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Holding Intergovernmental Institutions to Account

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Ngaire Woods
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Abstract

How can governments and peoples better hold to account international economic institutions, such as the WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF? This article proposes an approach based on public accountability, advocating improvements in four areas: constitutional, political, financial, and internal accountability.

The argument for more accountability is made with two caveats: more accountability is not always good–it can be distorting and costly; and, enhancing the accountability of international institutions should not justify increasing their jurisdiction for the sake of reducing the role of national governments. Constitutional accountability poses limits on how the institutions expand their activities, requiring the active consent of all members and particularly those most affected by their activities. Political accountability requires that those who make decisions in the organizations are directly answerable to all member governments and not just to the most powerful ones. The institutions' uneven record and structure of financial accountability is addressed through a model of mutual restraint. Finally, the internal accountability should ensure that technical decisions are distinguishable from political decisions. A better matching of the right kinds of accountability to the activities of the organizations would improve both their effectiveness and legitimacy.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , March 2003 , pp. 69 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2003

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References

1 Meltzer Commission, “Report of the International Financial Institutions Advisory Commission” (Washington, D.C., 2000); available at http://www.house.gov/jec/imf/meltzer.htm.

2 Held, David, “Law of States, Law of Peoples: Three Models of Sovereignty,” Legal Theory 8 (March 2002), PP 1–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 This is more elegantly argued by Dahl, Robert A., “Can International Organizations Be Democratic? A Skeptic's View,” in Shapiro, Ian and Hacker-Cordón, Casiano, eds., Democracy's Edges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 33Google Scholar.

4 Kapur, Devesh, “Who Gets to Run the World?” Foreign Policy (2000), pp. 44–50Google Scholar; and Kahler, Miles, Leadership Selection in the Major Multi-laterals (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 2001Google Scholar).

5 Locke, Mary, “Funding the IMF: The Debate in the U.S. Congress,” Finance and Development 37 (September 2000), pp. 56–59Google Scholar.

6 Gwin, Catherine, “U.S. Relations with the World Bank, 1945–1992,” in Kapur, Devesh, Lewis, John Prior, and Webb, Richard Charles, eds., The World Bank: Its First Half Century, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1997), p. 195–274Google Scholar.

7 Kapur, Devesh, “Expansive Agendas and Weak Instruments: Governance Related Conditionalities of the International Financial Institutions,” Journal of Policy Reform 4, no. 3 (2001), pp. 207–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 World Trade Organization, “Multilateral Agreements on Trade in Goods,” 1994; available at http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/legal_e.htm#goods.

9 See Petersmann, Ernst-Ulrich, “The Transformation of the World Trading System through the 1994 Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization,” European Journal of International Law 6, no. 2 (1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; available at http://www.ejil.org/journal/Vol6/No2/artl.html.

10 Collier, Paul, “Learning from Failure: The International Financial Institutions as Agencies of Restraint in Africa,” in Schedler, Andreas, Diamond, Larry, and Plattner, Marc, eds., The Self-Restraining State: Power and Accountability in New Democracies (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1999), pp. 313–32Google Scholar.

11 See my argument against this form of governance in Woods, Ngaire, “Global Governance and the Role of Institutions,” in Held, David and McGrew, Anthony, eds., Governing Globalization: Power, Authority and Global Governance (Maiden, Mass.: Polity Press, 2002), pp. 25–45Google Scholar.

12 See House of Commons Treasury Committee, “International Monetary Fund: A Blueprint for Parliamentary Accountability: Government Response to the Committee's Fourth Report of Session 2000–01,” November 26,2001, House of Commons Paper no. 379 (London: The Stationery Office, 2001); available at http://www.parliament.uk/commons/selcom/trepnto8.htm; Bretton Woods Project Proposal to the House of Commons Development Committee, “International Development: Appendices to the Minutes of Evidence,” Appendix 2, February 10, 2000 (London: The Stationery Office, 2000); available at http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmintdev/251/251apO3.htm; and Bank Information Center, “Who is Governing the Governors? Globalization, Governance, and Democracy” (Washington, D.C.: 2000); available at http://www.bicusa.org/ptoc/htm/jordan_governance.htm.

13 Indeed, the Commonwealth Secretariat's review of the role of parliaments in holding governments to account makes no mention of overseeing international institutions. See Commonwealth, “Activities”; available at http://www.thecommonwealth.org/activities/democ.html.

14 Daws, Sam and Stewart, Frances, Global Challenges: An Economic and Social Security Council at the United Nations (London: Christian Aid, 2000Google Scholar) proposes such a forum for different, more expansive rather than accountability purposes, as does Erskine Childers, “An Agenda for Peace and an Agenda for Development: The Security Council and the Economic and Social Council in the UN Reform Process” (speech given at “Colloquium on the United Nations at Fifty: Whither the Next Fifty Years?” European Parliament, Brussells, September 8,1995); available at http://www.globalpolicy.org/resource/pubs/childer2.htm.

15 The counter case has been forcefully argued in Pogge, Thomas, “Achieving Democracy,” Ethics & International Affairs 15, no. 1 (2001), pp. 3–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; in Pogge, Thomas W., World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002Google Scholar); and in Beitz, Charles, Political Theory and International Relations, rev. ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999Google Scholar).

16 See Corporatión Andina de Fomento, “About CAP,” September 11, 2002; available at http://www.caf.com/view/index.asp?ms=o&pageMs=4306.

17 We can contrast the experience of the Latin American Reserve Fund and its difficulties in increasing its members' contributions. See Latin American Reserve Fund, “Who Are We?”; available at http://www.comunidadandina.org/ingles/who/flar.htm.

18 de Gregorio, José et al. , An Independent and Accountable IMF (Geneva: International Centre for Monetary and Banking Studies, 1999Google Scholar); and Great Britain Department for International Development, Eliminating World Poverty: Making Globalization Work for the Poor: White Paper on International Development (London: The Stationery Office, 2000).

19 Kunibert Raffer, “Introducing Financial Accountability at the IBRD: An Overdue and Necessary Reform” (paper presented at the conference “Reinventing the World Bank,” May 14–16,1999, Northwestern University, I11.); available at http://www.worldbank.nwu.edu/papers/raffer.rtf.

20 These points are made by Daniel Bradlow. See Working Group on Institutional Reform in Global Financial Governance, “Report of October 2002 Meeting”; available at http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ntwoods/wg3.htm.

21 Devesh Kapur, “Who Gets to Run the World?”; and Kahler, Leadership Selection in the Major Multilateral.