How International Organizations Frame Global Inequality

• In Event: Talking About Markets

Abstract

Inequality is a defining feature of the global political economy; incomes are distributed more unequally globally than they are within any nation-state and the single largest predictor of a person’s income is the state they were born in. Yet while economic inequality has generated considerable political mobilization within domestic politics, there has been comparatively little mobilization around mitigating global inequality at the global level. International organizations play a key role in both legitimating and potentially reducing global inequality. This paper examines how IOs and NGOs have framed global inequality and investigates the relationship between their framing of global inequality and concrete programming and practices related to that topic.

Drawing on the methods of discourse analysis, I analyze each organization’s policy and related writings and public statements on the topic of global inequality. I find that while inequality has come to occupy an increasingly prominent position within economic IOs’ agendas, there is considerable variation in how inequality is discussed. The IMF and World Bank focus almost exclusively on within-country inequality, whereas the UN and ILO are increasingly attuned to between-country inequality. Moreover, IO discourse on inequality tends to frame it primarily as an impediment to economic growth to be addressed via national policy, rather than a moral issue requiring transnational mobilization. I contend that the national focus on IO inequality policy legitimates between-country inequality even as it is aimed at reducing within-country inequality. These findings point to potential tradeoffs between reducing national and global inequality and emphasize the connections between how inequality is framed and how it is responded to through policy and practice.

Author

• Erin Lockwood, University of California, Irvine