Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Powerful donors and foreign policy: The role of multilateral financial institutions

Contents:

Author Info

  • Espen Villanger

Abstract

The opportunity for a powerful donor country, such as the United States, to use a multilateral financial institution (MFI) strategically in order to promote its own foreign policy goals has received little attention. The gain to a donor that is able to make the World Bank or other MFIs adapt to this donor's view on an issue can be substantial. In that case, all the contributions from the other member nations will also stand behind the MFI's stance on the particular issue, and recipients may feel compelled to comply with this massive counterpart. As a result, influencing MFIs may give much more leverage to a donor's foreign assistance in the foreign policy arena than pursuing the same goals bilaterally with the same amount of aid. We present a model where a donor tries to influence a MFI to put pressure on a recipient to comply with the foreign policy interests of the donor. This game-theoretic multi-agent model with one donor, two MFIs and one recipient illustrates the virtue of using the multilateral as an instrument in foreign policy as seen from the powerful donor's point of view. Similarly, we show how this strategic behavior is damaging for the recipient in particular and for development in general.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.cmi.no/publications/file/1917-powerful-donors-and-foreign-policy.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by CMI (Chr. Michelsen Institute), Bergen, Norway in its series CMI Working Papers with number WP 2004: 12.

as in new window
Length: 22 pages
Date of creation: 2004
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:chm:wpaper:wp2004-12

Contact details of provider:
Postal: P.O. Box 6033, N-5020 Bergen
Phone: +47 55 57 40 00
Fax: +47 55 57 41 66
Email:
Web page: http://www.cmi.no
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: Foreign policies Conditionality Unilateralism;

Find related papers by JEL classification:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Alberto Alesina & David Dollar, 1998. "Who Gives Foreign Aid to Whom and Why?," NBER Working Papers 6612, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Guth, Werner & Tietz, Reinhard, 1990. "Ultimatum bargaining behavior : A survey and comparison of experimental results," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 417-449, September.
  3. Joseph Henrich, 2000. "Does Culture Matter in Economic Behavior? Ultimatum Game Bargaining among the Machiguenga of the Peruvian Amazon," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 973-979, September.
  4. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gaechter, 1999. "Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments," CESifo Working Paper Series 183, CESifo Group Munich.
  5. David Dollar & Craig Burnside, 2000. "Aid, Policies, and Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 847-868, September.
  6. Samuel Bowles & Herbert Gintis, 2000. "Walrasian Economics In Retrospect," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 115(4), pages 1411-1439, November.
  7. Alvin E. Roth & V. Prasnikar & M. Okuno-Fujiwara & S. Zamir, 1998. "Bargaining and market behavior in Jerusalem, Liubljana, Pittsburgh and Tokyo: an experimental study," Levine's Working Paper Archive 344, David K. Levine.
  8. Espen Villanger, 2004. "Company Influence on Foreign Aid Disbursement: Is Conditionality Credible when Donors Have Mixed Motives?," Southern Economic Journal, Southern Economic Association, vol. 71(2), pages 334-351, October.
  9. Odd-Helge Fjeldstad, 2003. "What has trust got to do with it? Non-payment of service charges in local authorities in South Africa," CMI Working Papers WP 2003:12, CMI (Chr. Michelsen Institute), Bergen, Norway.
  10. Wiig, Arne & Kolstad, Ivar, 2005. "Lowering barriers to agricultural exports through technical assistance," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 185-204, April.
  11. Svensson, Jakob, 2003. "Why conditional aid does not work and what can be done about it?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 381-402, April.
  12. Ivar Kolstad, 2006. "What constitutes a convention? Implications for the coexistence of conventions," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 321-336, August.
  13. Ivar Kolstad & Espen Villanger, 2004. "Determinants of foreign direct investment in services," CMI Working Papers WP 2004: 2, CMI (Chr. Michelsen Institute), Bergen, Norway.
  14. Svensson, Jakob, 2000. "When is foreign aid policy credible? Aid dependence and conditionality," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 61-84, February.
  15. Tina Søreide & Kjetil Bjorvatn, 2003. "Corruption and market reform," CMI Working Papers WP 2003:7, CMI (Chr. Michelsen Institute), Bergen, Norway.
  16. Arne Wiig, 2004. "Risk and disintermediation in tourism," CMI Working Papers WP 2004: 6, CMI (Chr. Michelsen Institute), Bergen, Norway.
  17. Kanbur, Ravi, 2002. "Conceptualizing RFI's Versus GFI's," Working Papers 127342, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
  18. Collier, Paul & Guillaumont, Patrick & Guillaumont, Sylviane & Gunning, Jan Willem, 1997. "Redesigning conditionality," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 25(9), pages 1399-1407, September.
  19. Kjetil Bjorvatn & Carsten Eckel, 2003. "Winners and losers from an international investment agreement," CMI Working Papers WP 2003:11, CMI (Chr. Michelsen Institute), Bergen, Norway.
  20. Odd-Helge Fjeldstad & Florida Henjewele & Geoffrey Mwambe & Erasto Ngalewa & Knut Nygaard, 2004. "Local government finances and financial management in Tanzania," CMI Working Papers WP 2004: 7, CMI (Chr. Michelsen Institute), Bergen, Norway.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Mavrotas, George & Villanger, Espen, 2006. "Multilateral Aid Agencies and Strategic Donor Behaviour," Working Papers DP2006/02, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:chm:wpaper:wp2004-12

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Robert Sjursen).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.