Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: How are seats allocated on the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Executive Board? Are seats determined by strategic power politics, as realists would contend; by economic and class interests, as critical theorists would argue; or by bureaucratic considerations, as organizational theorists would insist? The theoretical debate on this issue is lively, with hypothesizing taking place on every front. What is sorely lacking, however, is empirical evidence of actual practice. Developing an evidence-based understanding of the manner in which IMF member states gain access to seats at the Executive Board is particularly crucial now, given the centrality of this issue to current debates about the very future of the IMF itself. As part of a multi-case study, this paper will present historical context to this current policy dilemma, illustrating the political process involved in getting a seat at the Executive Board. This research will also build methodological bridges between the various theoretical paradigms used to examine decision-making bodies in international organizations. The core of the project will be an analysis of the process of IMF Executive Board seat allocation, with special focus on four countries that have gained seats since the late 1970s: Saudi Arabia (1978), China (1980), Russia (1992), and Switzerland (1992). The addition of these particular seats expanded the IMF Executive Board from the 20 mandated by the IMF’s Articles of Agreement to its current 24 seat composition. Why did the IMF Executive Board expand beyond its mandated number to include these members? Through a rigorous comparative political-historical analysis, this study will put the IMF’s technical, rules-based argument for how seats are allocated to the test. The project uses content-analysis of the IMF’s own internal Archive documents (including Executive Board minutes, staff technical studies, and Board decisions); of declassified US government documents acquired using Freedom of Information Act requests from the State and Treasury Departments, and of transcripts of personal interviews with IMF staff, Executive Directors, US officials, other governments’ officials, and policy insiders.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Who or what governs? To answer this question, we use city government spending patterns to determine the relative effect of economic, political, institutional and bureaucratic influences on policy. Everything except actual needs influences outputs.

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In 2005, foreign aid flows from industrialized donor countries to the developing world topped $100 billion, and aid remains an important, if at times controversial, instrument for financing global development. This paper presents a theoretical framework for understanding variations in donor commitments to using foreign aid to reduce poverty worldwide. The resources and collective mobilization efforts of domestic aid constituencies represent an initial determinant of aid policy choices. The demands that these aid constituencies advance are then filtered through a set of political institutions that regulate how societal interests access the policymaking process and determine how power is distributed among governmental actors. The level of a state’s commitment to poverty reduction via aid then results from the interactions between governmental actors with unique preferences on aid issues and varying power to promote these preferences. Brief treatments of development assistance policymaking in Denmark, Switzerland, France, and the United States offer an initial illustration of the application of the framework to the study of donor aid choices.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The question of which values public officials should use in making decisions affecting public agencies is a relatively unexplored issue of American politics. For elected officials, some aspects of the issue seem simple. For example, voters might expect that Democrats and Republicans would pursue quite different solutions to scope-of-government and to regulatory issues. Similarly, Presidents scrutinizing public agencies while taking care “that the Laws be faithfully executed” or members of Congress performing the oversight function for public agencies would be expected to take political stances congruent with their parties’ programs.