Global Justice And The Bretton Woods Institutions PDF Download

Abstract: My dissertation focuses on the problem of global justice (or cosmopolitanism) and its implications for international economic institutions, namely, the IMF and the World Bank. This is a topic that has recently attracted the attention of large audiences in academia, government and the general public. In the first part of my work, I explore theories of global economic justice in connection with questions of democratic governance. I focus especially on the governance of Bretton Woods institutions and I analyze rules affecting quota distributions, voting procedures and loan conditionality. The use of the latter by the IMF and the World Bank should call for heightened awareness of the biases that may result when implementing loan conditions in the developing world. Yet I find that global justice theorists tend to discuss the question of economic justice only at a highly abstract level. As a consequence, they have largely overlooked the power distortions implicit in the Bretton Woods regime. I then discuss some statist critiques of cosmopolitanism, which prove to be illuminating with respect to the past roles played by great powers in shaping the structures and policies of international financial institutions. I suggest ways in which both cosmopolitan and statist approaches could complement each other. The second part of the dissertation evaluates an empirical case of cosmopolitan activism. It describes the transnational advocacy campaign against "structural adjustment" (or neo-liberal policy conditionality) by the IMF and the World Bank. Drawing on the literature on social movements and the constructivist school of international relations theory, I argue that over the last three decades campaigners against neo-liberalism have incorporated many of the justice concerns raised by cosmopolitan theorists. As part of their strategy to reverse Bretton Woods sponsored neo-liberal reforms, I suggest activists have also grasped the necessity to engage with state actors in the global periphery. In the last chapter, I analyze the implications of global justice debates for the future of Bretton Woods and I review reform proposals that, critics believe, would contribute to increased fairness in the governance of international financial regimes.