at risk. The IMF’s
institutional design, a small Executive Board tilted in favour of US and G7 power, facilitates an
oversight on the technically oriented staff.