IMF and its role in International Political Economy Political economy is not a new word for us because of the close relationships between politics and the economy. The development in politics is due to the development in society and the development in society is mostly driven by the economy. The parallel existence and mutual interaction of ‘state’ and ‘market’ in the modern world creates ‘political economy’; without both state and market there could be no political economy (Gilpin, 2003, P9). Market allocates resources to a particular group, class or region where conditions are most favorable. As a consequence, market economies result in the uneven development both domestically and internationally. As our issue is about international …show more content…
Under this program, Saudi Arabia and other oil exporting countries have provided significant resources derived from their balance-of-payment surplus to poor countries. When oil prices quadrupled in 1973-1974, the IMF used assets from the surpluses of the oil-exporting countries to provide assistance to countries that faced a significant increase in the cost of energy imports (Goddard, 2003, P249, Par. 4). The IMF also offered financing assistance, which was known as large stand-by arrangements to industrial countries like Italy and the U.K. The reason was these countries, to some extent, could not adjust their policies to manage the price shock successfully. The wide-spread oil price rise would have been an unexpected negative impact on world economy, but the situation could be much worse without the on-time policies made by the IMF. Even though the IMF played an important role in dealing with the oil price shock, defects still existed. As Anne Krueger, the Acting Managing Director of the IMF, said in a report: “Failure to heed warnings by the Fund will inevitably lead to crisis in some causes. Crisis in individual countries have been frequent, but they have rarely brought widespread description to the global financial system. I come back to my point: that the multilateral framework put in place in the post-war decades has served the international economy well. (Krueger, June3 2004)” The price shock
Argentina is a well known case study of the failure or negative outcome of some IMF's standard policies. In fact, Argentina carefully applied policies dictated by IMF, but, until it stuck up with those policies, it couldn't step out from its crisis, and it ran into even deeper economic and social problems. This failure of the IMF has often been cited as the demonstration of unsuitability of the standard IMF approach (the usual so-called Washington Consensus) for solving economic crisis in developing countries (Serra & Stiglitz, 2008, p. 44). Also, this failure led to hostile feelings versus IMF among the population of Argentina (Kanenguiser, 2000) and fueled generalised suspects over IMF decision-making process being politicized and serving
This notion cannot be under-estimated when determining the wealth of the nation and political ideologies plays key role in the economies state. The outline of present political economy on labor have questioned on viability to useful strategies that can address influence of labor in the economy. Spreading available labor lowers available unemployment crisis unlike solving the state of the society in terms of income rather than increasing secondary labor market. Likewise movement of global capital toward low tax jurisdictions results to incredible government attempt to redistribute income on non-labor markets. Therefore, there has to be employed strand of thoughts in political economy with a suitable policy response to any developments in the
The international political economy can be defined as having three different ideologies, Liberalism, Mercantilism, and Marxism. I personally believe the economic liberalism ideology is superior to the others due to its success. In order to understand why economic liberalism is the most convincing ideology of the international political economy we must look not only at the core principles of said ideologies but towards the history of the international political economy and the flaws and shortcomings of them.
Global Political Economy is essentially a study of a political battle between the winners and losers of global economic exchange. In fact, understanding global economy relies on a clear knowledge of the process of political competition. Political power possessed by actors regulates economic activity and in turn this creates the basis for and affects political power. Through, critical analysis of the concept of global political economy it becomes clear that there are three prominent theories that form GPE, mercantilism, economic liberalism and Marxism.
Several oil-countries have been facing economic and political turbulence as a result of the crash in oil prices, and there is disagreement among OPEC as how to handle the situation. (Krauss) While this is happening, America’s oil production continues to rise, as it inches closer to becoming an energy superpower in production and consumption; and countries that depend on their oil exports face recession.
The US was willing to go to extreme lengths to protect such an asset, and likely would do so again. This prompts the much valuable question, ‘If the United States did not depend so heavily in foreign oil would our economy be so fragile?
AIPA 2: UNDERSTANDING ACTORS, INTERESTS & POWER Institutions Basic level – states exist to provide (1) defence and (2) social order this requires the presence of a functioning economy. State not only produces, consumes and redistributes; it’s also the main source and enforcer of “rules of games”. “Rules of games” are institutions institutional quality is related to economic performance. Evidence: No country has gotten rich with bad institutions. Politics Politics is the process of creating new institutions. Existing institutions create a constraint on this process. Political processes can be analysed in terms of Actors involved in the processes, their interests and their relative power (AIP). Actors: Political,
International political economy is an important subdiscipline of international relation. It has three main ideologies, Liberalism, Mercantilism and Marxism. In this essay there will be three parts, first part is to demonstrate what the Liberalism and Mercantilism are on the perspective of international political economy and then the second part is to compare and contrast these two ideologies of political economy. At last, give a conclusion to the Liberalism and Mercantilism.
This unequal distribution of wealth and income has reignited centuries old debate among economist about the type of market system that should govern the global political economy—a self-directing market system or a state driven market economy. This paper, takes the side of the latter, arguing that the liberal economic project is based on flawed assumptions, which in effect must be reevaluated. Contrary to the so-called “established facts ” that underpin the liberal economic system,
By merely glancing at the political systems across the world, it becomes clear that politics and the economy are inextricably tied. Both are institutions that maintain some sort of balance between freedom and equality, and both are associated with a variety of ideologies regarding what the best balance is (O’Neil 2013, 101 & 112). We often see how politics and economics influence each other, with policy focusing on economic regulation, and a country’s economy reflecting how well the state can operate.
To understand exactly what we mean by ‘politics’ means we must first unpack it. ‘Politics’ is defined in the Oxford English dictionary as ‘the activities associated with the governance of a country or area, especially the debate between parties having power’ (Soanes: 2004). We can break this into two parts: (1) the activities associated with governance of a country or area, and (2) the debate between parties having power. I will suggest that the ABSM pays less attention to the activities associated with governance over an area, and more attention to the deliberative process between institutions. While political economy analysis, as a concept analyses politics by taking into account the ideas and institutions which drive an actor’s interests outside of a well-defined system. In contrast, the ABSM simply attempts to understand what constitutes the drivers of interest. The ABSM recognises that in order to work within complex construction of politics there must be an understanding of the drivers of interest. Yet it fails to take into account a comprehensive understanding of politics. Even the broadest definition of politics accounts for the factors which govern the drivers of interest in complex and competing ways.
The definition of political economy is not simple. This essay uses the definitions given by Vincent Mosco and explores its origin in Greek and inspiration from the Classical Political Economy. Apart from the Classical Political Economy, this essay also describes other forms of this approach, such as Critical Political Economy and Neoclassical Political Economy. Latter the characteristics of political economy study are also discussed based on Vincent Mosco’s work in the 1990s.
This paper was prepared for GD530 Economics and the International System, taught by Professor Snow
Political economy is the study of production and trade and their links with custom, government and law. It is the study and use of how economic theory and methods influence and develop different social and economic systems, such as capitalism, socialism and communism, and it analyzes how public policy is created and implemented. Since various individuals and groups have different interests in how a country or economy is to develop, political economy as a discipline is a complex field, covering a broad array of potentially competing interests (Investopedia).
In the year of 1327, Kind Edward III of England defaulted on his Italian debts. This caused the banks of Bardi and Peruzzi in Florence to collapse. Who would know that over 650 years later, the world would still have these types of problems? After World War II, the need for an organization like the IMF was finally realized. After the war, politicians and economists began to work on blue prints for a postwar world. They envisioned a liberal international economic order, based on stable world currencies and revived world trade. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) finally came into existence on December 27, 1945. On this date, twenty-nine