and parcel to rationalist approaches. However, limiting rationalism to a set of predetermined
material goals constrains its usefulness. Allowing for the inclusion of socially-determined
preferences, derived from constructivism would enrich rationalism while preserving much of its
theoretical core. A sequencing model would allow for preference identification from both
rationalist assumptions and constructivist theorizing, while analyzing the pursuit of those
preferences through rationalist focuses on strategic interaction and similar methods. In the case
of MDBs generally and the IDB specifically, sociological institutionalism offers the beginnings
of an understanding of lending preferences for its member states. Principal-agent theory offers a
clear, broad, multilevel framework for understanding how preferences move from citizens to
governments to IOs and emerge as policy.
Sociological Institutionalism and Lending Preferences
Sociological institutionalism argues that the spread of a Weberian norm of legality and
rationality provides a focus for understanding state preferences. This culture emphasizes justice,
framed as equality and expressed in bureaucracy, and progress, perceived as economic growth
and embodied in markets (Finnemore 1996a). States exist in an international social system that
shapes how they see the world and what their roles are. International society socializes states to
want certain things. As states and the international social system are mutually constituted, states’
preferences shape the system as much as they are shaped by the system.
However, sociological institutionalists focus more on the second process. They argue
that so much the rationalist concentration on agency requires that it be balanced by study on the
role of international social structures. Sociological institutionalists squarely emphasize the
deterministic nature of structure in the agent-structure debate (Finnemore 1996b). Fortunately,
scholars like Finnemore attempt to pave the way for a middle ground between SI’s structural
Convention