The assistance of outside advisers—independent of the international financial institutions—had played a role in Botswana’s success even earlier. Botswana would not have fared as well as it did if its original contract with the South African diamond cartel had been maintained. Shortly after independence, the cartel paid Botswana $20 million for a diamond concession in 1969, which reportedly returned $60 million in profits a year. In other words, the payback period was four months! A brilliant and dedicated lawyer seconded to the Botswana government from the World Bank argued forcefully for a renegotiation of the contract at a higher price, much to the consternation of the mining interests. De Beers (the South African diamond cartel) tried to tell people that Botswana was being greedy. They used what political muscle they could, through the World Bank, to stop him. In the end, they managed to extract a letter from the World Bank making it clear that the lawyer did not speak for the Bank. Botswana’s response: That is precisely why we are listening to him. In the end, the discovery of the second large diamond mine gave Botswana the opportunity to renegotiate the whole relationship. The new agreement has so far served Botswana’s interests well, and enabled Botswana and De Beers to maintain good relations.
Ethiopia and Botswana are emblematic of the challenges facing the more successful countries of Africa today: countries with leaders dedicated to the well-being of their people, fragile and in some cases imperfect democracies, attempting to create new lives for their peoples from the wreckage of a colonial heritage that left them without institutions or human resources. The two countries are also emblematic of the contrasts that mark the developing world: contrasts between success and failure, between rich and poor, between hopes and reality, between what is and what might have been.
I BECAME AWARE of this contrast when I first went to Kenya, in the late 1960s. Here was a rich and fertile country, with some of the most valuable land still owned by old colonial settlers. When I arrived, the colonial civil servants were also still there; now they were called advisers.
As I watched developments in East Africa over the ensuing years, and returned for several visits after becoming chief economist of the World Bank, the contrast between the aspirations in the 1960s and the subsequent developments were striking. When I first went, the spirit of uhuru, the Swahili word for freedom, and ujama, the word for self-help, were in the air. When I returned, the government offices were staffed by well-spoken and well-trained Kenyans; but the economy had been sinking for years. Some of the problems—the seemingly rampant corruption—were of Kenya’s own making. But the high interest rates which had resulted from its following IMF advice, as well as other problems, could rightly be blamed at least in part on outsiders.
Uganda had begun the transition in perhaps better shape than any of the others, a relatively rich coffee-growing country, but it lacked trained native administrators and leaders. The British had allowed only two Africans to rise to the level of a master sergeant in their own army. One of them, unfortunately, was a Ugandan named Idi Amin, who ultimately became General Amin in Uganda’s army and overthrew Prime Minister Milton Obote in 1971. (Amin enjoyed a certain measure of British confidence thanks to his service in the King’s African Rifles in World War II and in Britain’s struggle to suppress the Mau-Mau revolt in Kenya.) Amin turned the country into a slaughterhouse; as many as 300,000 people were killed because they were considered opponents of the “President for Life”—as Amin proclaimed himself in 1976. The reign of terror by an arguably psychopathic dictator ended only in 1979 when he was toppled by Ugandan exiles and forces from neighboring Tanzania. Today, the country is on the way to recovery, led by a charismatic leader, Yoweri Museveni, who has instituted major reforms with remarkable success, reducing illiteracy and AIDS. And he is as interesting in talking about political philosophy as he is in talking about development strategies.
BUT THE IMF is not particularly interested in hearing the thoughts of its “client countries” on such topics as development strategy or fiscal austerity, let alone politcal philosophy. All too often, the Fund’s approach to developing countries has had the feel of a colonial ruler. A picture can be worth a thousand words, and a single picture snapped in 1998, shown throughout the world, has engraved itself in the minds of millions, particularly those in the former colonies. The IMF’s managing director, Michel Camdessus (the head of the IMF is referred to as its “Managing Director”), a short, neatly dressed former French Trea-sury bureaucrat, who once claimed to be a Socialist, is standing with a stern face and crossed arms over the seated and humiliated president of Indonesia. The hapless president was being forced, in effect, to turn over economic sovereignty of his country to the IMF in return for the aid his country needed. In the end, ironically, much of the money went not to help Indonesia but to bail out the “colonial power’s” private sector creditors. (Officially, the “ceremony” was the signing of a letter of agreement, an agreement effectively dictated by the IMF, though it often still keeps up the pretense that the letter of intent comes from the country’s government!)
Defenders of Camdessus claim the photograph was unfair, that he did not realize that it was being taken and that it was viewed out of context. But that is the point—in day-to-day interactions, away from cameras and reporters, this is precisely the stance that the IMF bureaucrats take, from the leader of the organization on down. To those in the developing countries, the picture raised a very disturbing question: Had things really changed since the “official” ending of colonialism a half century ago? When I saw the picture, images of other signings of “agreements” came to mind. I wondered how similar this scene was to those marking the “opening up of Japan” with Admiral Perry’s gunboat diplomacy or the end of the Opium Wars or the surrender of maharajas in India.
The stance of the IMF, like the stance of its leader, was clear: it was the font of wisdom, the purveyor of an orthodoxy too subtle to be grasped by those in the developing world. The message conveyed was all too often clear: in the best of cases there was a member of an elite—a minister of finance or the head of a central bank—with whom the Fund might have a meaningful dialogue. Outside of this circle, there was little point in even trying to talk.
A quarter of a century ago, those in the developing countries might rightly have given some deference to the “experts” from the IMF. But just as there has been a shift in the military balance of power, there has been an even more dramatic shift in the intellectual balance of power. The developing world now has its own economists—many of them trained at the world’s best academic institutions. These economists have the significant advantage of lifelong familiarity with local politics, conditions, and trends. The IMF is like so many bureaucracies; it has repeatedly sought to extend what it does, beyond the bounds of the objectives originally assigned to it. As the IMF’s mission creep gradually brought it outside its core area of competency in macroeconomics, into structural issues, such as privatization, labor markets, pension reforms, and so forth, and into broader areas of development strategies, the intellectual balance of power became even more tilted.
The IMF, of course, claims that it never dictates but always negotiates the terms of any loan agreement with the borrowing country. But these are one-sided negotiations in which all the power is in the hands of the IMF, largely because many countries seeking IMF help are in desperate need of funds. Although I had seen this so clearly in Ethiopia and the other developing countries with which I was involved, it was brought home again to me during my visit to South Korea in December 1997, as the East Asia crisis was unfolding. South Korea’s economists knew that the policies being pushed on their country by the IMF would be disastrous. While, in retrospect, even the IMF agreed that it imposed excessive fiscal stringency, in prospect, few economists (outside the IMF) thought the policy made sense.3 Yet Korea’s economic officials remained silent. I wondered why they had kept this silence, but did not get an answer from officials inside the government until a subsequent visit two years later, when the Korean eco
nomy had recovered. The answer was what, given past experience, I had suspected all along. Korean officials reluctantly explained that they had been scared to disagree openly. The IMF could not only cut off its own funds, but could use its bully pulpit to discourage investments from private market funds by telling private sector financial institutions of the doubts the IMF had about Korea’s economy. So Korea had no choice. Even implied criticism by Korea of the IMF program could have a disastrous effect: to the IMF, it would suggest that the government didn’t fully understand “IMF economics,” that it had reservations, making it less likely that it would actually carry out the program. (The IMF has a special phrase for describing such situations: the country has gone “off track.” There is one “right” way, and any deviation is a sign of an impending derailment.) A public announcement by the IMF that negotiations had broken off, or even been postponed, would send a highly negative signal to the markets. This signal would at best lead to higher interest rates and at worst a total cutoff from private funds. Even more serious for some of the poorest countries, which have in any case little access to private funds, is that other donors (the World Bank, the European Union, and many other countries) make access to their funds contingent on IMF approval. Recent initiatives for debt relief have effectively given the IMF even more power, because unless the IMF approves the country’s economic policy, there will be no debt relief. This gives the IMF enormous leverage, as the IMF well knows.
The imbalance of power between the IMF and the “client” countries inevitably creates tension between the two, but the IMF’s own behavior in negotiations exacerbates an already difficult situation. In dictating the terms of the agreements, the IMF effectively stifles any discussions within a client government—let alone more broadly within the country—about alternative economic policies. In times of crises, the IMF would defend its stance by saying there simply wasn’t time. But its behavior was little different in or out of crisis. The IMF’s view was simple: questions, particularly when raised vociferously and openly, would be viewed as a challenge to the inviolate orthodoxy. If accepted, they might even undermine its authority and credibility. Government leaders knew this and took the cue: they might argue in private, but not in public. The chance of modifying the Fund’s views was tiny, while the chance of annoying Fund leaders and provoking them to take a tougher position on other issues was far greater. And if they were angry or annoyed, the IMF could postpone its loans—a scary prospect for a country facing a crisis. But the fact that the government officials seemed to go along with the IMF’s recommendation did not mean that they really agreed. And the IMF knew it.
Even a casual reading of the terms of the typical agreements between the IMF and the developing countries showed the lack of trust between the Fund and its recipients. The IMF staff monitored progress, not just on the relevant indicators for sound macromanagement—inflation, growth, and unemployment—but on intermediate variables, such as the money supply, often only loosely connected to the variables of ultimate concern. Countries were put on strict targets—what would be accomplished in thirty days, in sixty days, in ninety days. In some cases the agreements stipulated what laws the country’s Parliament would have to pass to meet IMF requirements or “targets”—and by when.
These requirements are referred to as “conditions,” and “conditionality” is a hotly debated topic in the development world.4 Every loan document specifies basic conditions, of course. At a minimum, a loan agreement says the loan goes out on the condition that it will be repaid, usually with a schedule attached. Many loans impose conditions designed to increase the likelihood that they will be repaid. “Conditionality” refers to more forceful conditions, ones that often turn the loan into a policy tool. If the IMF wanted a nation to liberalize its financial markets, for instance, it might pay out the loan in installments, tying subsequent installments to verifiable steps toward liberalization. I personally believe that conditionality, at least in the manner and extent to which it has been used by the IMF, is a bad idea; there is little evidence that it leads to improved economic policy, but it does have adverse political effects because countries resent having conditions imposed on them. Some defend conditionality by saying that any banker imposes conditions on borrowers, to make it more likely that the loan will be repaid. But the conditionality imposed by the IMF and the World Bank was very different. In some cases, it even reduced the likelihood of repayment.
For instance, conditions that might weaken the economy in the short run, whatever their merits in the long, run the risk of exacerbating the downturn and thus making it more difficult for the country to repay the short-term IMF loans. Eliminating trade barriers, monopolies, and tax distortions may enhance long-run growth, but the disturbances to the economy, as it strives to adjust, may only deepen its downturn.
While the conditionalities could not be justified in terms of the Fund’s fiduciary responsibility, they might be justified in terms of what it might have perceived as its moral responsibility, its obligation to do everything it could to strengthen the economy of the countries that had turned to it for help. But the danger was that even when well intentioned, the myriad of conditions—in some cases over a hundred, each with its own rigid timetable—detracted from the country’s ability to address the central pressing problems.
The conditions went beyond economics into areas that properly belong in the realm of politics. In the case of Korea, for instance, the loans included a change in the charter of the Central Bank, to make it more independent of the political process, though there was scant evidence that countries with more independent central banks grow faster5 or have fewer or shallower fluctuations. There is a widespread feeling that Europe’s independent Central Bank exacerbated Europe’s economic slowdown in 2001, as, like a child, it responded peevishly to the natural political concerns over the growing unemployment. Just to show that it was independent, it refused to allow interest rates to fall, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The problems partly arose because the European Central Bank has a mandate to focus on inflation, a policy which the IMF has advocated around the world but one that can stifle growth or exacerbate an economic downturn. In the midst of Korea’s crisis, the Korean Central Bank was told not only to be more independent but to focus exclusively on inflation, although Korea had not had a problem with inflation, and there was no reason to believe that mismanaged monetary policy had anything to do with the crisis. The IMF simply used the opportunity that the crisis gave it to push its political agenda. When, in Seoul, I asked the IMF team why they were doing this, I found the answer shocking (though by then it should not have come as a surprise): We always insist that countries have an independent central bank focusing on inflation. This was an issue on which I felt strongly. When I had been the president’s chief economic adviser, we beat back an attempt by Senator Connie Mack of Florida to change the charter of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank to focus exclusively on inflation. The Fed, America’s central bank, has a mandate to focus not just on inflation but also on employment and growth. The president opposed the change, and we knew that, if anything, the American people thought the Fed already focused too much on inflation. The president made it clear that this was an issue he would fight, and as soon as this was made clear, the proponents backed off. Yet here was the IMF—partially under the influence of the U.S. Treasury—imposing a political condition on Korea that most Americans would have found unacceptable for themselves.
Sometimes, the conditions seemed little more than a simple exercise of power: in its 1997 lending agreement to Korea, the IMF insisted on moving up the date of opening Korea’s markets to certain Japanese goods although this could not possibly help Korea address the problems of the crisis. To some, these actions represented “seizing the window of opportunity,” using the crisis to leverage in changes that the IMF and World Bank had long been pushing; but to others, these were simply acts of pure political might, extracting a concession, of limited value, simply as a demonstration of who was
running the show.
While conditionality did engender resentment, it did not succeed in engendering development. Studies at the World Bank and elsewhere showed not just that conditionality did not ensure that money was well spent and that countries would grow faster but that there was little evidence it worked at all. Good policies cannot be bought.
Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited Page 21