Representative Bureaucracy in IMF and World Bank

• In Event: Diversity and Bureaucratic Behavior

Abstract

How do countries derive power and influence inside global economic governance institutions, and how representative are these institutions of their broader constituencies? To what extent do the formal balances of power and representation within these institutions change as member states’ relative balance of global economic power and population have shifted over time? How well are poorer countries – the ostensible beneficiaries of these institutions’ mandates – represented in important decision-making authority or other positions of influence beyond the meager voice afforded by the weighted voting systems within the executive boards of these two Bretton Woods agencies?
Much of the previous research on this issue focuses on the readily quantifiable formal measures of power and representation such as voting subscriptions, financial contributions (via subscriptions or trust fund contributions) and control over top leadership positions (namely World Bank President and IMF Managing Director. Drawing from the representative bureaucracy literature in public administration theory with application to international organizational literature, our research broadens the horizon by examining newly collected primary data from 2000-2019 on staffing “beneath the tip of the iceberg.” Using an original dataset that includes data on staff nationality, gender, and education (discipline and university of highest level degree) at multiple ranks and units within these organizations, we assess to what extent member states who lack formal power vis-à-vis voting shares or executive roles are represented (via national staff or staff educated in their countries) positions within the organizations in ways that provide the potential for other forms of ideational or material influence over policy and operational practice. We will also perform network analysis to study how bureaucrats interact with each other and its impact on policymaking in these organizations. This will allow us to re-examine the perceived representativeness (or lack thereof) of the IMF and World Bank bureaucracies by quantifying the effects of staffing over time and building a more efficient proxy of country influence and power in global economic governance institutions.

Authors

• Catherine Weaver, University of Texas, Austin

• Harshal Zalke, Princeton University