Monday, September 23, 2013

Cafaro: Democratizing The Bretton Woods Institutions: Problems and Tentative Solutions

Susanna Cafaro (Università del Salento - Law) has published Democratizing The Bretton Woods Institutions: Problems and Tentative Solutions (2013). Here's an excerpt:
Two subjects are now on the agenda: how to make the Bretton Woods institutions (i) more effective, so that they can successfully face the challenges of development gaps (World Bank) and crisis prevention and management (IMF) and (ii) more democratic and less opaque, so that all their members and stakeholders can have a voice in and be represented, be they large or small, wealthy or not. The two organizations will be examined simultaneously, because of the perfect symmetry in their governance structures, of their links (shared memberships, contextual agreements), and of the complementarity of their missions. This book will examine their governance systems and above all what I reckon is the core issue: their decision-making process. My analysis is based on the firm belief that the decision-making process affects the efficiency and also – indirectly – the outcome of the international organizations’ decisions. In other words, the governance systems are bound to influence and shape the results of the actions of the international organizations themselves.