Article Study - the Political Economy of Imf Lending in Africa

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Logic used by the author to present and defend the arguments

The above three issues are logically presented by the author along with various evidences. The basic idea behind the failure of the IMF to raise the economic conditions in Africa is that IMF has been lending money for its own benefits and not for the benefit of those weak countries.

The IMF lending has only redistributed the income from the lower section of the society to those belonging to the higher section of the society. The evidences for this can be seen in case studies of Africa, where the IMF have been recurrently lending funds to overburden the already-burdened countries.

The IMF also enforces its conditions on the countries who ask for funds. This is done to satisfy the countries who are lenders for IMF. The author provides evidence to this by discussing the case of Pakistan and United States. The second evidence to this given by the author is Turkey’s case. Turkey was not sanctioned a fund from IMF for the whole 1990s, until it had a pact with the United States to lead operations in Iraq.

The major reason for the non progressive nature of the IMF is that the countries who take funds from IMF have to abide with certain conditions to be fulfilled by them.

Personal assessment

The author is basically searching for the probable reasons of the failure of the IMF in bringing progress to economically weak African countries. The author claims that IMF is lending money to African countries for past 30 years still there seems to be no development.

The author has focused on the major issues that led to such situation. He had discussed various facts proving that IMF had just become a medium through which stronger countries use the weaker countries on the basis of their monitory power. The stronger countries lend money to IMF for funding. IMF lends money to economically weaker countries. For getting funds from IMF, the weaker countries have to abide with certain conditions enforced on them to fulfill the requirements of the stronger countries. This is the cause defined for the failure of IMF by the author.

References

- Stone, R. W. (2004). The political economy of IMF lending in Africa. American Political Science Review, 98(04), 577-591.

- Steinwand, M. C., & Stone, R. W. (2008). The International Monetary Fund: A review of the recent evidence. The Review of International Organizations, 3(2), 123-149.