Abstract
There is a battle over military expenditure at the International Monetary Fund, with consistent pressure from its most powerful member for the Fund to get tough on military expenditure being pitted against lowerorder states’ invocation of the organization’s sovereignty-protecting rules and practices. While the formal victory of the lower-order states has been codified in the Fund’s relatively weak Guidelines on Military Expenditure, on a case-by-case basis policy shifts continue to be imposed on borrowers through the application of informal influence by the US Executive Director in the IMF boardroom. By integrating insights from literature exploring the tension between formal rules and informal practices in international organizations, this case study extends the understanding offered in the international relations literature of the foundations of sovereign inequality in international politics.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 117-135 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| Journal | Global Governance |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2016 |
Keywords
- Conditionality
- IMF
- Military spending
- Sovereignty
- Transparency
- US congress