Controlling the World Bank and IMF : Shareholders, Stakeholders, and the Politics of Concessional Lending

Liam Clegg provides an innovative reading of where power lies in the institutions' concessional lending operations, drawing its focus on shareholders and stakeholders from staffs' own understandings of their operational environments.

With the concessional lending operations of the World Bank and IMF having expanded dramatically in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, Liam Clegg provides a timely analysis of the institutional dynamics shaping this aspect of the institutions'' operations. Drawn from staffs'' own understandings of their operational environments, the volume explores the dynamics of power surrounding these activities. As shareholder states continue to push the institutions to demonstrate their effective contribution to global poverty reduction, they alter the opportunities available for a range of stakeholders to shape operational practice in these key arenas of global economic governance. By demonstrating that current developments are serving to tilt the balance in the ''asymmetric accommodation'' between shareholders and stakeholders towards the former, the author highlights some of the most controversial areas of World Bank and IMF operations.