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Do domestic politics shape U.S. influence in the World Bank?

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Abstract

This paper investigates whether U.S. presidential administrations choose to exert more influence over international financial institutions when they have less control over bilateral aid because of a divided U.S. government. Reexamining four empirical studies of the World Bank, we demonstrate that findings of U.S. influence are driven by the years in which the U.S. government was divided. This provides a richer picture of when and why the U.S. exerts influence in multilateral settings and an alternate explanation to persistent questions about the role of international organizations in the international political economy.

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  • Erasmus Kersting & Christopher Kilby, 2016. "Do domestic politics shape U.S. influence in the World Bank?," Villanova School of Business Department of Economics and Statistics Working Paper Series 28, Villanova School of Business Department of Economics and Statistics.
    • Handle: RePEc:vil:papers:28
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    Cited by:

    1. Kaya, Ayse & Kilby, Christopher & Kay, Jonathan, 2021. "Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank as an instrument for Chinese influence? Supplementary versus remedial multilateralism," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    2. Balázs Szent-Iványi & Bernhard Reinsberg & Simon Lightfoot, 2019. "Small Donors in World Politics: The Role of Trust Funds in the Foreign Aid Policies of Central and Eastern European Donors," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 31(3), pages 663-683, July.
    3. Erasmus Kersting & Christopher Kilby, 2019. "The rise of supplemental lending at the World Bank," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(4), pages 1655-1698, November.
    4. Axel Dreher & Katharina Michaelowa, 2008. "The political economy of international organizations," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 3(4), pages 331-334, December.
    5. Bernhard Reinsberg, 2017. "Xu, Jiajun. 2017. Beyond US Hegemony in International Development: The Contest for Influence at the World Bank. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 491-495, September.
    6. Christopher Kilby & Carolyn McWhirter, 2022. "The World Bank COVID-19 response: Politics as usual?," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 627-656, July.
    7. Oliver Westerwinter & Kenneth W. Abbott & Thomas Biersteker, 2021. "Informal governance in world politics," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 1-27, January.
    8. Haibo Ruan & Li Qiu & Jun Chen & Shuo Liu & Zhiyuan Ma, 2022. "Government Trust, Environmental Pollution Perception, and Environmental Governance Satisfaction," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(16), pages 1-18, August.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    World Bank; Divided Government; Geopolitics of Aid;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F35 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Aid
    • F53 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Agreements and Observance; International Organizations
    • O19 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - International Linkages to Development; Role of International Organizations

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