Are IMF lending programs good or bad for democracy?

Stephen C. Nelson () and Geoffrey P. R. Wallace ()
Additional contact information
Stephen C. Nelson: Northwestern University
Geoffrey P. R. Wallace: Rutgers University

The Review of International Organizations, 2017, vol. 12, issue 4, No 2, 523-558

Abstract: Abstract Have IMF lending programs undermined political democracy in borrowing countries? Building on the extensive literature on conditional lending, we outline several pathways through which IMF program participation might affect the levels of democracy in borrowing countries - including a new variant that suggests the possibility of a positive association between lending program participation and democracy scores. In order to test the argument we assemble annual data from 120 low- and middle-income countries observed (at maximum) in each year between 1971 and 2007. We use three strategies - genetic matching, instrumental variables, and difference-in-differences estimation - to better estimate the direction and size of the statistical association between participation in IMF lending programs and the level of democracy. We find evidence for modest but definitively positive conditional differences in the democracy scores of participating and non-participating countries.

Keywords: International organizations; International Monetary Fund; Conditional Lending; Democracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11558-016-9250-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:revint:v:12:y:2017:i:4:d:10.1007_s11558-016-9250-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... iology/journal/11558

DOI: 10.1007/s11558-016-9250-3

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of International Organizations is currently edited by A. Dreher

More articles in The Review of International Organizations from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().