The Future of the Global Economic Organizations: An Evaluation of Criticisms Leveled at the IMF, the Multilateral Development Banks, and the Wto

Angebote / Angebote:

This book offers a careful and competent arms-length evaluation, from a legal perspective, of the main criticisms that have been leveled recently at the key global economic organisations -- that is, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and its fellow multilateral developmental banks (MDBs), and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Damning the Global Economic Organisations stands out from most of the growing body of literature on the IMF, MDBS, and the WTO in two main respects: the book's scope and the author's experience. Whereas numerous commentators have focused on particular strengths and weaknesses of one or the other of the GEOs, and have argued for changes on the basis of specific areas of operation, this book takes a wider view to examine all the GEOs at once. This broader scope reveals commonalities in the criticisms. For example, complaints about so-called 'democracy deficit' obviously can be applied to all GEOs but with different nuances in emphasis and sting. Against the background of his own experience as a legal counsel for one of the regional MDBs and for the IMF and a legal career that has focused on international economic law, Head distills the swarm of complaints leveled at the IMF, MDBS, and the WTO into 25 specific criticisms and then offers succinct explanations of why some of those criticisms should be dismissed, why some of them are valid, and how those valid criticisms should form the basis for an important restructuring of the institutions, including amendments to the charters that establish and govern their operations. Head speaks largely to three audiences here: persons in various professional positions, persons in national governments and politics around the world who are responsible for implementing their government's foreign policy, and to more general curious readers on whose involvement in civic life any society ultimately depends. The book includes several appendices: an extensive annotated survey of literature expressing and explaining criticisms of the GEOs and others reprinting the charters of all the GEOs under scrutiny.