Archive for the ‘Special Issues’ Category
How ‘delegation deals’ build state capacity
In the current issue of Governance, Aila Matanock of the University of California, Berkeley asks whether governance delegation agreements — international treaties by which states cede legal authority to external actors for fixed terms — can be effective in statebuilding. The answer, she concludes, is yes, largely because these “delegation deals” have domestic support from a ruling coalition. Matanock draws on statistical analysis of United Nations missions as well as discussion of specific cases, including the Australia-led mission to the Solomon Islands undertaken in 2003, a “canonical case of full governance delegation” that “succeeded in restoring the rule of law and strengthening governance.” Read the article. The article is part of a special issue on governance in areas of limited statehood edited by Thomas Risse and Stephen Krasner.Special issue: Has crisis changed the IMF?
A forthcoming special issue of Governance (28.2, April 2015) will consider how the 2008 financial crisis has changed policy and practice within the International Monetary Fund. The special issue is co-edited by professors Cornel Ban and Kevin Gallagher of the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University.
Ban and Gallagher explain the aims of the special issue:
Recently, the IMF has been in the headlines as a critic of austerity, inequality and unrestricted capital movements. This is in stark contrast to its conventional pre-crisis image as rigid international bully imposing draconian policies on countries in trouble.
Cornel Ban and Daniela Gabor at workshop for special issue at Boston University
In the special issue of Governance, the contributors examine how extensive these changes have been in both theory and in practice and provide explanations of the resulting patterns of stability and change. They find extensive evidence that the Fund has indeed experienced a significant recalibration of its policy advice and supervision since the 2008 crisis and attribute this outcome to staff politics, the rise of the BRICS’s or shifts in the economics profession.
However, not all changes in policy doctrine traveled into the IMF’s policy practice. Moreover, deeper shifts in policy doctrine were largely tempered by the nature of the institution and the powerful interests that control its governing structure. To make these arguments, the contributions examine fiscal policy, sovereign debt policy, structural reforms, capital controls and financial sector stability.
All of the papers in the special issue are now published on Governance EarlyView:
Introduction. Recalibrating Policy Orthodoxy: The IMF since the Great Recession.
André Broome, Back to Basics: The Great Recession and the Narrowing of IMF Policy Advice
Cornel Ban, Austerity versus Stimulus? Understanding Fiscal Policy Change at the International Monetary Fund Since the Great Recession
Kevin P. Gallagher, Contesting the Governance of Capital Flows at the IMF
Daniela Gabor, The IMF’s Rethink of Global Banks: Critical in Theory, Orthodox in Practice
Aitor Erce, Banking on Seniority: The IMF and the Sovereign’s Creditors
Leonard Seabrooke and Emelie Rebecca Nilsson, Professional Skills in International Financial Surveillance: Assessing Change in IMF Policy Teams
Professors Ban and Gallagher will host a lunch discussion about the special issue on November 20, 2014, 12:30-2:00pm, at The Pardee School for Global Studies, Bay State Rd. 121, Boston. More details here. Boston University also profiles the special issue here.
Special issue: External Actors, State-Building, and Service Provision in Areas of Limited Statehood
Clinic in Somalia. Photo: The Global Fund/Didier Ruef.
The October 2014 issue of Governance (27.4) will feature a series of articles on external actors, state-building, and service provision in areas of limited statehood. All of the articles are now available online. (See links below.)
Thomas Risse of Freie Universität Berlin provides an overview of the special issue: “While virtually all polities enjoy uncontested international legal sovereignty, there are wide variations in domestic sovereignty, i.e., the monopoly over the means of violence and/or the ability of the state to make and implement policies. Most states lack domestic sovereignty and exhibit areas of limited statehood, at least in some parts of the territory or with regard to some policy-areas. Areas of limited statehood are not, however, ungoverned or ungovernable spaces where anarchy and chaos prevail, as this special issue demonstrates. The provision of collective goods and services is possible even under extremely adverse conditions of fragile or failed statehood. Read the rest of this entry »
