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PONARS Eurasia
PONARS Eurasia
  • About
    • Contact
    • List of Members
    • Ukraine Experts
    • About Membership
    • Executive Committee
  • Policy Memos
    • List of Policy Memos
    • Submissions
  • Podcast
  • Online Academy
  • Events
    • Past Events
  • Recommended
  • Ukraine Experts
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RECOMMENDED
  • The Baltic States Are Also Worried About Russia

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  • International Society Must Act in the Wake of Russia’s Failed Opposition

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  • The Collapse of the Soviet Union | PONARS Eurasia Online Academy

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  • Labor Migration in Russia | PONARS Eurasia Online Academy

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  • Did Russia Put Its Geopolitical Glasses Back On? It Never Took Them Off in the First Place

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RSS PONARS Eurasia Podcast
  • The Putin-Xi Summit: What's New In Their Joint Communique ? February 23, 2022
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman speaks with Russian China experts Vita Spivak and Alexander Gabuev about the February meeting between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and what it may tell us about where the Russian-Chinese relationship is headed.
  • Exploring the Russian Courts' Ruling to Liquidate the Memorial Society January 28, 2022
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with scholars Kelly Smith and Benjamin Nathans about the history, achievements, and impending shutdown of the Memorial Society, Russia's oldest and most venerable civic organization, and what its imminent liquidation portends for the Russian civil society.
  • Russia's 2021 census and the Kremlin's nationalities policy [Lipman Series 2021] December 9, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with social scientist Andrey Shcherbak about the quality of the data collected in the recent population census and the goals of Vladimir Putin's government's nationalities policy
  • Active citizens of any kind are under threat [Lipman Series 2021] November 5, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Alexander Verkhovsky about the Kremlin's ever expanding toolkit against political and civic activists, journalists, and other dissidents.
  • Russia's Legislative Elections followup [Lipman Series 2021] October 4, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Tanya Lokot and Nikolay Petrov about the results of Russia’s legislative elections and about what comes next.
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    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Ben Noble and Nikolay Petrov about Russia’s September 17-19 legislative elections, repressive measures against electoral challengers, and whether to expect anything other than preordained results.
  • Vaccine Hesitancy in Russia, France, and the United States [Lipman Series 2021] August 31, 2021
    In this week's PONARS Eurasia Podcast episode, Maria Lipman chats with Denis Volkov, Naira Davlashyan, and Peter Slevin about why COVID-19 vaccination rates are still so low across the globe, comparing vaccine hesitant constituencies across Russia, France, and the United States.  
  • Is Russia Becoming More Soviet? [Lipman Series 2021] July 26, 2021
      In a new PONARS Eurasia Podcast episode, Maria Lipman chats with Maxim Trudolyubov about the current tightening of the Russian political sphere, asking whether or not it’s helpful to draw comparisons to the late Soviet period.
  • The Evolution of Russia's Political Regime [Lipman Series 2021] June 21, 2021
    In this week's episode of the PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Grigory Golosov and Henry Hale about the evolution of Russia's political regime, and what to expect in the lead-up to September's Duma elections.
  • Volodymyr Zelensky: Year Two [Lipman Series 2021] May 24, 2021
    In this week's episode of the PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Sergiy Kudelia and Georgiy Kasianov about Ukrainian President Zelensky's second year in office, and how he has handled the political turbulence of the past year.
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Controlling Institutions: International Organizations and the Global Economy (book event)

  • March 27, 2011
  • Randall Stone

 

PONARS Eurasia member Randall W. Stone discussed his new book "Controlling Institutions: International Organizations and the Global Economy," (Cambridge University Press, March 2011), at the George Washington University. Alex Mourmouras, chief of the European Division at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Institute provided commentary. Randall Stone’s book was motivated by a series of questions regarding the operation of the IMF. How does the organization’s decisionmaking processes actually work? How important is the role of the United States? Is U.S. power more formal or informal?

Stone’s main observation is that while the U.S. has 17 percent of the vote in the IMF, it "runs the show." This discovery, perhaps not in itself surprising, leads Stone down a further avenue of inquiry: What are the informal governing procedures of the IMF? How and when do informal procedures trump the formal rules of international organizations (IOs)? How do formal and informal governance interact within IOs?

Stone sets out to compare formal and informal decision-making procedures in the IMF. The formal procedures of the IMF involve initiation of discussion by the IMF managing director via proposal power, weighted voting allotted among member states, and universal representation. Only the managing director has proposal power, and no one state has a proportion of votes great enough to singlehandedly hijack the decision making process. The informal procedure operates in some significantly different ways. While formal procedures stress the equality of representation (not just voting weights), informal procedures often involve U.S. intervention prior to the executive board meeting and the managing director's proposal, and an assertion of agenda control. Once proposals reach the executive board meeting, most states in opposition abstain rather than vote against the U.S. position. Stone asserts that a "norm of deference" is clear in this informal procedure. Furthermore, even outside the U.S., those states with higher levels of participation determine influence, rather than those that might be expected to be more influential. As an example of this, he pointed to Belgium having a higher level of clout than China. Stone also argues that informal procedures mitigate the problems of the IMF’s executive directorate. First, thanks to universal representation, the executive board has too many divergent interests for progress to occur on significant issues. U.S. intervention and assertion of agenda control streamlines the process and serves as a means of interest aggregation. Furthermore, with around 100 different representatives in the meeting room, little confidentiality is available for negotiations. Most of these representatives have not been delegated with decision-making responsibilities by their respective governments, so decisions are stalled further. In these ways, Stone argues that the executive board is deliberately ineffective.  Beyond the IMF, Stone analyzes the WTO and the EU as comparative cases. He argues that similar characteristics (formalized dispute resolution, informal rule making procedures, and minimal or uneven delegation of executive authority) allow for comparison of these organizations. Stone concludes that by looking at formal and informal decision and rule making procedures, institutional design and intentional inefficacy of formalized processes, and the ways in which "important states" capture institutions without hampering legitimacy, scholars of international organizations can understand how these organizations function.

 

Randall Stone
Website | + posts
Professor and Director of the Skalny Center for Polish and Central European Studies

Affiliation

University of Rochester

Links

University of Rochester (Bio)

Expertise

International Trade, Economics, Institutions
  • Randall Stone
    https://www.ponarseurasia.org/members/randall-stone/
    Russia and the paradox of freedom of expression
  • Randall Stone
    https://www.ponarseurasia.org/members/randall-stone/
    Всемирный банк во власти транснационального капитала
  • Randall Stone
    https://www.ponarseurasia.org/members/randall-stone/
    Connections: Trump And Russia [Podcast]
  • Randall Stone
    https://www.ponarseurasia.org/members/randall-stone/
    Russia and Multilateral Institutions
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The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes: Managing Dissent in post-Communist Russia (book event)

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Russia’s Conflicts on Libya

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