Insiders versus outsiders on IMF surveillance teams
Protests in Iceland in 2010. In 2006, the IMF praised the stability of Iceland’s financial system.
The IMF spends much of its time monitoring national economies. But who exactly does the work? In the current issue of Governance, Leonard Seabrooke and Emelie Rebecca Nilsson use innnovative methods to look at struggles over the composition of IMF surveillance teams. The IMF’s failure to anticipate the crisis seemed to illustrate the need for increased private sector expertise on these teams. But IMF staff successfully resisted this initiative, limiting the number of private sector experts included on the teams. The pushback reduced the risk that outside experts would jeopardize IMF staff influence over the substance of surveillance activities. Read the article.
