Multilateral lending institutions and transnational policy networks in Mexico and Chile

Global Governance

Volumn 13, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 557-573

  Teichman, Judith ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO   (Canada)

Author keywords

Chile; Inter American Development Bank; Mexico; Poverty; World Bank

Indexed keywords

EID: 37349122554     PISSN: 10752846     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/19426720-01304008     Document Type: Review

References (50)

1. On the close collaboration between borrower country officials and multilateral officials in economic policymaking, see Judith A. Teichman, The Politics of Freeing Markets in Latin America: Chile, Argentina and Mexico (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001);
2. and Ngaire Woods, The Globalizes: The IMF, the World Bank and Their Borrowers (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).
3. Much of the information presented in this article was obtained through a series of open-ended interviews. Twenty-eight interviews were carried out in 2005 with officials in the international organizations involved in the Mexican and Chilean poverty programs: fourteen for the World Bank and fourteen for the Inter-American Development Bank and the consultant agency it worked with and paid for, the International Food Policy Research Institute. Of these twenty-eight, four interviewees had worked in at least two of these international organizations. The work also draws from interviews with country officials and civil society activists: twenty-one Chilean and thirty-three Mexican; these were carried out in 2003 and 2004. Because a pledge of confidentiality was given as a condition of these interviews, only descriptive, non-identifying characteristics are given. Financial support for this research from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada is gratefully acknowledged.
4. In addition to programs in Mexico and Chile, these include: Nicaragua (Red de Protección Social), Colombia (Familias en Acción), Ecuador (Bono Solidario), Brazil (Bolsa Familia), Argentina (Plan Familias), Costa Rica (Superemos), Honduras (PRAF), El Salvador (Red Solidaria), the Dominican Republic (Solidaridad), Jamaica (PATH), and Peru (Juntos).
5. R. A. W. Rhodes and David Marsh, "Policy Networks in British Politics," in David Marsh and R. A. W. Rhodes, eds., Policy Networks in British Government (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 8.
6. During the past decade, private flows to less developed countries have amounted to five times the total official development aid. Catherine Weaver and Ralf J. Leiteritz, "Our Poverty Is a World Full of Dreams': Reforming the World Bank," Global Governance 11, no. 3 (2006): 373.
7. Jeffrey Puryear, Thinking Politics: Intellectuals and Democracy in Chile (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996);
8. Miguel Ángel Centeno, Democracy Within Reason: Technocratic Revolution in Mexico (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997).
9. Carlos M. Urzúa, "Five Decades of Relations Between the World Bank and Mexico," in Devesh Kapur, John P. Lewis, and Richard Webb, eds., The World Bank: Its First Half Century, vol. 2: Perspectives (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1997), pp. 4, 82.
10. The multilaterals are also closely involved in discussions with country officials on a variety of other social issues, including many for which there may not be any lending. These include pension and health care reform, educational reform, and indigenous issues. The extent of multilateral influence in other social policy realms awaits further research.
11. For example, Tony Killick, IMF Programmes in Developing Countries (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 121;
12. and Paul Mosely, Jane Harrigan, and John Toye, Aid and Power: The World Bank and Policy Based Lending, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 68.
13. Two authors making this argument are Sebastian Edwards, Crisis and Reform in Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 41;
14. and Miles Kahler, "External Influence, Conditionality and the Politics of Adjustment," in Stephan Haggard and Robert R. Kaufman, eds., The Politics of Economic Adjustment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 123.
15. An example of the former is Michael Goldman, Imperial Nature: The World Bank and the Struggle for Social Justice in the Era of Globalization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005);
16. and of the latter is Judith Teichman, "The World Bank and Policy Reform in Mexico and Argentina," Latin American Politics and Society, 46, no. 1 (2004).
17. In Chile, between 1990 and 2000, poverty was reduced from 38.6 percent of the population to 20.67 percent, but extreme poverty persisted at 6 percent. In 2000, poverty in Mexico stood at 41.1 percent of the population with a level of inequality comparable to that of Chile's. Comisión Económica para América Latina (CEPAL), Panorama social en América Latina, 2002-2003: Anexo estadístico (Santiago: CEPAL, 2003), p. 282.
18. This was a more important reason in the Chilean case than in the Mexican case, where preserving the program from one administration to the next was identified by all key actors interviewed as the most important reason. This is discussed further below.
19. Paul Nelson, "Whose Civil Society? Whose Governance? Decisionmaking and Practice in the New Agenda at the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank," Global Governance 6, no. 4 (2000): 407. The information in this and the following paragraph draws from Nelson and from author interviews of four IADB officials.
20. "Disbursement culture" refers to the Bank's drive to develop and disburse loans, because that is the measurement of the Bank's success and the quantitative measurement by which career advancement occurs. Paul J. Nelson, Access and Influence: Tensions and Ambiguities in the World Bank's Expanding Relationship with Civil Society Organizations (Ottawa: North-South Institute: 2002);
21. and Goldman, Imperial Nature, p. 110.
22. For a discussion of the PRI government's stiff resistance to civil society involvement in projects funded by the World Bank, see Manuel Fernández de Villegas and Naomi Adelson, "Civil Society Participation in World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank Programs," Global Governance 6, no. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 2000).
23. The information in this paragraph comes from interviews with three senior-level Finance officials and two senior Social Development Ministry officials.
24. This information comes from interviews with five civil society leaders and six members of Congress.
25. The four umbrella civil society organizations most involved in social policy are the following: two on the left (FAM [Forum for Mutual Support] and Convergence of Civil Organizations for Democracy); one on the political right and the private sector (CEMEFI [Mexican Center for Philanthropy]); and one linked to the PRI (Fundación Miguel Alemán).
26. The information in this and the following paragraph is drawn from interviews with seven IADB and IFPRI officials and three Mexican officials.
27. That IADB official was Nora Lustig, then senior policy adviser and head of the poverty and inequality unit of the IADB. Lustig had many close contacts in Mexico (she had taught for many years at the Colegio de México) and was a close friend of Gómez de León.
28. See the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), "Is PROGRESA Working: Summary of the Results of an Evaluation of IFPRI" (Washington, DC: IFPRI, 2000), p. 43.
29. The information in this paragraph was obtained from interviews with three Mexican officials, three IADB officials, and two World Bank officials.
30. The IADB operational units are divided geographically into Regional Departments I, II, and III. At the time of this research, the Mexican programs were managed by the Mexico specialists in Regional Department II.
31. Each phase involved a loan of $1.0 billion.
32. The information in this and the following paragraph is drawn from interviews with four IADB officials and two Mexican officials.
33. The key IADB official behind this change was driven largely by the view that the program would be more sustainable in the long term with such an approach.
34. For explicit reference to the requirement that Mexico implement the new National Targeting Model, see IADB, "Mexico: Multiphase Program for the Consolidation and Expansion of Oportunidades Human Development Program, Phase II (ME-L1007), Evaluation Report," p. 3.
35. IFPRI researchers also apparently worked with the IADB officials to ensure that the statistical method of beneficiary selection remains in place.
36. While some of the early PROGESA people, such as Levy, were still in the picture, the ongoing discussion had succeeded in bringing over a number of the Fox appointees to support the program as originally conceived. Those who did not get on board, such as Fox's first PROGRESA head, were replaced, producing once again a tightly knit group of cooperative policymakers.
37. IADB wanted a different set of conditions for the cash transfers to the urban poor, and it wanted a change in the nutritional supplement for urban dwellers.
38. According to three civil society leaders interviewed.
39. Chile objected to the IADB's insistence on outside (foreign consultant) evaluation of the program (interview with IADB senior official).
40. The information in this and the following paragraph is drawn from interviews with two senior-level Finance Ministry officials.
41. The information in this section was obtained from interviews with three senior-level government officials and three World Bank officials.
42. These viewpoints, the subject of ongoing discussions from the late 1990s, are reflected in World Bank, "Chile, Household Risk Management and Social and Human Development Protection" (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003).
43. The information in this paragraph comes from two senior-level officials, one middle-level official of MIDEPLAN, and two World Bank officials.
44. The information in this and the following paragraph comes from interviews with the leaders of four civil society organizations and three senior-level government officials.
45. Those who submitted written commentary critical of Chile Solidario included Acción (Asociación Chilena de Organismos no Gubernamentales, an umbrella organization for seventy NGOs) and Hogar de Cristo. The Fundación para la Superación de la Pobreza was also critical.
46. This information comes from interviews with four senior-level officials, two each from the Finance and Planning ministries.
47. The information in this paragraph is from interviews with four civil society leaders and two World Bank officials.
48. The Bank's position was that approval from the Social Planning Ministry would have to be forthcoming before the loan would be made.
49. See World Bank, Human Development Management Unit, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay Country Management Unit, Latin American and Caribbean Region, "Projected Appraisal Document on a Proposed Social Protection Technical Assistance Loan in the Amount of $10.71 Million to the Republic of Chile" (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003), p. 9.
50. This information is from interviews with two senior-level Chilean officials and two World Bank officials.