Contesting Global

Governance: Multilateral
Economic Institutions and
Global Social Movements

Robert O'Brien

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contesting Global Governance

This book argues that increasing engagement between international

institutions and sectors of civil society is producing a new form of
global governance. The authors investigate `complex multilateralism'
by studying the relationship between three multilateral economic
institutions (the IMF, World Bank, and World Trade Organization),
and three global social movements (environmental, labour, and
women's movements). They provide a rich comparative analysis of
the institutional response to social movement pressure, tracing
institutional change, policy modi®cation and social movement tactics
as they struggle to in¯uence the rules and practices governing trade,
®nance and development regimes. The contest to shape global
governance is increasingly being conducted upon a number of levels
and amongst a diverse set of actors. Analysing a unique breadth of
institutions and movements, this book charts an important part of
that contest.

ROBERT O'BRIEN is Assistant Professor of Political Science in the

Institute for Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster
University.
ANNE MARIE GOETZ is a Fellow of the Institute of Development
Studies, University of Sussex.
J A N A A R T S C H O LT E is Reader in International Studies at the
University of Warwick.
MARC WILLIAMS is Professor of International Relations at the
University of New South Wales.
This page intentionally left blank
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: 71

Contesting Global Governance

Editorial Board
Steve Smith (Managing editor)
Thomas Biersteker Chris Brown Alex Danchev
Rosemary Foot Joseph Grieco G. John Ikenberry
Margot Light Andrew Linklater Michael Nicholson
Caroline Thomas Roger Tooze

Cambridge Studies in International Relations is a joint initiative of

Cambridge University Press and the British International Studies
Association (BISA). The series includes a wide range of material,
from undergraduate textbooks and surveys to research-based
monographs and collaborative volumes. The aim of the series is to
publish the best new scholarship in International Studies from
Europe, North America and the rest of the world.
71 Robert O'Brien, Anne Marie Goetz, Jan Aart Scholte
and Marc Williams
Contesting global governance
Multilateral economic institutions and global social movements
70 Roland Bleiker
Popular dissent, human agency and global politics
69 Bill McSweeney
Security, identity and interests
A sociology of international relations
68 Molly Cochran
Normative theory in international relations
A pragmatic approach
67 Alexander Wendt
Social theory of international politics
66 Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink (eds.)
The power of human rights
International norms and domestic change
65 Daniel W. Drezner
The sanctions paradox
Economic statecraft and international relations
64 Viva Ona Bartkus
The dynamic of secession
63 John A. Vasquez
The power of power politics
From classical realism to neotraditionalism
62 Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett (eds.)
Security communities
61 Charles Jones
E. H. Carr and international relations
A duty to lie
60 Jeffrey W. Knopf
Domestic society and international cooperation
The impact of protest on US arms control policy
59 Nicholas Greenwood Onuf
The republican legacy in international thought
58 Daniel S. Geller and J. David Singer
Nations at war
A scienti®c study of international con¯ict

Series list continues at the end of the book

Contesting Global Governance
Multilateral Economic Institutions and
Global Social Movements

Robert O'Brien
McMaster University

Anne Marie Goetz

Institute of Development Studies

Jan Aart Scholte

University of Warwick

Marc Williams
University of New South Wales
PUBLISHED BY CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS (VIRTUAL PUBLISHING)
FOR AND ON BEHALF OF THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF
CAMBRIDGE
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia

http://www.cambridge.org

© Robert O'Brien, Anne Marie Goetz, Jan Aart Scholte, Marc Williams 2000
This edition © Robert O'Brien, Anne Marie Goetz, Jan Aart Scholte, Marc Williams 2003

First published in printed format 2000

A catalogue record for the original printed book is available

from the British Library and from the Library of Congress
Original ISBN 0 521 77315 6 hardback
Original ISBN 0 521 77440 3 paperback

ISBN 0 511 01671 9 virtual (netLibrary Edition)

 Contents

Preface page ix
List of abbreviations xii

1 Contesting global governance: multilateralism and 1

global social movements
2 The World Bank and women's movements 24
3 The World Trade Organization and labour 67
4 The World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the 109
environmental social movement
5 The International Monetary Fund and social movements 159
6 Complex multilateralism: MEIs and GSMs 206

References 235
Index 256

vii
This page intentionally left blank
 Preface

The origins of this book lie in a 1994 research programme on global

economic institutions (GEI) launched by the Economic and Social
Research Council (ESRC) of Great Britain. The programme encour-
aged researchers to discuss how existing global economic institutions
and regimes, `shape international interaction, within the context of
important changes underway in the world economy' (ESRC 1995).
Feeling that initial ESRC projects re¯ected a narrow ®eld of investi-
gation, we (at that stage all colleagues at the University of Sussex)
formulated a research project that would help discover the nature of
the evolving relationship between the major public multilateral
economic institutions and the world's population. From our per-
spective, early ESRC GEI projects were dominated by economistic
methodologies and a view of the global political economy which
excluded civil society actors. Although claiming that changes in the
world economy posed great challenges for economic institutions, the
methodology and units of analysis used in the projects were hardly
innovative. Our view was not that the funded projects were
unimportant or unworthy, but that as a group they seemed oblivious
of recent theoretical and empirical developments in the ®elds of
international relations, sociology and politics.
It was our hope that the research we produced would supplement
and challenge both the ®ndings and the intellectual assumptions of
other GEI projects. The initial goal was to determine what relationship
there might be between this grand developing architecture of inter-
state (and sometimes inter®rm or state±®rm) economic institutions
and the non-elite majority of the world's population. It was an
interesting, but over-ambitious undertaking given the temporal (two
years) and ®nancial (£56,700) constraints on the project. To ful®l the

ix
Preface

demands of the funding agency for timely completion, scholarly

output and relevance to users we were required to be selective in our
study and limit our focus. We decided to focus upon the actions of
three multilateral economic institutions (the International Monetary
Fund, World Bank, and the World Trade Organization) and three
social movements (women's movements, environmentalists and
labour). We have used insight gained from these studies to re¯ect
more widely on multilateral governance.
During the course of our research we have accumulated many
debts. First, we thank the ESRC for funding our project (grant
L120251027). Second, we are grateful to a number of academic
colleagues for providing sound advice and supporting us over the
evolution of this project. This group includes Robert Cox, Stephen
Gill, Richard Higgott, Craig Murphy, Roger Tooze and Caroline
Thomas. A graduate student, Chris Slosser, helped in the preparation
of this manuscript for publication. Third, we thank many people in
our selected international institutions and social movements who
have given freely and openly of their time and views on the subject
matter. Their number is too great to thank them individually here, but
their contribution has been essential to the ®nal product.
Fourth, a number of academics, institutional of®cials and social
movement activists participated in a one-day workshop in February
1998 to discuss our interim report. This group included Jo Marie
Griesegraber of the Center of Concern in Washington, Sheila
Kawamara of the Ugandan National NGO Forum, Ricardo Melendez
of the International Centre for Sustainable Development and Trade in
Geneva, Elizabeth Morris-Hughes of the World Bank, Susan Prowse of
the International Monetary Fund, Stephen Pursey of the International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions, Laura Fraude Rubio of the
Mexican section of Women's Eyes on the Bank, Gary Sampson of the
World Trade Organization, Caroline Thomas of Southampton Univer-
sity, and David Vines of Oxford University. Their insights were greatly
appreciated. Despite the fact that there are sections of the book that
each of them would challenge we hope that they are stimulated by the
®nal product.
The research for and writing of this book was undertaken as a joint
project. Our aspiration was that it would read as a single work rather
than an edited collection. Robert O'Brien acted as coordinator and
took the lead on the introduction, conclusion and the WTO chapter.
Anne Marie Goetz researched and wrote the chapter on the World

x
 Preface

Bank, Marc Williams was responsible for the environmental chapter,

and Jan Aart Scholte conducted the IMF study. We have faced
scheduling dif®culties and intellectual disagreements, but we believe
a coherent and persuasive study has emerged from our efforts.

xi
 Abbreviations

AFL±CIO American Federation of Labor±Congress of

Industrial Organisations
BothENDS Environment and Development Service for
NGOs
CEM Country Economic Memorandum (World Bank)
CTE Committee on Trade and Environment
DAWN Development Alternatives with Women for a
New Era
Development GAP The Development Group for Alternative
Policies
EAs Environmental assessments (World Bank)
ED Executive Director (of the IMF)
EGCG External Gender Consultative Group (World
Bank)
EI Education International
ENGOs Environmental NGOs
ESAF Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility
ESDVP Environmentally Sustainable Development Vice
President (World Bank)
ESM Environmental social movement
ESW Economic and sector work (World Bank)
EURODAD European Network on Debt and Development
EXR External Relations department (IMF)
FAD Fiscal Affairs department (IMF)
FOE Friends of the Earth
GAB General Arrangements to Borrow
GAP Gender Analysis and Policy (World Bank)
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

xii
 List of abbreviations

GEMIT Group on Environmental Measures and Inter-

national Trade (GATT)
GSM Global social movements
HIPC Highly Indebted Poor Countries (debt-relief
initiative)
IBRD International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development
ICFTU International Confederation of Free Trade
Unions
ICHRDD International Centre for Human Rights and
Democratic Development
IDA International Development Authority
IFC International Finance Corporation
IIF Institute of International Finance
ILO International Labour Organisation
ILRF International Labor Rights Fund
IMF International Monetary Fund
ITGLWF International Textile, Garment and Leather
Workers' Federation
ITS International Trade Secretariats
MD Managing director (of the IMF)
MEI Multilateral economic institution
MIGA Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency
NGLS Non-Governmental Liaison Service (of the
United Nations)
NGO Non-governmental organisation
ODs Operational Directives (World Bank)
PAs Poverty Assessments (World Bank)
PAD Public Affairs Division (of IMF's EXR)
PDR Policy Development and Review department (of
the IMF)
PSI Public Services International
Res rep Resident representative (of the IMF)
SAF Structural Adjustment Facility
SAP Structural adjustment programme
SAPRI Structural Adjustment Policy Review Initiative
SCDO Swiss Coalition of Development Organisations
SDR Special Drawing Right
TPRM Trade policy review mechanism
TWN Third World Network

xiii
List of abbreviations

UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and

Development
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNICEF United Nations Children's Fund
WCL World Confederation of Labour
WEDO Women's Environment and Development
Organization
WID Women in Development
WIDE Women in Development Europe
WRI World Resources Institute
WTO World Trade Organization
WWF World Wide Fund for Nature; World Wildlife
Fund
WWW Women Working Worldwide

xiv
1 Contesting governance:
multilateralism and global social
movements

In May 1998 a crowd swarmed through Geneva attacking McDonald's

restaurants and vandalising expensive hotels as part of their protest
against the World Trade Organization (WTO). In preparation for the
same WTO meeting a global peasant alliance cemented relations and
declared their opposition to the goal of trade liberalisation. In Indo-
nesia social unrest in response to subsidy cuts agreed between the
government and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) contributed
to the downfall of a government. In the same year the IMF was subject
to ®erce criticism for its handling of the East Asian debt crisis by
Indonesian trade unionists and the prime minister of Malaysia. In
South Korea unions engaged in strikes in order to combat IMF and
World Bank restructuring prescriptions. The closing years of the
twentieth century have been marked by increasing opposition to the
operation of multilateral economic institutions.
Although the US scholarship ignores the distributional effect of
international institutions, preferring to debate their theoretical rele-
vance to the study of international relations (Martin and Simmons
1998), there is little doubt that for hundreds of millions of people
institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and WTO matter a great deal.
The terms of IMF structural adjustment programmes in¯uence the life
chances of people in developing countries, a World Bank decision to
prioritise girls' education can open the possibility for personal and
community development; and the ability of the WTO to balance
environmental concerns with trade liberalisation may save or con-
demn an ecological system. The operations of these institutions have
serious rami®cations for many people far from the decision-making
centres of Washington and Geneva. It is little wonder that the people
on the receiving end of these institutions' policies are increasingly

1
Contesting Global Governance

mobilised to in¯uence the structure and policies of the institutions

themselves. The collision between powerful economic institutions and
social movements in many countries has led to a contest over global
governance. The contest takes place both over the form of the institu-
tions (their structure, decision-making procedures) and over the
content of their policies (free market oriented or a balancing of social
values). It is this contest that is the subject of this book.

Contesting global governance

Governance, according to the Commission on Global Governance
(1995: 2), is the sum of the many ways that individuals and institu-
tions, public and private, manage their common affairs. Since world
politics is characterised by governance without government (Rosenau
and Czempiel 1992), the process of governance encompasses a broad
range of actors. In addition to the public (interstate) economic
organisations such as the IMF, World Bank and the WTO, states retain
a key decision-making role. Indeed, most of the international relations
literature that deals with regimes views states as the only signi®cant
actor (Hasenclever, Mayer and Rittberger 1997). Large scale private
enterprises or multinational corporations also participate in govern-
ance by attempting to in¯uence the activity of international organisa-
tions and states. In some cases, private enterprises have created their
own systems of regulation and governance (Cutler, Hau¯er and
Porter 1999). This study focuses on the relationship between multi-
lateral economic institutions (MEIs) and global social movements
(GSMs) as one aspect of a much wider global politics (Shaw 1994a)
and governance structure. Where possible, we take account of other
actors and their relationship to the objects of this study.
Since the early 1980s there has been a gradual change in the
functioning of key MEIs. Although the extent of this change has
varied across institutions, the pattern of increasing engagement with
social groups is noticeable. MEIs are moving beyond their interstate
mandates to actively engage civil society actors in numerous
countries. In order to gauge the signi®cance of such developments
this book investigates the interaction between three MEIs and three
GSMs.1 The MEIs are the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO while
the GSMs are the environmental, labour and women's movements.
1 This project was funded by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council of
Great Britain, grant L120251027.

2
 Multilateralism and GSMs

We argue that there is a transformation in the nature of global

economic governance as a result of the MEI±GSM encounter. This
transformation is labelled `complex multilateralism' in recognition of
its movement away from an exclusively state based structure. To date
the transformation has largely taken the form of institutional modi®-
cation rather than substantive policy innovation. Such changes expli-
citly acknowledge that actors other than states express the public
interest. While signalling a clear alteration to the method of govern-
ance, the change in the content of governing policies and the broad
interests they represent is less striking. In the short run the MEI±GSM
nexus is unlikely to transform either institutional functions or their
inherent nature to any signi®cant degree. In the longer run, there is
the possibility of incremental change in the functioning and ambit of
these key institutions. Complex multilateralism has not challenged the
fundamentals of existing world order, but it has incrementally
pluralised governing structures.
The relationship developing between MEIs and GSMs highlights a
contest over governance between old and new forms of multi-
lateralism. The `old' or existing dominant form of multilateralism is a
top down affair where state dominated institutions are taken as given
and minor adjustments in their operation are suggested (Ruggie 1993).
The `new' or emerging multilateralism is an attempt to `reconstitute
civil societies and political authorities on a global scale, building a
system of global governance from the bottom up' (Cox 1997: xxvii).
The new multilateralism offers a challenge to existing multilateralism
not just because it entails institutional transformation, but because it
represents a different set of interests.
The concept of a state centric multilateralism as form of inter-
national organisation has been outlined by John Ruggie. In an attempt
to re-establish the importance of cooperative international institutions
to the study of International Relations, Ruggie and a number of
colleagues have argued that `multilateralism matters'. He de®nes
multilateralism as `an institutional form that coordinates relations
among three or more states on the basis of generalized principles of
conduct' (Ruggie 1993: 11). There are two elements of this de®nition
which help us understand the tension between existing and new
forms of multilateralism in the MEI±GSM relationship. The ®rst is the
limiting of multilateralism to `three or more states' and the second is
the status of `generalized principles of conduct'.
The conduct of the IMF, World Bank and the General Agreement on

3
Contesting Global Governance

Tariffs and Trade (GATT) before the 1980s was indicative of this state
form of multilateralism. The organisations were dominated by
member states, had little institutionalised connection to civil societies
within member states and were intent upon generalising a particular
set of principles. Under increased pressure from some elements of
civil society for transparency and accountability the institutions have
in the 1990s embarked upon a strategy of incremental reform. The
intent is to extend and universalise existing multilateralism while
blunting opposition through coopting hostile groups. Existing multi-
lateralism can be universalised through geographic extension to new
countries as well as a strengthening of the generalised rules of
conduct. An example of the ®rst is bringing China into the WTO while
an example of the second is a strengthening of the WTO dispute
settlement mechanism. One method of blunting opposition to this
extension is to create links with hostile groups and integrate them into
a governing structure so that their outright opposition is diminished.
This form of multilateralism has recently been challenged by a
strategy termed `new multilateralism' by its proponents. The concept,
and political project, of new multilateralism has emerged from a four-
year project on Multilateralism and the United Nations System
(MUNS) sponsored by the United Nations University (Cox 1997; Gill
1997; Krause and Knight 1994; Sakamoto 1994; Schechter 1998a,
1998b). Its goal is to foster a form of multilateralism which is built
from the bottom up and is based upon a participative global civil
society. It differs in three major respects from existing multilateralism.
Firstly, the new multilateralism is an emerging entity that does not yet
exist in its ®nal form. It is slowly and painfully being created through
the interaction of numerous social groups around the world. Secondly,
while engaging with existing multilateralism, it attempts to build
from the bottom up by starting with social organisations independent
of the state. It does not view the state as the sole representative of
people's interests. Thirdly, the new multilateralism is an attempt at
post-hegemonic organising. This last point requires some clari®cation.
A hegemonic approach to multilateralism takes a dominant set of
assumptions about social life and then attempts to universalise these
principles through expanding key institutions. For example, hege-
monic assumptions might include the primacy of free markets in the
allocation of resources or the naturalness of patriarchal social
relations. A post-hegemonic approach to multilateralism must begin
with far more modest assumptions. It acknowledges the differences in

4
 Multilateralism and GSMs

assumptions about the social world and attempts to ®nd common

ground for cooperation. In the place of universalistic principles of
neoclassical economics one is aware of alternative methods of social
organising and cultural diversity.
The advent of a new multilateralism is itself marred by uncertain-
ties. The challenging of states' legitimacy to act on behalf of peoples
raises questions about the relationship between other forms of repre-
sentation or advocacy. Is the dominance of Northern interests repro-
duced in the new multilateralism? Does it weaken the power of all
states or have a disproportionate in¯uence upon those states that are
already weak? Does it excessively complicate the functioning of
existing multilateral institutions or provide an opportunity for them
to serve the interests of a broader community? The exercise of power
by dominant states, institutions or social groups remains an issue of
concern.
Our argument is not that the various organisations and groups
encountered in this book would necessarily identify themselves as
defenders of an established, state centric multilateral system or part of
the new multilateralism project, but that their actions are contributing
to just such a contest. On one side an effort is being made to reform
existing MEIs so that they can better perform their liberalising
agenda. On the other side is an attempt to transform the institutions
so that policy process and outcomes are radically different. Our
research captures a particular moment in the meeting of old and new
forms of multilateralism. The relative opening of MEIs to GSMs
reveals their attempt to adjust to a new structural environment.
However, this opening is often limited by a preference to maintain
policy effectiveness and pre-empt a far reaching restructuring of
multilateralism or transformation of the principles underlying existing
policies. Although the nature of interaction varies across the
MEI±GSM nexus, the obstacles to mutual accommodation are large.
The developments sketched in this book are likely to be only a brief
chapter in the struggle to in¯uence the structures of global
governance.
The evidence of our investigations suggest that we are witnessing
the development of a hybrid form of multilateralism. We call this
hybrid complex multilateralism. It is discussed in more detail in the
®nal chapter, but its outlines can be sketched here. Complex multi-
lateralism has ®ve central characteristics. The ®rst characteristic is
varied institutional modi®cation in response to civil society actors.

5
Contesting Global Governance

International public institutions are modifying in response to pressure

from social movements, NGOs and business actors, but this varies
across institutions depending upon institutional culture, structure,
role of the executive head and vulnerability to civil society pressure. A
second characteristic of this institutional form of international
relations is that the major participants are divided by con¯icting
motivations and goals. The goal of the institutions and their supporters
is to maintain existing policy direction and facilitate its smoother
operation while the goal of many civil society actors, and certainly
social movements, is to change the policy direction of the institutions.
The clash of rival goals leads to a third characteristic, namely the
ambiguous results of this form of organisation to date. If accomplish-
ments are de®ned in terms of the actors achieving their own goals,
both institutions and social movements have enjoyed only limited
success. A fourth characteristic of complex multilateralism is its
differential impact upon the role of the state depending upon the
state's pre-existing position in the international system. It tends to
reinforce the role of powerful states and weaken the role of many
developing states. A ®fth aspect of complex multilateralism is a
broadening of the policy agenda to include more social issues. MEIs
are ®nally being forced to address the social impacts of their policies.

Context of the MEI±GSM relationship

The MEI±GSM relationship is embedded in a broader context that
provides the opportunities and incentives for increased interaction.
This section brie¯y reminds the reader of the context. Three areas are
noteworthy. The ®rst is a series of structural changes in the global
political economy that are often referred to as `globalisation' which
has laid the groundwork for greater MEI±GSM interaction. The
second is a transformation of the mandate and roles of the MEIs. New
mandates and greater responsibilities of the IMF, World Bank and
WTO have increased the importance of these institutions for civil
society actors. A third development is the increasing signi®cance of
global social movement politics.

Structural transformations in the global political economy

Five of the most signi®cant structural changes in the global political
economy which provide a background to increased MEI±GSM contact

6
 Multilateralism and GSMs

are: the liberalisation of economies; innovation in information

technology; the creation of new centres of authority; instability in the
global ®nancial system; and changes in ideology. Let us brie¯y
consider how each of these affects our area of study.

Liberalisation of economies
The decade of the 1980s witnessed a three pronged advance of
economic liberalisation in the global political economy. In developed
countries a process of deregulation, including ®nancial deregulation
and globalisation, liberalised OECD economies. Although this was
much more pronounced in Britain and the United States, other
countries have also been opening up their markets and deregulating.
In the developing world the search for capital following the debt crisis
resulted in the `triumph of neoclassical economics' in many states
(Biersteker 1992). This involved the liberalisation of economies follow-
ing IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programmes, as well as
unilateral liberalisation. Finally, the collapse of communism in Eastern
Europe and the former Soviet Union brought vast new areas into the
global economy that had been relatively insulated for at least forty
years. Even in China a process of selected opening to Western
investment added to the liberalisation bandwagon. The exposure of
increased numbers of people to market forces has also led to greater
concern about how such markets will be regulated.

Increase in information technology

An increase in the ability of people to communicate with each other
over vast distances has had two signi®cant effects. Firstly, it has
facilitated liberalisation by providing an infrastructure for increased
capital mobility. This has occurred both in the area of linking ®nancial
markets and in facilitating the operation of multinational companies.
Secondly, developments such as faxes, the Internet and e-mail have
facilitated the networking of groups in civil society. The rise of the
network society (Castells 1996) lets groups that were formerly isolated
communicate with each other and share information about common
concerns. In some dramatic instances this has facilitated political
mobilisation and democratisation (Jones 1994).

New centres of authority

A third factor has been the creation of new centres of authority
beyond the state (Strange 1996). Some of the centres have been in the

7
Contesting Global Governance

private sector, such as bond rating agencies (Sinclair 1994) while some
have taken the form of regional regulation such as the European
Union or NAFTA. In other cases it can be seen in the increased
importance of MEIs in making authoritative statements about how
state economic policy should be conducted. This dispersal of authority
across national, regional and global levels has implications for
citizens. In order to in¯uence such authorities citizens must either
force their states to engage actively with these new centres or they
must attempt to engage the authorities directly. In practice both
options may be pursued. In some cases this necessitates the trans-
nationalisation of citizen activity.

Global ®nancial instability

The 1990s has seen a series of ®nancial crises sweeping over Mexico,
Russia, Brazil and East Asia. This instability has led to a questioning
of the principles and institutions governing global ®nance. The East
Asian crisis, in particular, has created calls for re¯ection and action. In
the second half of 1997 a ®nancial crisis began in Thailand and swept
its way through a number of South and Southeast Asian countries
including Indonesia and South Korea. Countries that had only
recently been regarded as development miracles by the World Bank
(1993a) suddenly seemed very fragile. A currency crisis turned into a
®nancial crisis, threatening the health of a number of countries and
the stability of the international ®nancial system. This had three
important implications for our study. Firstly, the damage in¯icted by
rapid capital movements on formerly thriving countries led to an
intense debate over the desirability of capital controls (Wade and
Veneroso 1998). The relative insulation of countries which had
systems of capital control such as India and China encouraged other
states to consider and implement controls. This challenged MEI
economic orthodoxy and provided the context for a much wider
debate about MEI policy and policy formation.
Secondly, the crisis revealed the extent to which MEIs were vulner-
able to civil society pressure. In developed states the IMF's seemingly
inadequate response to the crisis unleashed a wave of criticism and
necessitated a strong defence (Feldstein 1998; Fischer 1998, Kapur
1998). In developing countries the IMF and the World Bank were
forced to seek strategic social partners that might help them imple-
ment their economic packages. The political vulnerability of ®nancial
reform packages became apparent to MEIs and provided an unprece-

8
 Multilateralism and GSMs

dented opportunity for civil society groups to in¯uence institutional

policy. Details of this process are contained in the case studies later in
the book.
The third implication was that the ®nancial uncertainty arising from
the economic crisis fed a broader reconsideration of ideological
positions. A limited, but signi®cant ideological shift can be detected in
MEIs and amongst state elites in the late 1990s.

Ideological shifts
By the mid-1990s leaders in several Western states were turning away
from the pure liberal principles of the Thatcher/Reagan years. In
pursuit of the `radical centre' President Bill Clinton in the United
States and Prime Minister Tony Blair in the United Kingdom sought
to facilitate the restructuring of their economies in a way that would
make them more competitive, but with some attempt to temper
market excesses. Although continuing to give emphasis to the market,
they called for new methods of regulation and policy prescriptions to
temper the excesses of the market or to carve out competitive niches
within the market. Labour, environmentalist and women's groups
encountered a more friendly reception in the halls of power even
though their agendas were not automatically taken up.
In the international arena a number of voices, sometimes from
unlikely sources, called attention to the issue of social provision and
the reregulation of markets. After making a fortune through ®nancial
speculation, ®nancier George Soros became a leading ®gure calling for
increased social and ®nancial regulation (Soros 1997). By 1998 a Senior
Vice President of the World Bank could be found making speeches
about the failure of the `Washington consensus' (neoliberal policy
prescriptions) to assist in development (Stiglitz 1998). During the 1999
annual meeting of the World Economic Forum the UN Secretary
General added his voice to the growing numbers of prominent people
calling for social regulation to soften the impact of globalisation
(Annan 1999). Concern was expressed at the social costs and political
fragility of neoliberal globalisation. This marked a signi®cant shift
from earlier agendas of preaching rapid liberalisation as the solution
to the world's problems.
Thus, from a perspective of what resonated with governing ideol-
ogy, by the end of the 1990s more interventionist policies could once
again be considered. This was not a return to Keynesianism, but it
was a more open arena for people suggesting that neoliberalism

9
Contesting Global Governance

should be tempered in the interest of domestic and/or global society.

Although a far cry from the favoured policies of environmentalists,
labour unions or women's movements, the shift in governing rhetoric
to calls for a tempered form of liberalism provided a more inviting
space for the social movement advocates that feature in this study.

Institutions in transition
MEIs have been transforming in response to structural changes in the
economy. In general, they have taken a more prominent role in
governing the economy and expanded or modi®ed their mandates for
action. For example, following the outbreak of the debt crisis in 1982
the IMF took on a signi®cant role in guiding the restructuring of
indebted countries so that private capital would renew ¯ows to such
countries. This process involved the negotiation of structural adjust-
ment programmes (SAPs) with debtor governments. SAPs advocated
the liberalisation of economic policies and the privatisation of many
state owned industries and some government services. In the 1990s
the IMF has also served as a key institution in attempting to stabilise
an increasingly volatile ®nancial system as short term capital move-
ments undermined the Mexican economy in 1994 and attacked East
Asian economies in 1997. With the end of the Cold War the IMF began
to play a prominent role in the transition economies in Eastern Europe
and the former Soviet Union. The East Asian crisis of 1997 also
expanded the IMF's geographic scope as it shifted its attention from
the debtors of the 1980s to the tiger economies of Asia. It has also
brought it into negotiating the liberalisation of these states' economic
policies and the restructuring of their ®nancial sectors to achieve
greater transparency.
The World Bank has also gone through an extensive transition in
the past twenty years. It has moved away from ®nancing particular
development projects to supporting policies which facilitate structural
adjustment (Gilbert et al. 1996). Investment in physical infrastructure
was increasingly replaced with investment in economic infrastructure
in the form of `appropriate' policies and sectoral restructuring. It has
moved closer to the IMF's role of reorganising domestic economies so
that they are more competitive in the international market. Condition-
ality attached to loans has become the key mechanism for ensuring
compliance with this restructuring imperative. Since 1997 the Bank
has begun lending directly to subnational units, such as Brazilian and

10
 Multilateralism and GSMs

Indian state governments, to ®nance privatisation and economic

adjustment.
In the case of the founding of the WTO, a new institution was
created to replace GATT. The key features of the WTO are an
expansion in its mandate to new areas of economic activity and a
strengthened legal structure (Croome 1995; Jackson 1998). Because of
the Uruguay Round agreements, the WTO has expanded to take in the
liberalisation of agriculture, services and investment and the protec-
tion of intellectual property rights. It has also established a working
party to examine competition policy issues. On the legal front, a
strengthening of its dispute settlement mechanism endows the WTO
with greater coercive powers over incompatible state policies.
In summary, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO have under-
gone several changes since the early 1980s which have increased their
importance for global governance. This troika of multilateral economic
institutions is a cornerstone of the liberal world economy. Assisting in
the governance of ®nancial and production structures, they exercise
considerable in¯uence on the daily lives of the world's population. In
the category of multilateral public institutions they are notable
because their rule-creating and rule-supervisory decisions have
important immediate consequences for states and peoples around the
world. Their importance and power contrasts with institutions such as
the International Labour Organization (ILO) or the United Nations
Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) which must rely
upon moral suasion and argument (Cox and Jacobson 1974: 423±36).
In recent decades the institutions have become more intrusive in the
lives of citizens as their policy pronouncements in¯uence a wide
range of state activities.
From a research perspective, the World Bank/IMF/WTO combin-
ation offers a useful contrast in institutional structure and engagement
with non-state, non-®rm actors. The Bretton Woods institutions (IMF
and World Bank) date back to the early post-war era while the WTO is
a more recent creation (1995). Although all three institutions provide
services to their members and act as public forums, the WTO's role is
less in service provision and more in the ®eld of negotiating forum. It
is also distinctive because of its legalistic nature and possession of a
dispute settlement mechanism. Whereas the World Bank has since the
early 1980s had considerable experience with social organisations, the
IMF has a more insulated history and the WTO has just begun to
de®ne its relationships with non-state actors. Formal decision making

11
Contesting Global Governance

also varies between the institutions. The Bretton Woods pair are
formally controlled by their wealthiest member states through
weighted voting, but the WTO strives to operate upon a unanimity
principle.

The signi®cance of global social movements

Recent scholarship has pointed to the increasing activity of non-state
actors operating across national borders. There is no agreement upon
what this signi®es or even how it should be classi®ed. Leading terms
employed to describe this activity include: global society (Shaw
1994b), global civil society (Lipschutz 1992), international society
(Peterson 1992), world civic politics (Wapner 1995), transnational
relations (Risse-Kappen 1995), NGOs (Charnovitz 1997), transnational
social movement organisations (TSMOs) (Smith, Chat®eld and
Pagnucco 1997), global social change organisations (Gale 1998) and
transnational advocacy networks (Keck and Sikkink 1998). Each term
refers to a slightly different subject of study with a wider or narrower
scope and is selected in response to a speci®c research question. They
reveal differences about the centrality of the state in each investigation
and assumptions about the appropriate method for investigating such
phenomena. This study focuses on global social movements so we
will clarify what we mean by this term and why we use it.
Social movements are a subset of the numerous actors operating in
the realm of civil society. They are groups of people with a common
interest who band together to pursue a far reaching transformation of
society. Their power lies in popular mobilisation to in¯uence the
holders of political and economic power (Scott 1990: 15). They differ
from state elites in that they do not usually utilise the coercive power of
the state. They lack the resources of business interests who may rely on
the movement of capital to achieve their purposes. They can be
distinguished from interest groups in that their vision is broader and
they seek large scale social change. Social movements, by de®nition,
are not members of the elite in their societies. They are anti-systemic.
That is, they are working to forward priorities at odds with the existing
organisation of the system. They rely on mass mobilisation because
they do not directly control the levers of formal power such as the state.
A global social movement is one which operates in a global, as well
as local, national and international space. In this study we refer to
global as a plane of activity which coexists with local, national and

12
 Multilateralism and GSMs

international dimensions (Scholte 1997). It is an area of interaction

which is less bounded by barriers of time and space than the local or
national and goes beyond the interstate relations of the international.
It refers to the transnational connections of people and places that
were formerly seen as distant or separate. Thus, one can think of a
global ®nancial structure which connects ®nancial centres around the
world into a rapid and unceasing market. One can also think of a
`global' social movement. The term global social movement refers to
groups of people around the world working on the transworld plane
pursuing far reaching social change.
There are dif®culties with the appropriating of notions of civil
society and social movements from the domestic context. The global
civil society concept goes against the basic ontology of most inter-
national relations literature. The traditional international relations
approach to `international society' has been to speak of a society of
states (Bull and Watson 1994). This leaves no room for discussion of
civil society, because non-state actors are de®ned out of society. While
traditional international relations scholarship may reject the notions of
global civil society and GSMs because of its state centric approach,
others will raise doubts about the existence of a global civil society
and GSMs in the absence of a global state (Germain and Kenny 1998:
14±17). Civil society and social movements have always been de®ned
in the context of a relationship with a national state. It is the sphere of
public activity amongst a bounded community within the reach of a
particular state. The logic seems to be that if there is no overreaching
global state, there can be no global community and therefore no global
civil society and no global social movements.
It is important to acknowledge that the concept of civil society does
not make a smooth transition from the domestic to the international
sphere if one expects them to have identical characteristics. However,
if one accepts that moving to another level implies a qualitative shift
in the concept, then there is less of a problem. The adjective `global'
implies that civil society and social movements are more differen-
tiated than their domestic counterparts. Because there is no single
world state and no single world community, GSMs are less cohesive
than their national counterparts. A GSM's local characteristics and
interests may clash with other local manifestations of the movement.
Despite this, there are some transnational connections between the
various parts of the movement and there is some sense of a common
identity and the need for coordinated if not identical action.

13
Contesting Global Governance

Analysts of GSMs must be particularly aware of making broad

statements that assume an identity of interests or purposes between
elements of the movement located in different parts of the world. The
theory and study of social movements, especially new social move-
ments, and global civil society has on the whole tended to generalise
from the experience of Western Europe and the United States (Walker
1994). This poses dif®culties for national social movement theory, but
poses dangers for global social movement analysis. Three clear prob-
lems arise. First, such an intellectual history may assume that the
characteristics of Northern or Western social movements are shared by
social movements in other parts of the world. Second, it may assume
an identity of interest between Western social movements and those in
other parts of the world that does not actually exist. Finally, the
neglect of social movements in other areas may prevent researchers
asking dif®cult questions of Northern-dominated social movements.
The dif®cult questions are particularly important in the North±
South context. Southern social movements operate in a different local
environment from their Northern counterparts (Wignaraja 1993). In
addition to having fewer ®nancial resources, they may be much more
concerned with local organising and activity. Their relationship with
the state may be more ambivalent. While Southern states may be
actively oppressing local social movements, they may still be seen as
worthy of support against dominant Northern interests. They may
welcome assistance from sections of Northern based social move-
ments, but not at the cost of adopting a Northern agenda. We are
interested in the degree to which the concerns of Southern social
movements have been ®ltered through Northern based global NGOs.
What impact might this have on the issues taken up or ignored? Does
the prominence of Northern NGOs in¯uencing MEIs undermine the
domestic legitimacy of Southern social movements? Does MEI
conditionality in¯uenced by Northern NGOs serve to weaken the
Southern state and harm the prospects of those they seek to help?
One should also be wary about characterising global civil society as
a place where society is civil or developed. For example, John Hall
(1995: 25) describes (national) civil society as `a particular form of
society, appreciating social diversity and able to limit the depredations
of political power . . .' Lipschutz's (1992) analysis comes close to
reducing global civil society to the activity of environmental, develop-
ment, human rights and aboriginal movements. Not only does he
overlook the more sinister social movements (e.g. neo-Nazis), but

14
 Multilateralism and GSMs

powerful economic forces do not seem to be active in civil society.

Rather than viewing global civil society as a normative social structure
to be achieved, it is more accurate to see it as an arena for con¯ict that
interacts with both the interstate system and the global economy.
While social movements may extol the virtues of global civil society,
that space has been and is largely dominated by the extensive formal
and informal contacts of transnational business and their allies.2
Social movements are not moving into an empty space. Indeed,
discussion about democracy in a globalising era needs to be clear
about the forces driving the process in its present direction. Trans-
national business already has privileged access to those governments
whose cooperation would be required to implement reform of multi-
lateral institutions.3 An arrangement that limited the prerogatives of
global business would encounter great resistance.
In research terms it is dif®cult to capture the diversity that is
contained within a particular social movement. How does one inter-
view a global social movement? Social movements are, by de®nition,
¯uid and large. They evolve, transform and usually lack a permanent
institutional structure. There is no central core where one could go to
study the environmental movement as one might begin an investi-
gation of the IMF in Washington. The best that can be accomplished is
to identify organisational nodes within the movement on the under-
standing that these represent only particular tendencies of the whole.4
Within a broad based movement, one may encounter numerous
organisational forms or nodes. One can discuss the rise of environ-
mentalism as a social movement and yet distinguish between a
number of organisations within that movement such as the Sierra
Club, Kenya's Greenbelt Movement and Friends of the Earth. These
green organisations may all share a commitment to the environment,
but differ widely upon policy issues and programmes. For example,

2 On the concept of a transnational managerial class and its relationship to other classes
see Cox (1987: 355±91). Gill's (1990) study of the Trilateral Commission offers an
example of an in¯uential global civil society actor linked with transnational business
interests. From a business studies perspective Stopford and Strange (1991: 21) refer to
a transnational business civilisation.
3 Charles Lindblom's (1977: 170±88) neo-pluralist work could now be reformulated to
stress the privileged position of transnational business in domestic political systems.
Milner (1988) has detailed the in¯uence of transnational corporations on US and
French trade policy.
4 Blair (1997) takes a similar approach when he attempts to `operationalise' civil society
by focusing upon NGOs.

15
Contesting Global Governance

the distance between conservationists such as the Sierra Club and

rejectionists such as Deep Ecology activists is immense. The former
seeks to conserve the environment within the present system while
the latter rejects the existing industrial structure.
The key organisational node in global social movements are the
ubiquitous (non-pro®t) non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
NGOs have been particularly active at building global civil society
around UN world conferences (Clark, Friedman and Hochstetler
1998). Alger (1997) has gone further to note that international NGOs
(INGOs) seeking social transformation (TSMOs in his terms) operate
on a number of levels to in¯uence global governance. INGOs create
and activate global networks, participate in multilateral arenas, facil-
itate interstate cooperation, act within states and enhance public
participation. This leads to the question of the relationship between
particular NGOs and the more broadly based social movements under
consideration in this study. With the growth of some organisations
such as Greenpeace into sizeable actors with considerable ®nancial
resources, questions of accountability and representativeness of NGOs
themselves must be addressed. To what degree do they speak and act
on behalf of the wider movement? Some NGOs claim that because
they do not seek state power themselves they have no need to be
bound by demands for representativeness (UNGLS 1996b: 64). This
claim needs to be challenged if such groups are pressing for a more
inclusive role in policy making.
If it is true that it is much easier to study an NGO than a GSM and
that there is doubt about the cohesion of GSMs in different countries,
is there any sense in deploying the concept of a global social move-
ment? Despite its acknowledged weaknesses, we believe it can still
serve a useful function. Our study is not about particular NGOs or
NGOs in general, but captures the activity of a collectivity of people
and organisations concerned with the social impacts of the three
MEIs. Some of these people are in well known NGOs, but others work
on a more local basis while some work inside the institutions
themselves. They are more than an interest group in that they draw
upon social mobilisation of numerous forms of organisation from
neighbourhood associations to formal organisations. They are differ-
ent from ®rms or business organisations in that their primary function
is not to amass pro®t, but to transform society so that it protects their
social interests. The term GSM is elastic enough to capture this
collectivity of people.

16
 Multilateralism and GSMs

We concentrate on three social movements: women, environmen-

talists and labour. They have been active in engaging MEIs on a
number of policy issues and also provide a useful contrast because
they have varying degrees of ®nancial resources, institutionalisation
and differing priorities for engaging MEIs. Two of them are often
labelled as `new' social movements while the third is usually seen as
an `old' social movement, if it even quali®es for the social movement
label. The distinction between old and new is not actually a chrono-
logical one, but is based upon the divisions around which they
organise. Old social movements are class-based such as workers' or
peasants' groups. New social movements refer to the post-war
development of movements around non-class issues such as gender,
race, peace and the environment. They are usually associated with
political and cultural change in advanced industrialised countries
since the 1960s.
This is not an exhaustive list of social movements engaged with
MEIs. In particular it does not take account of groups which do not ®t
easily our environmental±labour±women's typology. For example, a
number of groups organise around the theme of development. They
may address environmental, women's and labour issues. These organ-
isations make an appearance in our study when they intersect with
the MEIs and GSMs that are the focus of our book.

Key questions
In pursuing our case studies we tried to answer three principal
questions. These questions served to focus our investigations and
provided coherence across the case studies in addition to helping us
gauge the signi®cance of the MEI±GSM relationship.

How have the MEIs modi®ed?

The ®rst question that we explore is `What have MEIs done to
accommodate the desires of social movements interested in increased
relations, including in¯uence in policy making?' How have the IMF,
World Bank, and WTO changed or adapted their institutional struc-
tures to communicate with social movements? To what degree have
they undertaken institutional modi®cations to accommodate the con-
cerns of social movements? In some cases this question is rather

17
Contesting Global Governance

preliminary and need not detain us for long. The task is simply to
describe the forms of institutional mechanisms that have been estab-
lished and may be established to facilitate MEI±GSM interaction.
As the case studies will demonstrate, the contribution of this study
in answering this question is signi®cant. In the case of the IMF, it is
the ®rst study of its kind. Although there has been similar work
undertaken on the World Bank and work is emerging on the WTO, we
believe this is the ®rst comparative study of the three institutions. This
allows us to draw some conclusions about why the institutions have
followed different paths in their engagement of social movements.
The detailed answer to this question is contained in each case study
chapter with a comparative overview in the ®nal chapter. All three
institutions have developed mechanisms to increase their engagement
with social movements ranging from providing more information to
informal channels of communication to the creation of new depart-
ments to deal with social movement concerns. This process has been
most developed at the Bank, with much more modest developments
at the IMF and WTO.

What are the motivations driving MEI±GSM engagement?

The increasing engagement of MEIs and GSMs requires some explan-
ation. Constitutionally, MEIs are the creation of states and are respon-
sible to states. Traditional practice in world politics has been to
recognise states as the legitimate voice of the people within its
boundaries. Why have these institutions felt the need to move beyond
state structures of interaction? A number of possibilities come to
mind.
Rather than begin by assuming that MEIs are inherently committed
to openness and democratisation, we suspect that social movements
have something that the MEIs need. Since the MEIs and GSMs
surveyed in this study are often engaged in a hostile relationship, the
question becomes why do MEIs, which occupy positions of power in
comparison to the social movements, bother to interact with GSMs?
The IMF, World Bank and WTO are engaged in a process of liberal-
ising the world economy and subjecting more social and economic
areas to the discipline and imperative of market forces. GSMs are
often engaged in a defensive movement against such coercion. In
many cases, they challenge the underlying neoliberal philosophy and
material interests behind MEI policy. Indeed, elements of the GSMs

18
 Multilateralism and GSMs

we examine are anti-systemic in that they can challenge the principles

upon which existing MEI multilateralism is built.5
MEIs ®nd GSMs useful in two areas ± policy implementation and in
broader political terms. In regard to policy implementation, GSMs
might assist or frustrate MEI policies. MEIs may want to tap GSMs'
specialised local knowledge that is unavailable to the staff of the
institutions. For example, GSMs may be able to shed light on the
impact of particular policies on the ground. GSMs are often familiar
with the micro aspects that the macro institutions address. MEIs are
often unfamiliar with vulnerable sectors of society such as the poor or
women. Parallel to this is the possibility that MEIs might hope to use
GSMs as tools to implement favoured policies. This may take the form
of privatising tasks formerly done by the institutions such as infor-
mation collection or having the movements pressure states to follow
MEI policy lines. In the case of the World Bank, NGOs can assist in the
delivery of development services. In the case of the IMF, it is hoped
that labour will exert pressures on states to limit corruption and
maintain good governance.
The other side to this is that GSMs may be able to frustrate MEI
initiatives on the ground. For example, social mobilisation in India
may result in the cancellation of a World Bank dam-building project.
Another example would be social movement lobbying against trade
liberalisation measures whether they be intellectual property rights in
India or environmental concerns in the United States. IMF riots such
as those in Venezuela in 1989 which left over three hundred dead may
make it extremely dif®cult to implement particular structural adjust-
ment policies.
In broader political terms GSMs may in¯uence key governmental
actors which control the fate of the MEIs. The most relevant example
would be the in¯uence of environmental groups upon the US
Congress which in turn in¯uences funding decisions for the World
Bank. Similarly, civic groups have lobbied the US Congress since the
early 1980s to put conditions upon funding designated for the IMF. In
the case of the GATT, member states started to recognise the import-
ance of NGOs when environmentalists threatened to derail the
Uruguay Round agreements in the USA. The present WTO leadership
hopes that by opening relations with NGOs it will secure public

5 Discussion of anti-systemic movements can be found in Arrighi, Hopkins and

Wallerstein (1989).

19
Contesting Global Governance

support for a new round of liberalisation in the early years of the

twenty-®rst century.
MEI accommodation of social movements may be a result of the
direct demands of the most powerful governments or as a strategy to
pre-empt the wrath of particular states. A slightly different angle is
that those interested in seeing the expansion of MEI activity, be it the
bureaucrats themselves, a policy community, or a leading state, may
want to build public support for new initiatives. Good relations with
social movements may make for smoother acceptance of an expanding
governing role for the institutions.
Turning to social movements, why and how have they increasingly
engaged MEIs? Why have elements of some social movements
decided to target MEIs? The explanations vary across social move-
ment and institution, but in general GSMs are concerned about the
growing in¯uence of MEI activity upon their constituency. With
regard to the IMF, there is concern about the neoliberal approach to
structural adjustment programmes, as well as criticism of its expan-
sion past the bounds of monetary relations. GSM concern with the
World Bank is focused upon its lending policies and projects. The
WTO is seen as an institution creating new international economic
law and enforcing liberalisation programmes in a number of new
areas. In each case, GSMs offer a challenge to the liberal economic
approach of the governing institutions.
In some cases, particular NGOs link up with MEIs because they will
bene®t directly. For example, the World Bank may contract selected
NGOs to assist in policy implementation. This allows some NGOs to
forward their agenda and privileges them over other groups. In other
cases NGOs may feel international organisations will give them a
better hearing than national states. The attempt by some social move-
ments and NGOs to lobby MEIs may be a recognition that governance
is now a multilayered affair requiring participation at the local,
national, international and global levels.
We also hope to suggest what kinds of strategies and tactics social
movements have found to be most effective. Is the priority to in¯uence
institution of®cials or the purse holders in the developed states? What
does this mean for their relationship with their home states? How do
they order priorities between various levels of activity? Conversely,
why have some elements of the social movements refused to engage
with MEIs?

20
 Multilateralism and GSMs

What is the signi®cance of the MEI±GSM relationship?

The signi®cance of the MEI±GSM relationship lies in three areas:
policy change, democratic governance and political sustainability. The
®rst area for evaluation is the degree to which this relationship is
shaping policy outcomes. In cases where we have found some
changes in this ®eld we will highlight them. Prominent examples
include environmental assessments of World Bank projects, increased
attention to gender issues in development, the creation of social
dimensions to structural adjustment programmes and the high-
lighting of core labour standards. Each of these policy changes shifts
resources in the global economy, affecting the health and livelihood of
target populations. In some cases, such as the construction of social
safety nets, these can be questions of life and death. Potentially, the
MEI±GSM relationship can be very signi®cant for the vulnerable
sectors of global society.
The second aspect is to determine what effect the relationship is
having on the method of governance in terms of democratisation. The
operation of MEIs is a concern for global democracy. The activity of
these institutions is increasingly affecting the daily lives of hundreds
of millions of people. The lead role the IMF and World Bank have
played since the debt crisis of the early 1980s has guided the structural
adjustment policies in many developing countries. The World Bank's
lending policies have guided development projects, often causing
considerable controversy amongst local inhabitants. Article IV con-
sultations of the IMF have subjected the member states to detailed
critical review. The new powers of the WTO herald an era of increased
scrutiny of national economies by the international community in the
area of trade policies. In Northern states some groups are concerned
that the ideology of these institutions subordinates issues such as
environmental protection, gender equality and labour rights to a
liberalisation drive. In Southern countries these concerns are accom-
panied by fears of the increasing gap generated between developed
and developing countries in a liberal global economy. People in both
Southern and Northern countries have expressed fears about the
dilution of state sovereignty by these institutions and the interests
they represent.
Some theorists have pointed to the activity of social movements
working beyond state borders as a method of increasing democratic
practice. They see a contradiction between the fact that the structures

21
Contesting Global Governance

of power and issues of concern are ®rmly rooted in a global context,

but participation, representation and legitimacy are ®xed at the state
level (Connolly 1991; Walker 1993: 141±58). Rather than stressing the
rebuilding of state-like institutions at an international level, new social
movements are advanced as the best hope for global democratic
practice. These movements are said to have a global vision, proposing
transnational solutions. One of the primary tasks of such movements
and the way in which they might contribute to increasing democracy
is by creating a global political community which has a sense of
common problems (Brecher, Childs and Culter 1993; Thiele 1993).
Does this work in practice? Does the MEI±GSM relationship con-
tribute to a democratisation of global governance? The answer devel-
oped in our conclusion is a tentative and quali®ed `yes'.
Finally, the MEI±GSM relationship is signi®cant because it high-
lights the issue of the political sustainability of global governance. In
addition to debates about the most desirable economic strategy,
attention must be given to the political foundation upon which these
institutions rest. The study argues that the foundations of global
governance go beyond states and ®rms to include social movements.
Proposals for change in the institutions' structures and roles should be
cognisant of this dimension of their activity.

Research method and plan of the study

We have combined several research methods. In addition to a survey
of secondary sources we have undertaken interviews with of®cials
from the three institutions under study. Where possible we have also
consulted their libraries and ®les. A similar approach was adopted
with regard to social movements and NGOs. We also acted as
observers at events where MEI±GSM interaction took place, such as
the 1995 UN Summit for Social Development (Copenhagen), the 1995
Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing), the 1996 World
Congress of the ICFTU (Brussels), the 1996 IMF/World Bank Annual
Meetings (Washington), the 1996 WTO Ministerial Meeting (Singa-
pore), the 1997 Asia Paci®c Economic Cooperation meeting
(Vancouver) and the 1998 WTO Ministerial Meeting (Geneva). Field
work has also taken place in Romania and Uganda. A draft report was
circulated to a selection of people involved in the activities of MEIs
and GSMs. In February 1998 we hosted a small workshop where
participants from MEIs and GSMs were able to voice their criticisms

22
 Multilateralism and GSMs

and offer suggestions for improvements to the report. This book is a

response to those helpful suggestions.
This introductory chapter is followed by four case studies and a
conclusion. The case studies re¯ect the varied degree of activity in the
MEI±GSM relationship. On the institutional side, the World Bank has
had the most involvement with GSMs. On the GSM side, environmen-
talists have had more success than labour and women's groups. As a
result, although each institution has its own chapter focusing upon
engagement with a GSM (Bank and women, WTO and labour, IMF
and GSMs) we also have a chapter which offers a comparative
analysis of the environmental campaign at the Bank and the WTO.
The conclusion provides an overview of the MEI±GSM engagement
and develops the complex multilateralism concept.

23
2 The World Bank and women's
movements

This chapter examines the ways in which women's movements have

engaged with the World Bank in order to challenge the neoliberal
economic development paradigm which the Bank promotes, and
which some feminists claim is responsible for accelerating rates of
female immiseration in developing countries. Feminist critiques have
made inroads at the World Bank in terms of diverting some develop-
ment resources to support women's education, health, and access to
micro-credit. But the feminist critique has barely grazed neoliberal
prescriptions for market led economic growth in spite of evidence
that failures in economic reform policies and structural adjustment
have been caused in part by ignorance about the ways gender affects
household level responses to production incentives. The outcomes of
engagement between women's movements and the World Bank
re¯ect on characteristic features of the Bank's institutional culture,
cognitive framework, and decision-making structures which make it
relatively indifferent to the gender justice and equity argument.
Outcomes of this engagement are also shaped by characteristic
features of women's organisations which have, until recently, limited
their capacity for building global coalitions around women's
economic rights.

The World Bank: what it is, what it does,

how it works
The World Bank is the world's biggest development bank, providing
®nance, research and policy advice to developing countries, with an
annual turnover in new loan commitments to developing nations of

24
 The World Bank and women's movements

over $20 billion.1 Up to the 1980s Bank loans were primarily for
speci®c development projects, but in response to national crises in
economic management in the 1980s it embarked on the more contro-
versial course of policy-based lending, attaching conditions on loan
disbursement which resembled the IMF's economic austerity con-
ditions.2 This in¯uence over how loans are spent gives the Bank an
important position in setting the terms of development policy dis-
courses, which is why the Bank's policies are of such great interest to
global social movements and alternative development practitioners.
The Bank's operations are divided across four main institutions: the
International Development Authority (IDA) for concessional lending
to the poorest countries, the International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development (IBRD) for regular loans, the International Finance
Corporation (IFC) for private sector commercial lending, and the
Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) to insure private
foreign direct investors against `political risks' in developing coun-
tries. IDA loans are funded by regular voluntary contributions by
developed countries (`Part I' countries in Bank terminology), and
increasingly from IDA repayments and IBRD pro®ts. IBRD loans are
funded through the sale of Bank bonds on international capital
markets ($15 billion a year compared to $6 billion a year for IDA). The
operations of the IFC and the MIGA are the least subject to condition-
alities and quality controls, but are just as much of concern to gender
equity advocates. The Bank's support to the private sector through the
IFC and the MIGA is the fastest growing component of Bank lending,
and it has a `multiplier' effect, in that Bank activity in the private
sector of a given country acts as a green light to other commercial
investors. Bank critics therefore target Bank activities in the private
sector as an arena in which labour and environmental standards, and
gender equity concerns, could be modelled as standards for the
commercial sector.
The World Bank is not a monolithic or monological institution, for

1 However, the importance of Bank lending has diminished with increased private
capital ¯ows ± e.g. in the Latin American region public capital ¯ows have dropped
from 50 per cent to 20 per cent of total capital ¯ows in the last ®ve years. In the last
seven years, the ¯ow of private sector funds to developing countries has increased
®vefold (World Bank 1997b: 7, 13).
2 The Bank's adjustment loans are actually only a small proportion of its loans. In 1995,
it made 130 adjustment loans (average size $140 million) and 1,612 project investment
loans (average size $80 million) (Alexander 1996).

25
Contesting Global Governance

all it may seem so to its critics. It has always been somewhat torn
between two competing identities. On the one hand, it is a bank, an
institution driven by a `disbursement imperative for capital-driven
growth-oriented lending' (Nelson 1995: 171). On the other, it is a
development organisation with a stated objective of poverty reduction
through economic growth. These two identities can clash, when new
development ideas diverge from ®nancial management requirements.
The tension between the two identities actually creates space within
the Bank for pockets of resistance and the development of alternatives
to dominant neoliberal economic development paradigms. This
tension is also productive of the periodic sea-changes in the Bank's
approach to its development mandate. In the 1950s and 1960s the
Bank promoted strong state-led investment in developing economies
and poverty reduction programmes. From the late 1970s this approach
was virtually reversed with a new neoliberal economic orthodoxy
prescribing state withdrawal from markets. By the late 1980s as the
human costs of structural adjustment programmes emerged, the Bank
recommitted itself to its poverty reduction mission, and although it
has not deviated from its neoliberal policies on market liberalisation,
it is devoting more attention to human capital development and social
development more generally. Since 1990, and very markedly since
President James Wolfensohn took of®ce in June 1995, there has been a
shift, at least in the Bank's rhetoric, to promoting `participatory
development'. One of Wolfensohn's ®rst acts in of®ce was to launch a
report by the Bank's `Learning Group on Participatory Development',
thus enormously validating the importance of participation in policy
and project development, giving a ®llip to the efforts of NGOs to
make the Bank's work more transparent and accessible to those most
affected by it (World Bank 1994h: 1). A partner to this agenda is the
Bank's new concern with promoting good governance, and although
its Articles of Agreement forbid any explicit promotion of political
change ± such as transitions to democracy ± its approach to good
governance aims to encourage greater participation in national institu-
tions of governance, and to improve the accountability of these
institutions, all of which should encourage a deepening of democracy
in some contexts.
Formal power at the Bank rests with its owners ± its member states.
These are represented on the Board of Governors, a body which meets
just twice a year and delegates decision making to the Bank's twenty-
four-member Executive Board, which meets twice a week to review,

26
 The World Bank and women's movements

approve, or reject Bank project proposals, as well as to review Bank

policy. The president of the Bank chairs the Executive Board on which
he has the casting vote in the event of a tie. The ®ve largest
shareholders in the Bank (the USA, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom
and France) each appoint an Executive Director; the remainder of the
Board is elected by the other member governments every two years.
The Board operates on a weighted voting basis but most decisions are
based on consensus. There is an obvious North±South power division
between the rich, non-borrowing countries on the Executive Board
who make the capital contributions which support the IDA, and the
poor, borrowing countries. Within Part I countries the US Treasury
exercises the most power, as it controls the biggest single-country
contribution to the IDA. As a result the most effective way of
in¯uencing the Bank from the outside is by lobbying Congress to
threaten funds released through the US Treasury to the Bank; precisely
the strategy used to great effect by environmental groups in the mid-
1980s. Another effective strategy is to lobby Executive Directors and
the national legislatures to which they report to act as advocates for
certain issues when scrutinising Bank policy.
The Executive Board is not the only site of power in the institution.
Another important locus of power in the Bank in terms of setting
policy priorities is the Bank's president and top management team. As
Williams (1994: 107) points out, the ability of the management and
staff of the bank to shape policies and decisions ± and indeed, to enjoy
a high degree of autonomy in relation to its Board of Directors, arises
from a combination of the Bank's relatively `independent ®nancial
base, the impressive technical and intellectual reputation of its staff,
its pre-eminent position among multilateral lending agencies and the
activities of successive presidents to develop and preserve organisa-
tional autonomy'. This relative autonomy extends to the rank and ®le
of economists and other specialists working in the operational and
technical divisions of the Bank in the sense that they have some room
for manoeuvre in pursuing new ideas. This facilitated, for instance,
the creation in 1990 of a Bank-wide Learning Group on Participatory
Development ± on the face of it a rather counter-cultural subject for
the Bank. This kind of elasticity in the Bank's institutional culture has
been very important to the relative successes of advocates of gender
equity in development.

27
Contesting Global Governance

Bank±NGO relations
No formal place existed in the Bank's original institutional structure
for the representation of the interests of non-state actors such as social
movements. Since 1982, however, there has been an increasing degree
of dialogue and cooperation between the Bank and development
NGOs. The 1990s have seen increasing reference to the importance of
`dialogue' with `stakeholders' and `civil society' in the Bank's dis-
course. Such sentiments appear in particular in the Bank's new
governance documents (World Bank 1994a) and in its discussion
papers on participatory development and development partnership
(World Bank 1998a).3 `Civil society' is very broadly de®ned in these
kinds of documents, as are the range of actors which are embraced by
the notion of `stakeholders' in any particular set of economic reform
policies or sectoral investment programmes. These might include
trade unions, business associations, social movements and so on, but
in the Bank's actual engagement with non-state actors, this has boiled
down to NGOs involved in development.
Outreach to and incorporation of NGOs is prompted by two
concerns. First, there is increasing recognition of the `comparative
advantage' exercised by NGOs over state bureaucracies in delivering
development resources to the poor ± and thereby in enhancing
development effectiveness. Second, there is a growing recognition of
the effectiveness of NGOs in determining the climate of public
opinion, particularly in the North, about the Bank's work ± and
thereby threatening some of the Bank's operating funds, let alone the
environment of good will for its work. There is also recognition of
their role in developing countries in channelling and expressing
popular frustrations with the sometimes painful social impact of
economic reform policies, a role which can contribute to an often
already weak national sense of ownership of these policies. Devel-
oping a partnership with NGOs is seen as helpful in enhancing the
social sustainability of the Bank's work.
In this sense Bank±NGO dialogue has been stimulated by internal
critiques of the quality of the Bank's work. In 1993 Wili Wapenhans, a

3 Note that the notion of partnership is intended mainly to apply to more effective
partnerships with borrowing country governments, as a step towards establishing
more effective in-country ownership and management of economic reform processes.
This, it is hoped, will overcome the tendency of borrowing countries to see economic
reform agendas as an external imposition.

28
 The World Bank and women's movements

retiring bank vice-president, led an evaluation of the Bank's portfolio

which charged that the preoccupation with `moving money' had
seriously undermined the quality of the Bank's work (World Bank
1993b). There is no automatic accountability check on the Bank's work
because loans must be repaid whether or not the projects they ®nance
are successful. The declining performance of the Bank's loan portfolio
was undermining its credibility, as was Wapenhans' discovery that
few of the conditions on loans were complied with by borrowers. This
made it imperative to enhance local commitment and ownership of
Bank-funded development work, which is where NGOs were seen to
have a contribution to make.
The ®rst of®cial channel for World Bank±NGO dialogue predated
this development, however. It was established in 1982 in the formal
NGO±World Bank Committee of twenty-six NGO leaders from
around the world, but this has been seen by many NGOs as a rather
tame forum which is over-controlled by the Bank. In reaction to this,
NGOs have created a forum for more critical and open dialogue: the
NGO Working Group, in which representative non-governmental
institutions from the world's regions participate through a staggered
election process allowing for rotation and diversity of the NGOs
represented.
During the 1980s the presence and importance of NGOs in develop-
ment work increased rapidly, as did their impact on policy debates
and their often strident opposition to the neoliberal `Washington
consensus'. Within the Bank, attention was paid to this phenomenon
in Michael Cernea's 1987 paper `Nongovernmental Organisations and
Local Development', where he argued that NGOs were `builders of
organisational capacity and . . . social (rather than ®nancial) mobilisers
in development work' (Cernea 1987: 8). This in¯uenced the Bank's
appreciation of the utility of NGOs in promoting project effectiveness,
as suggested in a speech in 1988 by Moeen Quereshi, then Senior Vice-
President for Operations, who noted: `In the last few years NGO
in¯uence on Bank policies has grown . . . I have asked our staff to look
for more situations where NGOs could help us elicit participation of
poor people in planning public projects and policies' (Nelson 1995: 7).
This declaration suggests an internally driven process of outreach. But
in fact, the Bank's engagement with NGOs has always been just as
much in response to increasingly effective NGO campaigns to elicit
reform of the Bank.
There have been tensions in Bank±NGO relations. Many NGOs

29
Contesting Global Governance

viewed the formal NGO±World Bank Committee with suspicion.

Since the 1990s, as Bank±NGO interactions have become broader and
more generally accepted, the Committee no longer appears to be
performing any useful function. It was not, for instance, involved in
the joint Bank±NGO initiative to research the impact of structural
adjustment on the poor: the Structural Adjustment Participatory
Research Initiative (SAPRI) launched in late 1996. This engages the
Bank to work with NGO activists and researchers in seven countries
experiencing economic reform to research the impact of adjustment
(using participatory methods) and to enhance the participation of civil
society groups in the design of policies. Over 1,000 NGOs all over the
world have signed upto this initiative.
Bank±NGO interactions are structured around operational colla-
boration, economic and sector work (ESW), and policy dialogue.
There has been a great increase in the number of Bank projects which
involve NGOs; they were an average of ®fteen a year in the early and
mid-1980s, but by 1991/92, 89 of the 156 projects approved involved
NGOs in their design and implementation. NGO participation has
been over 30 per cent in every year in the 1990s, and up to 50 per cent
in 1994 (World Bank 1996b: iii). In most of these cases, the NGOs are
involved primarily as service providers, as intermediaries in imple-
menting projects, not as policy makers. Classically, they are contracted
to provide targeted services to the poor to ease the impact of adjust-
ment measures, without themselves having a chance to challenge the
Bank's adjustment agenda.
This is changing, however, with the increasing involvement of
NGOs in providing research-based inputs to the Bank's ESW, and to
its in-country policy dialogues. ESW provides the analytical founda-
tions for Bank policy work and project lending. It informs the `policy
dialogue' between the Bank and its clients via a central policy
document: the Country Assistance Strategy (CAS), whose production
and negotiation with governments has been, until recently, a secretive
process. NGOs have been involved, however, in consultations over
the documents which feed into the CAS, such as country economic
memoranda (reports which are prepared for each borrower country
analysing its economic prospects and suggesting broad policy
directions), poverty and social assessments, public expenditure
reviews, and environmental action plans.
Involvement of NGOs in policy dialogue has gradually become
more meaningful in the sense that the Bank is slowly relinquishing

30
 The World Bank and women's movements

aspects of its culture of secrecy to enable NGOs to inform themselves

better of Bank±borrower-country dealings. The NGO±World Bank
Committee is intended as a forum for policy dialogue, and topics
discussed include poverty, participation, social development, environ-
ment, the management of the Bank and information disclosure. NGOs
have lobbied persistently for a relaxation of the Bank's notorious
secrecy around policy development and project preparation, and this
paid off in the 1990s with a Public Disclosure Policy in January 1994 to
open bank project documents (prepared after January 1994) to the
public. In addition, an Independent Inspection Panel was created in
September 1994 to improve accountability to `affected parties of an
action or omission by the Bank' (World Bank 1994b: 17, 74) ± in effect,
to give those who feel they have been harmed by the Bank a chance to
hold the Bank accountable to its own operational policies.4
More directly, the Bank now speaks of establishing partnerships
with civil society (along with the private sector) to encourage partici-
pation in the design and implementation of national development
strategies. In part, this has involved convening huge in-country fora to
discuss policy reform with civil society representatives. Inevitably
such jamborees leave many participants unsatis®ed because of
the impossibility of including all interested parties, and because of the
dif®culty of establishing more than super®cial exchanges. In part
the notion of partnerships and dialogue with civil society has involved
plans to ®nance a programme of `education of civil society', to be
managed by the Bank's Economic Development Institute (which
focuses on research and training). This would mean a programme to
`build understanding of economic and social issues among organisa-
tions of civil society ± NGOs, labour unions and the media ± as well as
among parliamentarians and other government of®cials' (Bread for
the World 1997a: 6). Such activities are intended to build public
consensus and support for economic reform, not to generate or pick
up on popular critiques of the Bank's work.
Before discussing the history of the engagement of women's move-
ments with the Bank, and their impact, we turn to a discussion of
important features of women's movements which have determined
their critique of economic policies and the nature of their engagement
with multilateral economic institutions such as the Bank.

4 For a more detailed history of Bank±NGO relations see UNGLS (1997).

31
Contesting Global Governance

Women's movements
There is no single international women's movement, nor such a thing
as global feminism. Although women's movements have proliferated
the world over, they differ across and between nations on the grounds
of race, class, ethnicity, geopolitical location, and of course ideological
orientation. However, there is no doubt that from the plurality of
women's movements it makes sense to talk of `women's movements'
as national and international actors articulating new political and
economic agendas based upon critiques of inequities in gender power
relations.
Women's movements project a vision of a new social order which is
more radical than the social change projects of other `new' social
movements globally, in that the gender equality which feminists
propose would fundamentally change current approaches to social
organisation. The condemnation of inequalities in relations between
the sexes is a radical challenge to social relations which are still often
seen as a matter of nature, not human choice and social design, not
matters for politics. It is important, however, not to assume that all
movements organised by women autonomously from male-
dominated organisations are based upon a critique of gender rela-
tions; upon what could very broadly be described as a feminist social
analysis. Many forms of women's activism are organised around
struggles for democracy, national self-determination, environmental
protection and human rights. Some women's movements such as
religious fundamentalist and right-wing groups take a decidedly
conservative perspective on gender relations, seeking to preserve,
rather than challenge or change, unequal relations between women
and men. This chapter, however, is concerned with women's move-
ments which pursue justice in gender relations, and in particular,
which propose alternative perspectives on economic development to
challenge the Washington consensus on neoliberal economic policies.
Unorthodox organisational forms and tactics characterise women's
civil society associations and their political struggles. This is because
of structural constraints on women's activism which are caused by
gender divisions of labour and power. These constraints include
women's limited time for political activism because of their double
duty of work in productive and reproductive arenas, and women's
lack of ®nancial and social resources and political experience.
Women's movements rarely possess capacities to impose sanctions for

32
 The World Bank and women's movements

failure to respect gender equity agendas or laws. Women's subordina-

tion to men means that they may have weak `fallback' positions to
retreat to as a threat in negotiations. They tend to lack independent
sources of income and social support, and their physical subordina-
tion to men makes it dif®cult to effect a `strike' from performing
domestic and sexual duties.5 More crucially, relations between the
sexes in the family tend to be regarded as matters of cooperative and
affective or loving values which are much less open to bargaining and
compulsion than other forms of social relations, such as those between
classes, or workers and employers. As a result, when it comes to
challenging inequities in gender relations, women's movements
employ complex, subtle, and sometimes very low-pro®le tactics which
aim to reshape gender identities, methods of socialising children and
cultural expectations in male±female interactions.
These structural features of many women's movements ± low
political leverage and loose organisational forms ± affects their terms
of engagement with multilateral economic institutions. As will be
shown, they must seek constructive engagement and `entry' into
institutional processes and cognitive frameworks, rather than em-
ploying more overtly political tactics of capturing the resources and
undermining the public image of such institutions in the way the
environmental movement has been able to do (see chapter 4).
Women's movements simply, to date, lack the collective power for
such tactics. Above all, they tend to lack a broad base of public
sympathy ± or a broad constituency ± because the challenge to
`natural' gender relations is experienced as deeply threatening in all
societies, and because feminist politics are assumed to be the concern
of a very small, elite and unrepresentative group of women.

Pursuing women's interests in the international arena

Multilateral organisations concerned with global governance, peace-
keeping and human rights have proven important arenas in which
women have been able to legitimise their rights claims and develop

5 The `strike' tactic has been attempted, though, for example the women's `strike for
peace' across the USA in the mid-1960s in protest at fallout from atmospheric testing
of nuclear weapons. This spread to Canada and Europe, with national chapters of the
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom providing a networking
function in an early example of transnational women's activism. See Boulding (1993:
13) for a description.

33
Contesting Global Governance

transnational networks. Indeed, women's movements have had much

more success in securing recognition (although not enforcement) of
their rights in the UN's social institutions than in multilateral economic
institutions. This owes in part to the differing cognitive frameworks
and of®cial ideologies of the different institutions. International organ-
isations set up to enhance cross-national dialogue espouse values of
tolerance and respect for human rights which women's movements
can call upon when seeking equal respect for women's concerns. In
contrast, multilateral economic institutions monitoring and supporting
stability in national budgets, such as the World Bank and the IMF, or
promoting the interests of transnational capital, such as the WTO, are
governed by a set of values drawn from neoliberal economics, within
which women's concerns with social justice can sometimes be seen as
attempts to impose market distortions.
The four UN Conferences on Women (Mexico, 1975; Copenhagen,
1980; Nairobi, 1985; Beijing, 1995) have acted as great catalysts to the
development of women's organisations and movements nationally
and internationally. At each conference a parallel forum for NGOs
was set up, at which the numbers of women participating multiplied
over the years. There were 6,000 women representing NGOs at the
Mexico City conference in 1975, and 23,000 twenty years later at the
Beijing conference, with thousands more women registered but
unable to attend owing to China's anxiety over the huge in¯ux of
visitors, its inadequate facilities and its outright obstruction of
women's efforts to obtain visas.
The high pro®le of the UN conferences has encouraged a tendency
to assume that women's movements are products of modernisation
and development, animated primarily by middle-class urban women,
and inspired by Western feminism. These conferences certainly
helped to consolidate women's movements in many countries as they
prepared for participation in NGO fora or as they lobbied their
governments. But suggestions that women's movements are products
of `modernisation' and globalisation have been rejected by women in
developing countries, who point to extensive pre-colonial histories of
women's activism, and show that the bulk of women's associational
energies in their countries is rooted in the concerns of rural women
and of working-class urban women, not in the concerns of urban
elites.
The notion that women's activism globally is inspired by Western
liberal feminism has also been deeply resented and has triggered

34
 The World Bank and women's movements

profound convulsions and divisions in international women's move-

ments (Mohanty 1991). Women in developing countries, as well as
poor women and women of colour in industrialised countries, have
charged Western liberal feminists with ignoring differences of class
and race between women; differences which generate profound in-
equalities between women, let alone between women and men. For
example a statement from the Association of African Women for
Research and Development (AAWORD), an international organisation
established in 1976, argues: `While patriarchal views and structures
oppress women all over the world, women are also members of classes
and countries that dominate others and enjoy privileges in terms of
access to resources. Hence, contrary to the best intentions of `sister-
hood', not all women share identical interests' (AAWORD: 1992).
The painful debates between First and Third World feminists have
had a fruitful outcome: they triggered the articulation of a new
gendered political economy by socialist feminists and feminists in the
South, a fundamental critique of economic development which now
animates the position of many women's movements in relation to
multilateral economic institutions.

Women's movements and alternative economics

Until recently, economic development policy has been a policy arena
fairly closed to feminist critiques, with its technical language and its
impervious international institutions maintaining high entrance bar-
riers to the participation of women (let alone feminists). Western
feminist critiques of economic development processes initially did not
challenge the conceptual framework of economics; rather, the `Women
in Development' (WID) critique which developed out of the work of
feminist development practitioners in Northern bilaterals in the early
1970s saw the problem as the exclusion of women from access to new
development resources and opportunities (Tinker 1990).
A rather different critique of the development process itself (as
opposed to women's apparent exclusion from it) had been emerging
from feminist anthropologists, and socialist feminists, including
women in developing countries, often developing out of critiques of
colonial exploitation, post-colonial neo-imperialism, and consequent
dependency. This critique was expanded by a new international
network of women researchers from the economic South: Develop-
ment Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), founded in

35
Contesting Global Governance

1984 on the eve of the NGO and of®cial conferences marking the end
of the UN Decade for Women. Their starting point was to establish
that the problem of women's disprivilege was not caused by exclusion
from the development process, but by their inclusion in a process
which relies upon gendered divisions of labour and power (as well as
systems of class and national inequality) to fuel processes of growth
(Sen and Grown 1987). As Peggy Antrobus, one of DAWN's General
Coordinators, noted with reference to current neoliberal economic
development policies: `The problem with structural adjustment poli-
cies is not that they assume women are outside of development and
need to be brought in, but that they are actually grounded in a gender
ideology which is deeply and fundamentally exploitative of women's
time, work, and sexuality' (Antrobus 1988).6
Feminist critiques of economic development have proceeded from
this point, exposing the unacknowledged assumptions made in
economic theory about the low or zero value of women's labour.
Economists such as Diane Elson (1991), Gita Sen (Sen and Grown
1987), and Nancy Folbre (1986) have elaborated principles of feminist
economics which begin from new perspectives on household
economic behaviour to endow women's work with value in spite of
being unpaid, and which recognise that relations of power between
women and men (and people of different age groups or life-cycle
stages) within the household mean that members of households do
not share equally in economic opportunities and wealth. This critique
is a strong challenge to assumptions made by economic planners
because it demonstrates that people will not respond to economic or
market signals in a `free', rational way unencumbered by social
relations. The fact that gender relations ascribe female labour to
domestic tasks means that this female labour is immobilised in
activities which are not responsive to market signals. Thus price
signals, so key to neoliberal economic planning, will not necessarily
change the way a household allocates its labour. The non-attribution
of economic value or cost to household work leads planners mis-
takenly to assume that women's time has a zero opportunity cost, and
that women can therefore be called upon to expand their labour input
to paid production or voluntary community activity with no negative
impact on human reproductive activity ± on the well-being of chil-
dren, for example, or on the stability of the household.

6 Also cited in Dayal and Mukhopadhyay (1995).

36
 The World Bank and women's movements

In the context of the structural adjustment policies promoted by the

World Bank and IMF since the late 1970s, these feminist economic
principles explain the unequal impact of economic reform on women
and men. Adjustment policies have sought to stabilise economies and
reduce balance of payments de®cits by devaluing the currency, redu-
cing government expenditures, increasing interest rates and control-
ling credit expansion, reducing the role of the state, privatising
national industries, liberalising markets and removing government
subsidies and minimum wages. A measure which has an immediate
impact on women is the reduction of state expenditures on social
services, with women expected to expand their domestic responsibil-
ities to compensate for decreasing state investment in children's
education or health. The introduction of charges to recover costs of
social services can exacerbate gender biases in household decisions
about which children to educate or bring to the clinic, with girls often
losing out. In some cultures, gendered expectations about appropriate
responsibilities for the sexes can mean that it is women's incomes
which are expected to cover social service costs, not men's.7 In effect,
women are expected to bear the `invisible' costs of adjustment:
there is the risk that what is perceived in conventional economic
analysis as ef®ciency improvements may in fact be a shift in costs
from the visible (predominantly male) to the invisible (predomin-
antly female) economy . . . Gender bias (or `neutrality') in the under-
lying concepts and tools of economics has led to invisibility of
women's economic and non-economic work and to an incomplete
picture of total economic activity. (World Bank 1994e)
However, it is the positive growth programme proposed in neo-
liberal economic reform policies which have had more profoundly
negative impacts upon women's well-being and household survival.
Adjustment measures in productive sectors aim to encourage pro-
duction for the market and for export. Price signals sent out by
liberalised markets encourage this shift. But the capacity of producers
to respond to these signals is affected by gender relations. Women's
labour may be subject to the control of men, and in addition, their
unequal rights and obligations mean they have differential access to
and control over economically productive resources (such as land,
labour, credit, extension services, transport infrastructure). In many

7 This problem is discussed in the context of poverty in Uganda in Goetz, Maxwell and
Maniyire (1994).

37
Contesting Global Governance

parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, where women dominate agricultural

production, these constraints have led to a much lower response than
expected to economic incentives ± what has become known as the lack
of a `supply response' to the signals of increased `demand' sent out by
liberalised markets.8 Alternatively, men have demanded increased
inputs of women's labour on crops sold for cash and export, which
has detracted from women's investment in food crops, undermining
the food security of their families (Floro 1994; World Bank 1990). Some
of the consequences of the strains which economic reform has put on
women's time are becoming evident in family breakdown and increas-
ing female household headship in urban areas of Latin America and
Asia (Dayal and Mukhopadhyay 1995: 18), in women's deteriorating
health and in girls' withdrawal from school to support mothers with
household work (Sparr 1994).
A large number of women's development associations have taken
up these issues, expressed variously through grass-roots struggles to
defend women's economic rights or through national, regional, and
international networks of researchers and activists articulating in-
creasingly sophisticated analysis of economic policy. Just a few
examples of regional networks besides DAWN include the African
Women's Economic Policy Network (AWEPON), which critiques
structural adjustment policies in Sub-Saharan Africa, and Women in
Development Europe (WIDE), a network of feminist activists from
research institutions and European non-governmental development
organisations (NGDOs) which is analysing European Union trade
policies from a gender perspective. The New York-based Women's
Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) has devel-
oped extensive networks on gender and environment- development
issues.
It is striking, however, that effective global coalitions of feminist
economic development associations are much less developed than
global coalitions promoting other gender issues, such as women's
rights as human rights (the International Women's Rights Action
Watch, the Asia-Paci®c Forum on Women, Law and Development,
Women in Law and Development in Africa, and the Latin American
Committee for the Defence of Women's Rights) (Thompson 1997) and

8 A World Bank discussion of this problem in terms of the `missed' economic potential
of women, whose productivity could be tapped for economic growth, is provided in
Saito (1992).

38
 The World Bank and women's movements

women's reproductive rights (FINNRAGE, Women's Reproductive

Health Coalition). This has had consequences for the nature and
success of efforts by women's movements to challenge multilateral
economic institutions.
A nascent feminist economic rights coalition does exist called the
Women's Global Alliance for Development Alternatives. It is devel-
oping a holistic feminist critique of macroeconomic and trade policies,
but it has some problems as a lobbying system which stem from some
of the tensions in cross-national feminist activism mentioned in the
previous section. The coalition has no structure, no secretariat, no
address; just a mailing list linking about ten networks of women's
associations which has at its core the strong regional networks
provided by DAWN, WEDO, and WIDE.9 It has developed in
response to the need to have, to some degree, a united voice at UN
conferences, and has come together in an ad hoc way, starting with
DAWN/WEDO collaboration at the 1992 Rio Conference. Its greatest
success was to create a platform for the feminist critique of economic
austerity programmes at the Social Summit in Copenhagen in 1994. It
coordinated feminist economic analyses to feed into national positions
for the Beijing conference (particularly at the ECE preparatory con-
ference for Beijing), and was a key actor at the Economic Justice NGO
linkage caucus at Beijing which fed NGO perspectives to of®cial
conference participants.
However, the Alliance has been primarily reactive rather than
proactive in setting an agenda for global change from the perspective
of women's movements. There are several reasons for this. Like
women's associations everywhere, it lacks resources, and this under-
mines effective communications with the extended web of women's
groups which form its membership base. It is in debate internally

9 The other networks comprise two from the USA: Alternative Women in Development
(Alt-WID, a Washington-based network for women activists in development organisa-
tions), and the Center for Women's Global Leadership (a research, training, and
advocacy group); two from Canada: the National Action Committee (representing 730
women's groups), and the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of
Women (with 700 individual members from NGOs and research institutions), and
several organisations which are neither dominated by women nor solely concerned
with gender issues: Eurostep (European Solidarity towards Equal Participation of
People), which coordinates the lobbying activities of twenty-one European non-
denominational NGOs, and the Society for International Development (SID), a group
of institutions and individuals concerned with development, involving 6,000 members
in 115 countries.

39
Contesting Global Governance

about whether its members, North and South, have a common agenda
and critique around economic reform, or whether it is instead a
solidarity network to support its members from the South. This issue
has been put on the table by Alt-WID, a US-based network of Women
in Development activists, and also by women of the South. As one
member of this Alliance said: `the Southern members of the Alliance
are not convinced that they need to be in a global alliance. We know
that it is our countries which are taking the damaging decisions and
we take responsibility for changing our own governments.'10 There
has been a challenge to acknowledge the complicity of women in the
North in the sufferings of women in the South, for instance where the
preservation of women's consumption standards and employment in
the North results in environmental damage or loss of women's labour
rights in the South. This tension points to the main problem in
developing a shared global perspective amongst women's movements
on economic change. The fact is that the economic interests of women
in the South can directly con¯ict with those of women in the North.
Cheap female labour in the South can draw jobs away from women in
the North, for example.
Although all global women's coalitions must confront North±South
power differences between women, the con¯icts of economic interest
which, though surmountable, challenge the coherence of the Alliance,
demonstrate the particular challenges to cross-national coalitions on
economic justice issues. Con¯icts of interest of this sort do not muddy
many of the other issues over which women have come together
cross-culturally. For example, the great success of global women's
movements to date has been politicising violence against women as a
crime and a human rights violation. This is an issue which unites
women across a vast ideological spectrum, and where gains in the
physical security and human rights of particular groups of women
are seen as gains for all, not as potentially detracting from the
opportunities of others.
A recent initiative has sought to galvanise women's movements
globally into scrutinising the impact of the World Bank's policies on
women and monitoring the process of institutionalising gender equity
concerns to the Bank's structure. The `Women's Eyes on the Bank'
campaign was launched at the Beijing conference with a petition

10 Interview, NGO, Washington DC, 9 September 1997. Interviews were conducted on a

non-attributable basis and hence no names will be furnished here.

40
 The World Bank and women's movements

signed by 900 activists, which was presented to the World Bank's

President Wolfensohn. The petition called on the Bank to implement
fully the Beijing Platform for Action and to expand NGO involvement
in Bank activities. There were four speci®c demands:
. to increase the participation of grass-roots women in
economic policy making;
. to institutionalise a gender perspective in the design and
implementation of Banks' policies and programmes;
. to increase the Bank's investments that reach women, par-
ticularly in basic education, health, and credit programmes;
. to increase the number and diversity of senior women at the
bank.
The campaign represents a sea-change amongst women's move-
ments, because it is based on a perspective which, though challenging
the Bank's policies, also sees it as a potential ally in dialogues between
women's groups and their own governments. The campaign has had
some success in triggering a response from the Bank, particularly
since it is building on internal changes already underway to promote
gender equity concerns in the Bank's work, as will be shown below.
Bank insiders say that the size of this response re¯ected Wolfen-
sohn's impression that a coherent and massive global women's move-
ment was pressing these demands. This speaks to the value of civil
society efforts to develop a united front on economic reform issues,
however dif®cult it may be to establish or maintain.

Gender issues in the Bank's work

It has been extremely dif®cult for women's movements to gain direct
access to the Bank. Its Washington of®ces are inaccessible to most
women's associations around the world unless they are represented
by powerful Washington-based NGOs with an established relation-
ship with the Bank. The Bank's economistic policy language is highly
technical and can seem deliberately arcane and indecipherable to
many women critics. In any case, its policy documents such as the
important Country Assistance Strategy papers have been, until very
recently, inaccessible to readers in civil society, protected by a compre-
hensive embargo on outside scrutiny. Above all, the Bank does not
recognise women's movements as legitimate interlocutors in
economic policy making; until very recently its policy dialogue

41
Contesting Global Governance

process has been conducted exclusively between the Bank and the
borrowing country.
The Bank has been markedly slow in its response to the concerns of
women's movements. Most development agencies such as bilaterals
and regional development banks were spurred into an institutional
and policy response to the gender issue by the series of UN Confer-
ences on Women. Most began putting in place institutional infra-
structure to house Women in Development concerns after the Mexico
City conference in 1975. Most had a policy directive to promote
gender equity in development planning by the end-of-decade confer-
ence in Nairobi; those which did not issued policy statements shortly
afterwards. At the World Bank, although the idea of developing a
gender equity policy statement was ®rst mooted in 1975, a Policy
Paper: Enhancing Women's Involvement in Economic Development, was
not issued until 1994.
In the mid-1970s, the Bank was criticised by women's movements
for failing to include women in its development projects. And indeed,
from FY 67 to FY 86 only 7 per cent of Bank projects included `gender-
related activities' (World Bank 1994f: 37). These activities formed a
relatively small part of project objectives, and were also hardly
oriented towards achieving gender equity; they tended merely to
target women's reproductive roles, often just by providing contra-
ceptives in family planning projects (World Bank 1994f: 37). Since FY
86 there has been a greater proportion of Bank projects with `gender-
related actions'; up to almost 30 per cent of Bank operations in 1995,
although as we will see, women's groups question the quality of these
actions. During the 1980s, the focus of critiques by women's move-
ments shifted to a condemnation of the negative impact of Bank
structural adjustment measures on women's livelihoods and on
gender relations. Feminist critics charged that the Bank ignores
gender issues in its important Economic and Sector Work (ESW)
which includes the Bank's macroeconomic policy analysis and its
research on development sectors such as ®nance, industry, agriculture,
and infrastructure, as well as cross-cutting concerns such as poverty
and the environment (Women's Eyes on the World Bank 1997).
Institutionally, the Bank has found it dif®cult to ®nd a home for the
gender equity concern. A lone woman advisor on Women in Develop-
ment was appointed in 1977, who, lacking resources to develop policy
or to monitor gender equity concerns in Bank projects, focused on
defending the Bank's work to outside critics (Kardam 1991: 77). There

42
 The World Bank and women's movements

was certainly no question of endowing this position with powers of

in¯uence over the Bank's work ± such as a veto over inappropriate
policies. This problem of inadequate resources for the gender equity
concern within the Bank, and a lack of effective powers over Bank
policies and processes, has plagued subsequent efforts to `main-
stream' a Women in Development focus in the Bank's work (Kardam
1991; Razavi and Miller 1995). In 1986, a three-person WID of®ce was
established, and the following year placed within the Population and
Human Resources Department. By 1988 the WID of®ce had become a
division with eight staff. In 1990 each region was given funding to
establish a full-time WID Coordinator post. This was an important
step towards bringing WID issues into the operational part of the
Bank, but rather pales in comparison to the expansion occurring
simultaneously in another area related to the quality of Bank loans:
the environment. Between 1983 and 1987 professional staff assigned to
monitor environmental concerns multiplied from six to sixty; there
were environmental divisions in the regional departments, and a full
department for the environment in the technical support services of
the Bank (Rich 1994).
In the 1990s, particularly since the UN Conference on Women in
Beijing, the pace of change and enhanced commitment to gender
equity concerns at the Bank has been accelerating. In 1993 after a
Bank-wide reorganisation, a Gender Analysis and Policy (GAP)
thematic group was set up in the Education and Social Policy Depart-
ment of the new vice-presidency for Human Resources Development
and Operations Policy. In 1995, the Bank's new president, James
Wolfensohn, attended the Beijing conference, the ®rst time a World
Bank president had done so. The nature of his participation, in which
he consulted with women's civil society groups at the NGO linkage
Caucus on Economic Justice, and accepted a petition from the
Women's Eyes on the Bank Campaign for policy reform at the Bank,
signalled an important new opening to global women's movements.
Wolfensohn, who is noted for his concern with the social impact of
economic reform, responded to the Women's Eyes on the Bank
campaign by setting up an External Gender Consultative Group
(EGCG) composed of fourteen women who are members of women's
movements around the world. Top management at the Bank has
consulted with this group on an annual basis since Beijing. In spite of
tremendous obstacles to regular communication among members, or
to the development of a common strategy or set of concerns, the

43
Contesting Global Governance

EGCG has taken steps in areas which are relatively new for the
feminist critique of the Bank. For instance, it has pressed the Bank to
apply its principles on gender equity to its work in private sector
development. Wolfensohn also demanded regional gender action
plans of all Bank regional operations (most had been completed by
mid-1997), asked the Bank to produce annual reports on progress in
addressing gender issues in development, launched gender ¯agship
projects,11 and included gender equity in the institutional change
process at the Bank which is intended to produce a new mission for
the Bank based on fostering social as well as economic development.
As part of a general effort to open up civil society participation in the
design and implementation of some programmes, a commitment has
been made to consult women in the Bank's economic and sector work,
particularly the Country Assistance Strategy process.
In 1997, after yet another massive reorganisation, a Gender Sector
Board was set up in one of the four new Technical Networks which
represent restructured thematic support services to country-level
operations. The Gender Sector Board is intended to operate as a
family of gender specialists across the Bank, anchored by a core group
in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Technical
Network, whose other concerns include public sector management
and poverty.12 Locating the gender equity interest in this Technical
Network is a coup for the internal Bank gender advocates who
lobbied for this. It signals that gender equity is not considered a `soft'
sector issue related mainly to reproductive concerns. However, there
has been no change to the fact that the gender unit at the Bank has
little command over the incentive system and cannot therefore enforce
compliance with gender equity goals in Bank lending. Indeed, outside
observers suggest that the new system may make it even more
dif®cult to impose a whole range of quality-related concerns on Bank
project design, including social assessments, poverty reduction and
participation. The new system is demand-driven, which means that
11 These are sectoral investment programmes which are intended to be particularly
productive in terms of enhancing women's or girls' development, such as the
Tanzania Girls' Secondary Education Support Project, or the Zimbabwe Health Sector
Projects.
12 The other three Technical Networks are: Human Development (population, health,
nutrition, education); Private Sector and Infrastructure (small and medium-sized
businesses, banking and capital markets, telecoms, transportation, sanitation, energy);
Environment, Rural and Social Development (participation, NGOs and post-con¯ict
work).

44
 The World Bank and women's movements

gender specialists will have to rely upon project designers, or `task

team managers' in country departments, to call upon their services,
but these managers will be under no strict obligation to do so (Bread
for the World Institute 1996: 20). This puts the onus on gender
specialists to `sell' their services in ways which will attract project
designers ± and in a neoliberal economic environment this means
stressing the business case for gender equity, not the social justice
case, which has tended to be the stronger suit of gender advocates.
On the surface, the Bank appears to have taken gender equity
concerns seriously. Many feminist critics, however, are sceptical about
the Bank's commitment to these measures. A post-Beijing assessment
of gender equity at the World Bank by the US chapter of the Women's
Eyes on the Bank campaign lists a range of shortcomings in the Bank's
approach to gender equity concerns. It charges that the Bank's 1994
gender policy is not actionable, because `Bank gender initiatives have
yet to translate into concrete actions that address gender inequalities
and break down gender barriers in a majority of its policies'
(Women's Eyes on the World Bank 1997: 2). It charges that the Bank
has failed to recognise gender-speci®c constraints on the participation
of women from civil society in Bank policy dialogues, pointing out
that it makes no allowance for the greater time needed for `partici-
pation' where vast differences of power exist and where women's
groups may be unfamiliar with economic planning languages. What is
more, the Bank is accused of disingenuousness, of claiming credit for
a greater degree of sensitivity to gender issues than it actually re¯ects
in practice. For example, the Bank is satis®ed that its economic and
sector work addresses gender issues when its documents merely
make mention of women or gender, rather than incorporate a gender-
sensitive perspective into economic analyses. For instance, a Country
Assistance Strategy for Indonesia was cited by the Bank as addressing
gender issues, on the rather shallow basis that it mentions `women'
three times and `gender' once, yet lacks either a gender analysis or
strategies to address gender inequalities. The same problem applies to
projects which are said to contain `gender-related actions'; by and
large, these actions do not challenge inequities in gender relations
(Women's Eyes on the World Bank 1997: 3). The Bank is charged
with persistently refusing to entertain a gendered critique of its
macroeconomic policy framework; and with failing to alter its
approach to structural adjustment to minimise its negative impact on
poor women. The Bank has been described as `conspicuously

45
Contesting Global Governance

noncommittal' in response to pressure from the External Gender

Consultative Group to bring gender issues into its more commercial
arms, the IFC and MIGA, described by Wolfensohn as `a much harder
nut to crack' than the IDA (Women's Environment and Development
Organization 1997: 14).
The Bank's opening to consultation with women's movements
through the External Gender Consultative Group has also attracted
criticism. The legitimacy of the EGCG is challenged by some women's
groups on the grounds that as a body it is neither representative nor
accountable ± a very similar criticism as that levelled by many NGOs
at the NGO±World Bank Committee when it was set up in 1982.
Neither the criteria for nor process of selecting members was trans-
parent, with only a narrow stratum of women's groups consulted for
advice on suitable candidates. Very few of the fourteen members
come from associations involved in day-to-day Bank monitoring and
some are therefore not suf®ciently familiar with Bank procedures to
provide the kind of recommendations and advice which could result
in real changes in the Bank. It has no resources and no clear mandate,
nor are members certain about their expected term of tenure in the
group. Not all members have extensive links with women's move-
ments. It was not until June 1998 that a secretariat for the EGCG was
created (based at the NGO Tools for Transition in Netherlands), with
funds from the World Bank. The Women's Eyes on the Bank campaign
has questioned the group's legitimacy, particularly as it is assumed to
represent global women's movements. It has been described by one
feminist activist in Washington DC as `just a bone which Wolfensohn
threw them [women's movements]',13 and by a gender advocate
within the Bank as `Bank de®ned, managed, and implemented. Low-
level and low-brow [. . .] and handled like a damage limitation
measure'.14
Some of these criticisms have hit home. In mid-1998 the Bank
announced that it was about to undertake a policy review report on
gender for the ®rst time, to be ®nalised in December 1999. This kind of
review is intended to be a state-of-the-art assessment of the subject
area as well as a Bank position statement. The Bank has invited broad
civil society participation in this review, a process launched by an
ad hoc working group of representatives from civil society and the

13 Interview, NGO, Washington DC, 9 September 1997.

14 Interview, World Bank, Washington DC, 11 September 1997.

46
 The World Bank and women's movements

Bank convened in mid-1998 by the EGCG. The Bank also announced

that it would ®nally dedicate one of its important annual World
Development Reports (WDR) to gender. These very broadly distributed
annual reports establish a snapshot of current thinking on important
development issues and themes, and are in¯uential in shaping the
dominant development discourse. A WDR on gender is badly
overdue, and many felt one should have been produced for the 1995
UN Conference in Beijing. Instead, it is to be produced in 2004, as a
contribution to the 2005 Fifth UN Conference on Women.
However promising recent developments may seem, the gender
equity issue has had a troubled time at the Bank. In order to explain
this it is important to understand aspects of the Bank's cognitive
framework and its power structure. The Bank's cognitive framework
affects the ways new development concerns like gender equity have
been entertained by its staff, and determines the arguments used by
external critics to plead their case. Its power structure affects its
sensitivity to external critique and determines lines of entry or attack
by outsiders.

The World Bank's cognitive framework: the `business case for

gender equity'
The Bank's cognitive universe ± its framework for understanding
human behaviour ± is neoclassical economics. As the political scientist
Yusuf Bangura notes: `Perhaps the greatest barrier to the institutiona-
lisation of gendered development is the in¯exible nature of the
dominant neo-liberal discourse [. . .] wide gaps exist between the
fundamental premises, values and goals of neo-liberalism and the
broad gender discourse' (Bangura 1997: 20).
The two policy discourses could not be more different. Neoliberal
economics pitches its analyses at the level of the macro economy,
whereas feminist economics begins in the microeconomics and politics
of decision making between women and men in the household. The
driving concern of neoliberal economics is to improve market ef®ci-
ency, which, optimally, will lead to fairness in the allocation of
resources and rewards. To create market ef®ciency, measures such as
limited state intervention, private ownership of assets, trade liberal-
isation, and unregulated competition are encouraged. In contrast, the
driving concern of feminist economics is gender justice, righting
the wrongs experienced by women because of their sex, including the

47
Contesting Global Governance

derogation of the value of their work, the limits on their rights to

property ownership, unequal access to education, employment, or
positions of public power, and even the denial of women's rights to
control their bodies and sexuality. This approach relies upon inter-
ventions to assign value to women's work and to mitigate distortions
caused by gendered ideologies in institutions such as households,
markets and state bureaucracies. There is some premium on the
interventionist role of the state as an agent to challenge some of the
tyrannies of private-sphere patriarchy. Neoliberal economists base
their predictions of people's responses to economic signals on
assumptions about the rationality of individuals keen to maximise
personal advantage, with society simply the aggregate of these
choices. Feminist economists are trying to ®nd ways of working the
politics of gender relations into economics so as to acknowledge the
constraints on individual choices created by social structure, belief
systems and ideologies.15
In interactions between gender equity advocates and the Bank, the
terms of discourse are set by the Bank, as the more powerful
interlocutor, obliging feminist critics to work within the framework of
the neoliberal concern with ef®ciency. At the May 1997 meeting
between the Bank and the EGCG, Minh Chau Nguyen, the acting
head of the Bank's Gender Sector Board, described this as putting the
onus on gender equity advocates to `make the business case for
gender and sell it to staff' (World Bank 1997b: 4). At this same
meeting, phrases such as `the business case for gender', as well as `the
economic rationale for investing in gender' were reiterated frequently
by a series of senior Bank managers, including the president. This is
nothing new, and gender equity advocates have become adept at
demonstrating women's productive ef®ciency, which has resulted in a
highly instrumental perspective on women's contribution to develop-
ment, rather than the contribution of development to women's
empowerment.
The case for the ef®cacy of investing in women has been made most
effectively in the arena of human capital development. Research has
demonstrated higher social pay-offs (or `social externalities') to
investing in women's rather than men's health and education; the
results are lower fertility rates, higher life expectancy, better nutrition

15 This comparison of the two approaches to economic analysis is summarised from

Bangura (1997: 20±1).

48
 The World Bank and women's movements

levels and overall education levels. This evidence has persuaded the
Bank to increase its investments in girls' education and women's
health. Over the last twenty-®ve years, of the 615 Bank projects (out of
5,000) which included `gender-related components',16 46 per cent
were in the health, population and education sectors (Alexander 1996:
5; also ODA/ICRW 1995). These are relatively non-controversial areas
in which to invest; they support women's reproductive roles17 and do
not overtly challenge gender roles. As an independent assessment of
the Bank's record on gender equity explains, `Development thinking
has more easily embraced women's reproductive roles because . . . an
emphasis on motherhood validates widely held beliefs about
women's role in society' (Razavi and Miller 1995: 2).
Gender equity advocates have had much less success in challenging
the framework of the Bank's economic and sector work. Gender
equity concerns have tended to receive scant mention in investment
strategies for `hard' sectors like agricultural or industrial planning, or
industry, energy and transport which absorb the bulk of Bank sectoral
loans, where women's differential resources and options as producers
and homemakers are ignored.18 Gender equity concerns do not even
penetrate very deeply into the Bank's work on poverty reduction; its
country-speci®c Poverty Assessments (PAs) by and large fail to
disaggregate the experience of poverty by gender.19 The important
exception is the Bank's new programme of loans and grants to
institutions offering micro-credit to the very poor: the Consultative
Group to Assist the Poorest (C-GAP). The majority of borrowers in

16 By the Bank's own admission, the rating system which identi®es projects as having
`gender-related components' is insensitive to the quality and `depth' of those
components, not differentiating between whether the project addresses gender equity
issues in a substantive or super®cial way. See the Bank's two progress reports to date
(World Bank 1996a, 1997c). Note that for all regions except for the Middle East, over
half of these `gender-related' projects were approved only very recently, between 1989
and 1993. Before then, `gender-related components' in Bank projects were very scarce.
The Bank's Operations and Evaluations Division estimated that between FY 79 and
FY 84, the height of the UN Decade for Women, only 7 per cent of the investment
portfolio could be said to relate to gender equity concerns (World Bank 1994g).
17 Quite literally. The bulk of the Bank's early research on women was preoccupied with
establishing the determinants of fertility, underlining the strong association between
women and biological reproduction. See Razavi and Miller (1995: 35).
18 `Hard' sector loans totalled $18 billion in 1995 compared with $4 billion loaned to the
social sectors (Alexander 1996: 7).
19 Important exceptions are the PAs for Cameroon, Kenya, and Uganda. See the study of
the World Bank's Poverty Assessments in IDS (1994).

49
Contesting Global Governance

many of these micro-credit programmes are women. Investing in

women's access to micro-credit coheres comfortably with ef®ciency
and poverty-reduction agendas without raising issues of social change
because of the very individualised and home-based nature of micro-
enterprise activities.
Two problems hold back the potential impact of the feminist
critique on the Bank's economic and sectoral work. The most funda-
mental is the clash in the two cognitive frameworks. Forced to make
the business case for investing in women's economic productivity, the
feminist case has ¯oundered somewhat. It is perfectly plausible to
argue that women's productivity could be increased tremendously by
enhancing women's human capital endowments and rights to factors
of production and inputs (Saito 1992). Indeed, the Bank is prepared to
support the project of `investing in and releasing the economic
potential of women' to enhance their contribution to economic devel-
opment.20 But this argument seems to be suggesting that gender
inequalities would be eradicated if market imperfections were
removed, and ignores the persistence of gendered power inequities
which can keep women from controlling the fruits of their increased
productivity. In addition, any increase in women's productivity in
income-generating work represents a loss of their time for work
within the home. In a policy environment which refuses to legitimate
or to ®nance the costs of compensating for the loss of women's
investment household reproduction, women will be expected to work
harder in `productive' and `reproductive' arenas, depleting their
productivity in both. Thus the arguments sometimes offered by
gender equity advocates that `investing in women's productivity is
economically ef®cient', or that `economic growth requires women's
participation' are a little unconvincing.21 One does not have to be a
great cynic to note that economic growth in the West took place
without rewarding women's participation, and indeed, probably
pro®ted from the unpaid subsidy provided by women's work.
The second problem has to do with the ethics and ideologies

20 The quoted phrase is the subtitle of a special Bank memorandum for the Fourth UN
Conference on Women (World Bank 1994d).
21 Although research by the Bank and others has convincingly demonstrated the high
returns to investing in women's education and health, according to the Bank, efforts
to show that countries which invested heavily in women experienced more rapid
economic growth has not been done in a `rigorous and convincing' manner (Razavi
and Miller 1995: 73).

50
 The World Bank and women's movements

surrounding judgements about what is `unfair' in gender relations.

Gender relations are seen as cultural matters, and the condemnation
of inequities in gender relations is assumed to re¯ect a narrow, highly
ideological, Western feminist perspective. The Bank therefore demurs
on assessing justice in gender relations because this is seen as cultural
interference. Its Operational Directive to all staff to integrate gender
equity concerns into their work carries an important let-out clause:
staff are enjoined to pay `due regard to cultural sensitivity' (World
Bank 1994c). No similar delicacy is expected of staff when dealing
with other subjects which can interfere with cultural matters, such as
population policy, privatisation, poverty reduction measures, policies
to educate girls and so on. Nor does the Bank acknowledge the highly
ideological nature of its own cognitive framework. As William
Claussen, Bank president from 1981 to 1986, said: `the Bank is not a
political organisation, the only altar we worship at is pragmatic
economics' (Razavi and Miller 1995: 31).

Power systems at the World Bank: few points of

access or in¯uence
As noted at the beginning of this chapter, the Executive Board is locus
of formal decision making at the Bank, and as such it has been a very
important channel for the expression of the concerns of global
women's movements, depending on their success at lobbying certain
member country governments. Nordic governments have been par-
ticularly critical in introducing `social conscience' themes to the Bank,
including poverty reduction, social sector lending, debt management
reform, and gender equity, even though they have a weak position on
the Executive Board in terms of their voting power. The UK, Canada,
and the Netherlands have also been particularly sympathetic on
gender equity matters. It was criticism from the Executive Board that
triggered renewed efforts in the Bank in 1990 to institutionalise the
gender and development interest.
In 1994, when the Bank presented its ®rst full Policy Paper on
gender to the Board, some Executive Directors again pressed the Bank
to push its analysis further, particularly in terms of investigating the
feminist critique of its macroeconomic work. According to the
minutes of the 14 April Board meeting, the Executive Directors for
Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands expressed surprise and
concern that the gender differential effects of macroeconomic

51
Contesting Global Governance

measures such as structural adjustment loans had not been men-

tioned, and urged the Bank to address this. In a written statement, the
Dutch Executive Director quoted the reaction of the UK Executive
Director to the policy paper: `It portrays gender in terms of a series of
special problems to be addressed through speci®c interventions,
rather than a social relation which underlies and needs to be
addressed in all Bank operations, policy dialogue, and ESW' (Herf-
kens 1994: 1).
Not all Executive Board members represent this kind of constructive
lobbying resource for the feminist case in macroeconomic planning.
Some Executive Directors ®nd even the Bank's cautious approach to
gender equity issues to be too radical; at the same 1994 meeting, the
Executive Director for Korea asked that the policy paper be `toned
down', and both he and the Executive Director for Saudi Arabia
implied that an interest in reducing gender disparities was a Western
concern which violated their countries' cultural sensitivities. This
familiar `cultural' objection to gender equity concerns gives the Bank a
defence for its caution on the gender issue. Ambivalence from some
Executive Directors over gender equity issues re¯ects either the
weakness of domestic women's movements in in¯uencing their
governments, or it can re¯ect a lack of democracy in state±civil society
relationships, which may be obstructing the expression of women's
interests in national politics. This makes it important for women's
movements to have access to international NGOs that can represent
their views to the World Bank, an issue to which we return in a
moment.
Women's movements have not attempted the most powerful
lobbying manoeuvre in relation to the governance and ®nancing of
the World Bank, which is to lobby the more wealthy countries'
Treasuries to withhold replenishment funding for the IDA in the way
the environmental movement has done. Women's movements tend to
have a much narrower base of support than environmental move-
ments and hence cannot exercise the same degree of political leverage.
Most importantly, the gender and development concern has not been
taken up by the US women's movement in a strong enough way to
support an assault on the Bank's funds through Congress. The US
environmental movement was central to the success of campaigns by
global environmental movements because it is well resourced, has a
wide base of domestic support and is familiar with the legislative and
lobbying dynamic in Washington. But in the case of the US women's

52
 The World Bank and women's movements

movement, even though it is the largest and most powerful women's

movement in the world, its focus is squarely domestic, not inter-
national. It has not put its weight and political resources behind
gender and development concerns. In addition, there is a great
reluctance to tamper with US government funds for development
since most women's groups in the USA which are involved in
development issues rely heavily upon USAID for funds, and have no
wish to threaten its Congress allocation, something which could occur
as a side-effect of challenging the quality of World Bank spending of
Congress allocations.
Beyond the Executive Board, as noted earlier, the Bank's president
and top management have considerable autonomy in determining the
Bank's policy directions. A 1994 evaluation of gender at the Bank by
its Operations Evaluation Department found that although outside
pressure and internal advocates were catalysts for change, it was the
leadership of senior management at the Bank which most affected the
amount of funds devoted to gender equity and its credibility in the
organisation (World Bank 1994g).
In this respect President Wolfensohn is regarded by gender equity
advocates both within and outside the Bank as a tremendous positive
resource for change. One internal gender specialist pronounced him
`the Bank's biggest institutional asset, responding to the big social
issues of the day'.22 Wolfensohn does appear to have a genuine
interest in democratising policy-making processes in the Bank, and
also in encouraging sensitivity to the social sustainability of the
Bank's work, which means paying attention to issues of poverty,
human rights, gender equity, governance and participation. He is also
under pressure to do so from the non-governmental development
community. He took of®ce in June 1995, at the climax of the `Fifty
Years Is Enough' global campaign by NGOs to rethink the role and
relevance of the Bretton Woods ®nancial institutions. This, as well as
the battering the Bank has taken since the mid-1980s over its environ-
mentally destructive grand infrastructure projects, has meant that he
has inherited an institutional structure much more sensitive about its
public image than ever before. He is presiding over sweeping changes
in Bank structure to make it more transparent, consultative, and
teamwork-based, with staff performance measured by `results on the
ground' rather than speed in moving money. This process has

22 Interview, World Bank, Washington DC, September 1997.

53
Contesting Global Governance

involved establishing a new `strategic compact' or corporate strategy

with the Board of Directors to justify signi®cant Bank expansion into
new, key areas: social development, rural development, ®nancial
sector services, anti-corruption initiatives and knowledge-based
exchanges.
However, it is dif®cult to reform any institution, particularly one
with such a solidly homogeneous culture of economic rationality,
professionalism, exclusiveness, and excellence, as well as a history of
secrecy in its intellectual processes and products, with many policy
documents embargoed from public scrutiny. From this perspective
considerable power rests in the hands of the Bank's professional staff
in Operations, the six regional departments and the individual
country management units where the loans and sectoral projects are
designed, negotiated and supervised. At the heart of this work are
the task team managers, who have `the principal operational role of
the Bank, the role that does the work that justi®es the existence of the
organisation: preparing loans or making studies' (Wade 1997: 29).
As noted above, issues which concern the actual quality of the
Bank's work are located in the less powerful Technical Networks,
`which have large staffs and small budgets', in comparison with the
country management units in Operations `which have large budgets
and small staffs' (Bread for the World 1997b: 6). Staff in the Technical
Networks are meant to supply their expertise to task team managers
on demand. These support services are weakly placed in the Bank's
incentive system, which centres on pressure on staff to move money,
to make and recover loans.23 There is less pressure to ensure compli-
ance with Bank standards such as environment, resettlement, infor-
mation disclosure or gender equity. Directives do exist to set out Bank
policies on best practice in these and many other areas. However,
there are over 150 mandatory actions or procedures spelled out in

23 Late in 1997 the Bank introduced new products which are designed to modify the
`moving money' incentives with new concerns to enhance the quality and success
rate of loans. These products include Adaptable Programme Loans and Learning and
Innovation Loans. The ®rst is a loan with a phased-in implementation process to
enable borrowers to pilot test solutions with small amounts without risking large
amounts and exposing the Bank. At the same time, the borrower retains the Bank's
commitment to supporting the development sector in question. The Learning and
Innovation Loans are a smaller version of the Adaptable Programme Loans and are
intended to foster iterative learning and solution testing (Bread for the World 1997b:
9±10).

54
 The World Bank and women's movements

these directives ± it is dif®cult to comply with all of them.24 Inclusion

of social concerns in project preparation therefore depends upon the
commitment of the individual task team manager. Although issues of
gender equity and social justice may interest many staff members,
they sit uneasily in the Bank's culture as `value-laden and subjective'
concerns (Kardam 1991: 72).
This puts the onus on internal gender equity advocates or `policy
entrepreneurs' to promote the merits of sensitivity to gender issues in
the work of their Country departments. Indeed, one account of the
considerable progress between 1985 and 1995 in the Bank's response
to WID gives most credit to such insiders: `the available evidence
suggests strongly that internal WID entrepreneurs played a critical
role in promoting the subject, with varying support from top manage-
ment' (Razavi and Miller 1995: 47). There are only a few individuals in
positions of responsibility for Women in Development concerns
within the six regions. They are strongest in the Africa region, where
just a few people have made a huge contribution to the Bank's
analytical work on gender and adjustment, and in the Asia region,
where the WID focus has been among other things on micro-credit.
They are also found in the technical support services outside of the
gender unit, where they have made important contributions to
bringing gender into the Bank's research and policy work on partici-
pation, urban poverty and the environment.
Internal gender specialists are in a dif®cult position. Careers in the
Bank are not made by arguing the case for what is seen as a marginal
interest. They, and other staff who are feminists or are sympathetic to
gender equity positions, are in a minority position both by virtue of
their sex (though some are men of course), and by virtue of the fact
that whether they are economists or not, their feminist convictions
mean they are in a counter-cultural position in relation to the Bank's
dominant cognitive framework. The vast majority of the Bank's staff
are economists, and they are also mostly men,25 two facts which are

24 Interview, NGO, Washington DC, 9 September 1997. These directives had been
rationalised down from 400 `operational policies', examples of `best practice' or `good
practice', and they have less force than they had before. This may not make much of a
difference for some directives which had previously been respected mostly in the
breach. One NGO interviewee suspected that this is the Bank's way of defending
itself from charges that it is not respecting its own policies, weakening procedures
that should be mandatory like resettlement, indigenous peoples, gender policy.
25 The composition of Bank staff in terms of professional training and gender has been

55
Contesting Global Governance

not immaterial in terms of creating an organisational culture resistant

to feminist concerns.26
Moreover, they do not necessarily get the degree of support they
ought to from the very institution that should be backing them up: the
central gender unit. That unit, in its various guises over the years, is
more often engaged in defending Bank policies to the outside world,
than in promoting an internal critique or change process. An example
of this lack of support is the surprising failure of the central gender
unit to mention, in its 1994 gender policy paper, a path-breaking
Technical Note produced by the Africa Region Gender Team on
gender and economic adjustment in 1993 (Blackden and Morris-
Hughes 1993). This Technical Note ± Paradigm Postponed: Gender and
Economic Adjustment in Sub-Saharan Africa ± takes on board and
advances contemporary feminist critiques of structural adjustment,
and was very much welcomed by gender equity activists outside of
the Bank as evidence of the Bank's growing openness to the feminist
critique. It was the basis for a report on gender and adjustment by
donors to the World Bank's Special Programme of Assistance (SPA)
for Africa, a consultative forum of donors to the Bank's IDA facility
for lending to the most indebted nations, in Oslo in 1994. In another
example of the Bank's resistance to the work of its internal gender
advocates, the Bank economist who presented this same report at a
plenary SPA meeting in Washington in 1994 took pains to undermine
its credibility, using the word `anecdotal' ®ve times to describe the
evidence used to demonstrate the differential impact of structural
adjustment on women and men, and the word `controversial' nine
times to describe the report as a whole.27
Committed insiders ought to be a resource for women's move-

changing gradually, with growing numbers of sociologists and anthropologists being

hired, and with more women being appointed (Razavi and Miller 1995: 31).
26 A growing body of feminist organisational analysis is demonstrating that the balance
of genders in an organisation's staff, and a range of other features of organisations
such as the tolerance of justice and equity concerns in intellectual and ideological
frameworks, the openness of decision making, the rigidity of calibrations in status
hierarchies, and so on, can create gendered organisational cultures which profoundly
affect the impact of an organisation's work on women and men, as well as the
experience of women and men within organisations (Kardam 1991; Razavi and Miller
1995). For general expositions of approaches to feminist analyses of development
bureaucracies see Goetz (1997) and Staudt (1997).
27 Notes made by the author during SPA plenary meeting to discuss gender and
macroeconomic planning, Washington DC, World Bank, 20 March 1994.

56
 The World Bank and women's movements

ments, yet these staff members say they have relatively few contacts
with women's movements, and have even at times been criticised by
outside feminist activists. In spite of a commonality of aims, there is
mutual ambivalence between gender equity advocates on either side
of the institutional divide. Outsiders are suspicious of insiders, even
though insiders could use their support. At the same time, excessive
contact with outside feminists could undermine the credibility and
perceived professionalism of insiders.

Gender issues in Bank±NGO interactions

It might be expected that the involvement of NGOs in the Bank's
work has been an entry point for dialogue on gender equity issues
and, indeed, for enhancing women's participation as policy-making
partners and as policy bene®ciaries. This has not been the case. This is
somewhat counter-intuitive, as assumptions are commonly made
about the comparative advantage of NGOs in representing the inter-
ests not just of the poor, but also of women. Certainly the Bank
appears to be making this assumption; for example, the 1997 World
Bank progress report: Implementing the World Bank's Gender Policies
claims that `involving NGOs helps to promote attention to gender'
(World Bank 1997c: 3). In fact, this is a relatively unproven pro-
position. A growing number of studies of NGOs demonstrate that
they have few inherent features of organisational structure or culture
which favour the representation of women's interests. Although they
may be more effective at including women as clients of development
programmes than some state development bureaucracies are, their
¯atter hierarchies, decentralised structures and egalitarian ideologies
do not, in fact, necessarily enable more women to control these
organisations, and indeed, NGOs can be particularly masculine
environments (Mayoux 1998; Rao and Kelleher 1997; Siddarth 1995).
Bank studies show that although NGO involvement in project
implementation improves the degree and quality of local-level partici-
pation, there is no automatic inclusion of women as participants. Only
half of Bank operations which involve NGOs have had a component
addressing gender equity, and that has been at the initiative of the
Bank (in particular its gender specialists), not the NGOs (Siddarth
1995).
There is also a certain amount of conceptual muddiness in attitudes
which assume that development NGOs can represent `civil society' in

57
Contesting Global Governance

general, or women's movements in particular. This assumption is

made frequently, for instance at the May 1997 External Gender
Consultative Group meeting, Lyn Squire, Director of the Policy
Research Department and the head of the SAPRI project on the Bank
side, said that the Bank was `counting on NGOs to ensure a broad
representation of civil society' (World Bank 1997a: 28). Yet develop-
ment NGOs are just a small part of civil society, and represent just one
associational form. In legal status, purpose, and organisational struc-
ture they differ greatly from trade unions, business associations and
many kinds of social movements. Confusing NGOs with `civil society'
is convenient for the Bank; development NGOs are much more
appealing interlocutors than trade unions or social movements, which
tend to be more overtly political and with whom it is much more
dif®cult to establish common institutional procedures and norms on
which to base interactions.
This confusion also explains why NGOs have not been effective at
representing women's movements; women may favour less visible
and formalised associations with loose networks, ¯at hierarchies,
diffused authority and responsibility. Many women's associations ±
particularly grass-roots self-help and urban community networks,
explicitly avoid formal organisational status (i.e. registering with the
state) in order to preserve organisational autonomy. Engaging NGOs
to engineer `participation' by these kinds of associations can be
unrealistic. In Chile, for example, NGOs are organising community
improvement projects in low income areas on a World Bank-funded
Social Investment and Solidarity Fund (FOSIS). These NGOs were
operating in the urban areas from which the women-dominated
poblador movement had organised protests against the Pinochet
regime in the mid-1980s. Channelling funds only through of®cially
registered organisations requires the amorphous poblador groups to
become more formal and institutionalised. According to a recent
study, this actually sidelines many of the women's groups who wish
to avoid registering themselves as statutory bodies in order to
continue evading the potentially exploitative interests of the state:
`The poblador movement, already in decline, has been successfully
marginalised by structures into which it doesn't ®t and a discourse
which brands its approach as immature and obsolete' (Taylor 1996:
784). In addition, the formalisation of community self-help has the
effect of depoliticising local social movements; the FOSIS funds are
for speci®c tasks: self-help projects or skills training, not public

58
 The World Bank and women's movements

protests demanding employment. As Lucy Taylor (1996) suggests,

NGO±state±Bank engagement in this case has the effect of demobi-
lising civil society, shifting the protest energies of the poblador move-
ment away from challenging the state towards colluding in the state's
withdrawal from direct responsibility for reconstruction and poverty
reduction.
Throughout the 1980s the NGOs formally involved in dialogue with
or monitoring the Bank apparently did not see it as their role to
promote gender equity in the Bank's work, although gender issues
were sometimes raised in relation to other concerns, in particular
poverty and structural adjustment. However, since the late 1980s,
large international NGOs have been changing as their own internal
gender equity advocates push for a greater commitment to gender
issues in development. These internal gender advocates are working
across organisational boundaries with other feminists in NGOs and
governmental development agencies, linking into women's move-
ments internationally and nationally.28 The work of gender equity
advocates both within their own NGOs and through feminist advo-
cacy networks has meant that gradually, the main Washington DC-
based international NGOs in dialogue with the Bank have been
promoting gender equity concerns with more energy. These include
Bread for the World Institute, Oxfam International, the Bank Infor-
mation Centre, Center of Concern and Development GAP's `Fifty
Years Is Enough' campaign.
Still, the extent to which the gender equity interest is represented by
NGOs remains patchy, contingent on the presence of committed
feminist activists. There has been dif®culty already in ensuring
adequate participation of women's associations in the Bank±NGO
Structural Adjustment and Participatory Research Initiative (SAPRI)
mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. In spite of wide NGO
participation in this initiative, the SAPRI global steering committee
lacks a feminist economist,29 and some of the SAPRI Bank±NGO
consultations which have already taken place have neglected gender

28 Examples of the networks through which feminists are supporting each other's work
in development institutions include, in the USA, the Washington DC-based WID
Coalition, Alt-WID, and AWID (the Association of Women in Development), and
Women's EDGE (The Coalition for Women's Economic Development and Global
Equality).
29 This is not entirely its fault, as feminist economists are rare, and extremely busy.

59
Contesting Global Governance

issues. The issue of women's participation has raised another problem

between NGOs which is taking on a North±South dimension. Wash-
ington DC-based NGOs have claimed that their efforts to encourage
Southern NGOs to take on gender issues and to involve women's
associations have been resented and rejected by Southern NGOs as a
form of cultural interference.30
However, as one NGO activist involved with SAPRI in Washington
DC said, `it is not as simple as the men excluding women. The women
themselves are unskilled in economic analysis and self-isolate from
NGO movements.'31 Women's NGOs dropped out of SAPRI meetings
in El Salvador because they were unfamiliar with the technical
language of the discussions and the speed with which the initiative
was developing. They also protested that the quality of participation
was arti®cial. This differential in levels of technical skills in economic
analysis and negotiations is only to be expected given women's
associations' characteristic lack of resources and exposure to power,
discussed earlier. It speaks to the need for both the Bank and NGOs to
take a gender-sensitive approach to the mechanics of `participation' in
order to accommodate and compensate for women's lack of experi-
ence of engaging with the formal policy arena.
Generating genuine participation with women requires more than
just providing openings for women to come to meetings. The
mechanics of participation ± the venues, the technical languages, the
duration of exchanges ± must be adjusted to account for the con-
straints on women's power and public effectiveness which are caused
by relations of gender, class, nationality, and race. Access to participa-
tory fora is not the same as the capacity to express voice effectively or
to exercise any kind of leverage in participatory processes, especially
when massive power differences are involved. An example of the
disjunction between the knowledge and time frameworks of the Bank
and women's associations was provided by Hellen Wangusa, of the
African Women's Policy Network, in her report to the May 1997
External Gender Consultative Group meeting about Bank±NGO `par-
ticipation' over the content of the Country Assistance Strategy in
Uganda. She pointed out that women had been unable to make much
of an impact, saying that women in Uganda had no idea what a CAS
is. She argued that the time-frame for involving them in `participation'

30 Interview, NGO, Washington DC, 28 August 1997.

31 Interview, NGO, Washington DC, 9 September 1997.

60
 The World Bank and women's movements

or `consultation' has to be much longer than currently provided by the

Bank's tight economic planning and project preparation framework
(in this case nine months), in order to compensate for their lesser
preparation in terms of policy knowledge and bargaining skills (let
alone literacy or economic literacy) (World Bank 1997a: 18).

Women's Eyes on the Bank: lobbying the Bank

and `leap-frogging' the state
This chapter ®nishes with another look at the Women's Eyes on the
Bank campaign to draw out both advantages and tensions in North±
South partnerships in women's movements, and also to suggest some
implications for global governance in the Bank±NGO lobbying rela-
tionship. Initially, the campaign was intended to strengthen the
knowledge of Southern women's organisations about economic policy
and to shift the locus of lobbying from Washington to borrowing
countries themselves (Siddarth 1996: 18). The campaign was struc-
tured around regional `chapters' consisting of groups of women's
organisations which would maintain pressure on the Bank to respond
to the campaign's demands. Eight women agreed to act as focal points
for these chapters. However, just over one year into the campaign
only two chapters ± the US and Latin American ones ± were still
functioning actively. It is far too early to judge that the campaign has
®zzled out in the more dormant chapters. Nevertheless, the evolution
of the campaign to date is illustrative of the power differences
between women's movements North and South, of the importance of
geographical location, and also of delays in the spread of communi-
cation technologies to marginalised social movements.
This is precisely why Washington-based NGOs tend to take such a
prominent role in campaigns to in¯uence the Bank. They tend to be
highly skilled in information collection and in lobbying and are close
to the legislative process in the USA which has a disproportionately
strong in¯uence on the work of the World Bank. For women's move-
ments, this provides the opportunity to `leap-frog' the legislative
dynamic in their own countries where they may be either too weak to
have an impact, or prevented from participating by a repressive state.
Northern NGOs can try to in¯uence the Bank, and if they succeed,
policy changes are imposed on Southern governments by the Bank, in
what has become known as the `boomerang pattern' (Keck and
Sikkink 1998: 12±13).

61
Contesting Global Governance

A positive example of this dynamic has occurred through the

Women's Eyes campaign. In 1996 the Mexico chapter of the campaign
investigated the Bank's claims to have addressed gender issues in its
economic and sector work in Mexico. It exposed the lack of attention
to gender equity in three areas: the Bank's `Second Basic Health
Project', the Mexican Country Assistance Strategy, and the labour law
reform which the Bank is promoting for Mexico (Women's Environ-
ment and Development Organization 1997: 15). The Mexican chapter
wrote a letter to the Bank's US Executive Director ± not the Mexican
Executive Director, from whom it expected little sympathy ± objecting
to the lack of women's participation in the Country Assistance
Strategy. The US chapter of the Women's Eyes campaign helped to
mobilise a representation from the US women's movement behind
this letter, getting its member organisations to sign it before it went to
Jan Piercy, the US Executive Director. This had a huge impact. Within
the Bank, the country director for Mexico called the US chapter of the
campaign to ask for help in setting up a meeting with gender
specialists in the USA. The US chapter of the campaign refused to do
this, and insisted instead that he should meet with women's groups
in Mexico, which he did, along with a handful of his task team
managers in the spring of 1997. The Latin American chapter of the
campaign has also worked with the US chapter to arrange direct
meetings in Washington between a ten-person delegation from Latin
American women's groups and the top management of the Latin
America region at the Bank. This resulted in commitments from
senior managers to improve the quality of gender analysis and design
in projects.
This is an excellent example of the bene®ts of `leap-frogging' the
state in order to bring back stronger policy commitments from the
Bank. Its success owes greatly to the fact that the Southern-based actor
in this case is itself very strong in its own analytical and lobbying
skills, and in its relations with the US-based actor. Also important is
the commitment of the US-based actor to `repatriate' policy discus-
sions as quickly as possible so as to enhance local ownership. But the
global and national governance implications of this are ambiguous.
It can undermine democratic or potentially democratic dynamics
locally, if social movements voice their interests beyond national
boundaries rather than investing in improving the quality of domestic
government±civil society relations. And the impact of `leap-frogging'
can be disappointing. If policy `fed back' through the Bank to

62
 The World Bank and women's movements

Southern governments is perceived as externally devised and derived,

not as a legitimate product of national debates and political struggles,
it can be resented and resisted, undercutting the legitimacy of local
social movements (Abugre and Alexander 1997).
It is therefore important for Southern women's movements to
develop good relations with their own governments, something
which is very dif®cult even in full democracies, where women have
few channels of access to the political arena, and where their struggles
for gender equity are still not seen as legitimate concerns for politics.
Alliances and coalitions on an international level can prove extremely
fruitful in building the leverage of domestic women's movements and
in enhancing their knowledge base and analytical skills. The Women's
Eyes on the Bank campaign has shown a capacity to do this so far, but
primarily this has been with a Southern women's movement which is
already very familiar with the politics and tactics of leverage and
lobbying.

Conclusion
Over the last thirty years, women's movements have developed
increasingly sophisticated and politically credible critiques of
economic development, and have targeted their concerns at multi-
lateral economic institutions, most particularly the World Bank. This
chapter has investigated the relationship between women's move-
ments, the feminist critique of neoliberal economics and the World
Bank.

How has this MEI modi®ed?

In the second half of the 1990s the Bank has embarked upon an
important restructuring process ± a new `strategic compact' ± to
augment its impact on important new development areas, with a
particular focus on social development, participation, and partner-
ships. Although it can be expected that gender equity concerns will be
better addressed in these new policy approaches, the women's move-
ment cannot take the credit for these changes. They are the results of a
much broader process of critique and pressure on the Bank coming
from a range of development actors, from borrower country govern-
ments, a wide range of development NGOs, and many Northern
governments.

63
Contesting Global Governance

The Bank's attitude to gender issues has de®nitely become less

dismissive than when these issues ®rst came up in the 1970s. The
Bank has installed an internal machinery to promote gender equity in
its work, setting up standards of best practice in this area, and
expanding the resources it targets to women, such as lending pro-
grammes for girls' education and women's reproductive health, and
grants to institutions providing micro-credit to poor women bor-
rowers. It has been much slower to review its structural adjustment
policies from the point of view of their impact on women, and has
made little serious effort to entertain feminist critiques of macroeco-
nomics in its economic and sectoral work.

What are the motivations driving MEI±GSM engagement?

The World Bank's response to the women's movement is motivated
by several factors. The ®rst is the indirect effect of women's move-
ments on the Bank through the Executive Directors. Some of these
Directors have taken their domestic women's movements seriously
and have sought to represent their concerns to the Bank. They have
done so by questioning the Bank's commitment to the gender equity
issue, and by challenging Bank assumptions as to the gender-neutral
impact of its macroeconomic policies. The second factor prompting
the Bank's response to women's movements is a growing perception
of the size and importance of these movements globally, a perception
which Wolfensohn took away with him from the 1995 Beijing con-
ference. Finally, engagement with women's movements is a part of the
Bank's efforts to promote the social sustainability of its work through
improved partnerships with civil society groups.
From the point of view of women's movements, engagement with
the Bank is an imperative created by the growing immiseration of
women as a perceived result of neoliberal economic policies such as
structural adjustment in the South and economic austerity in the
North. The majority of the world's poor (70 per cent) and of the
world's illiterates (60 per cent) are female (UNDP 1995: 5), and
women's weak market positions and inadequate rights to physical
and social assets leaves them vulnerable in contexts of social and
economic change. Economic austerity policies promoted by institu-
tions like the World Bank and the IMF are seen to have exacerbated
these problems by obliging women to extend their domestic and
community caring functions to compensate for state withdrawal from

64
 The World Bank and women's movements

social service provisioning. Engagement with the Bank is therefore

seen as critical to a project of developing more gender-equitable and
humane development policies.

What is the signi®cance of the MEI±GSM relationship?

This chapter has shown that global women's movements have put the
Bank on the defensive, at least in terms of its public relations, and this
should be seen as a real achievement for a social movement which is
probably more diffuse, diverse, and less well resourced than others.
Triggered by the challenges posed by women at Beijing, the Bank has
stepped up its efforts to enhance women's experience of development,
and is gingerly beginning to entertain the feminist critique of
economics.
Nevertheless, women's movements have had less of an impact on
the Bank than the environmental movement or than the NGOs
promoting the participation agenda. This chapter has suggested
several reasons for this. The ®rst is that until recently, there has not
been a concerted global civil society coalition demanding gender
equity in the Bank's work. This has to do with a range of constraints
facing women's movements, including their lack of resources and lack
of lobbying expertise, as well as the technical barrier of economic
planning languages, and the fact that women's economic interests can
clash, particularly across differences of class and nation.
A second reason has to do with the centrality of the US women's
movement to the success of any campaign directed at a US-based
institution. The US women's movement has not thrown its weight
behind gender and development issues. Nor, in spite of its enormous
size and great successes, can it command the same quantum of
domestic support as the environmental movement was able to do.
Gender equity issues are still seen as more controversial, and more
`culturally speci®c' than are concerns with the environment or even
human rights.
A powerful way of in¯uencing the Bank is still through national
governments, which means that for women's movements, a persistent
obstacle remains their poor representation in their own governments,
and the sexism within state structures which makes governments
such poor representatives of women's economic interests. Although
the Bank's governance structure still privileges states as representa-
tives of their societies, the successes of global social movements in

65
Contesting Global Governance

by-passing individual governments and tackling the Bank directly is

contributing to a considerable openness towards civil society groups.
This has been of particular importance for women's movements given
their generally low level of in¯uence over individual governments.

66
3 The World Trade Organization
and labour

This chapter examines the relationship between the World Trade

Organization (WTO) and labour. The analysis proceeds in the follow-
ing manner. Firstly, an overview is provided of the WTO and its
signi®cance. Secondly, the global labour movement is pro®led and
some preliminary points are made about its status in the social move-
ment and NGO community. Thirdly, labour's engagement with inter-
national economic institutions other than the WTO is surveyed.
Fourthly, labour's particular concern with the WTO is explained.
Fifthly, labour participation in the ®rst ministerial meeting of the
WTO is examined for what it reveals about both the WTO and labour.
Sixthly, the general relationship between NGOs and the WTO is
surveyed. Finally, the implications of the WTO±labour engagement
for the International Labour Organisation is considered.
The primary argument of the chapter is that labour's inability to
advance its concerns in the WTO framework risks losing a poten-
tially signi®cant constituency. Organised labour is more supportive
of the WTO's trade liberalisation project than other elements of the
social movement community. Disagreement with various NGOs over
the social clause issue highlights organised labour's desire to work
within dominant institutions. However, the meagre results of the
WTO Singapore Ministerial meeting, continued resistance at the
WTO and increased opposition to reform of the ILO put continued
cooperation in doubt. For a multilateral institution seeking to sink
roots in national societies such a development should be a cause for
concern.

67
Contesting Global Governance

The World Trade Organization

The WTO came into being on 1 January 1995. The Contracting Parties
of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) created it
through the ®nal agreements which ended the Uruguay Round multi-
lateral negotiations. Its establishment provides a sister institution for
the Bretton Woods pairing of the IMF and World Bank some ®fty
years after their creation. The WTO takes its place in an environment
of multilateral trade rules dating back to 1945. A signi®cant character-
istic of this post-war trading regime has been the need to balance
liberalisation with the desire for policy autonomy by many states and
communities. Two key features of the WTO which shift this balance
away from policy autonomy are the strengthening of its dispute
settlement system and the innovation of biannual ministerial meet-
ings. These changes increase the importance of the WTO and invite
further scrutiny by concerned publics world-wide.
The roots of the WTO can be traced back to December 1945 when
the USA invited fourteen countries to begin negotiations on liberal-
ising international trade.1 The negotiations followed two paths. The
®rst was the attempt to create an International Trade Organisation
(ITO) that would facilitate trading relations as Bretton Woods facili-
tated monetary relations. The other path was an initiative to imple-
ment quickly an agreement to reduce tariff levels. The tariff cutting
exercise resulted in the GATT which was signed on 30 October 1947. It
was thought that once the ITO was complete the GATT would be
subsumed in the larger organisation.
The draft charter for the ITO, known as the Havana Charter, was
drawn up in March 1948.2 In addition to addressing tariff policy it
contained sections on employment and economic activity, economic
development and reconstruction, restrictive business practices, inter-
governmental commodity arrangements and subsidies. It was more
wide ranging than the GATT, which focused on tariffs in manufac-
tured goods. In negotiating the Havana Charter the USA push for a
pure free trade system was limited by its own internal commitment to
agricultural protection. With echoes of the Senate's refusal to endorse

1 The countries were Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Luxem-
bourg, France, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, the Soviet Union
and the United Kingdom.
2 For details see Wilcox (1949). A detailed account of the US position and activity during
the creation of the ITO and GATT can be found in Brown (1950).

68
 The WTO and labour

Woodrow Wilson's effort to have the US join the League of Nations

following the First World War, the US Congress refused to give its
agreement to the ITO. More in¯uential than isolationists in rejecting
the agreement were liberal forces which heartily condemned conces-
sions the US negotiators made to other countries. The US branch of
the International Chamber of Commerce opposed the ITO because
they thought it was based on economic nationalism and jeopardised
the free enterprise system (Kock 1969: 59). Congressional opinion was
so set against the ITO that in December 1950 the US administration
dropped the initiative and asked Congress to continue giving its
support to GATT.
Following this failure the international trade regime was forced to
fall back upon the GATT. While GATT strove for the lofty goal of free
trade, it implemented what was most feasible. Although the Agree-
ment aimed for liberalisation on a non-discriminatory and multilateral
basis, major exceptions to these principles were permitted to accom-
modate diverse concerns.3 There were exceptions from GATT rules for
textiles, agriculture, regional trading groups, developing countries
and safeguards to prevent serious injury to domestic producers.
GATT did not demand the politically impossible ± that all nations
liberalise immediately and unconditionally. GATT members, or Con-
tracting Parties, were not coerced into accepting complete liberal-
isation. States balanced domestic interests and made whatever
concessions they deemed feasible. One observer has described it as a
disarmament treaty for mercantilists (Wolf 1990). Small steps were
gradually taken over a long time period to reduce trade barriers and
liberalise trade ¯ows among countries.
The compromise between wanting to provide clear rules and
allowing for domestic autonomy can be seen in the mechanisms
developed for settling disputes between Contracting Parties. When
Contracting Parties had a disagreement, they could utilise GATT's
dispute settlement procedure which was covered by Articles XXII and
XXIII (Pescatore 1993). Article XXII provided for consultation if
Parties believed that they were not receiving GATT bene®ts while
Article XXIII allowed the matter to be brought before the GATT
Council. After 1962 it became GATT practice that disputes which

3 Finlayson and Zacher (1981) have identi®ed seven key GATT norms. Ruggie (1982)
refers to the accommodation of domestic social purpose in international regimes as
embedded liberalism.

69
Contesting Global Governance

could not be resolved through consultation (Article XXII) were

handed over to a panel which examined the issue. Once the panel had
considered the issue a report was presented to the Parties. If they
could not work out an agreement based on this report within two
weeks, it was transmitted to the GATT Council. At the GATT Council
(assembly of all GATT Contracting Parties) a decision could be taken
to accept a report, but only if it was unanimous. The party which lost
the case would have to agree. Reports usually demanded that a
country terminated an offending practice or authorised the aggrieved
party to undertake counter-measures or retaliation.
Although the GATT dispute settlement process enjoyed some
success it has also had two major weaknesses. The ®rst was the ability
of a Contracting Party (prior to completion of the Uruguay Round) to
veto the process at numerous stages. A dissatis®ed party could block
the creation of a panel, block adoption of the report by the Council or
fail to undertake the obligations outlined in the report. Contracting
Parties had to agree that their activities violated the rules and should
be changed. A strong domestic interest often mitigated against such a
position. The second problem was that even if the country accepted a
panel report in question, it could choose to keep the offending policy,
leaving the injured party to suspend bene®ts in kind. The dispute
then fell back on to unilateral action by the aggrieved party. The party
which had its complaint supported by a panel would have to under-
take retaliation through its own domestic legislation. This could take
the form of tariffs or suspension of trade bene®ts to the offender.
Offenders were not sanctioned; they just had bene®ts of equal value
withdrawn by the complainant.
The unilateral nature of the process raised serious problems for the
whole system. The countries able to take unilateral measures tended
to be the economically powerful such as the USA, Japan and the EU.
Smaller states were less likely to take action against the giants because
they feared a trade war that would cost them dearly. One of the
purposes of having an international legal framework for trade is to
facilitate relations based on rules rather than power. Law should
restrain powerful states from abusing their economic power to the
cost of smaller states. Since the GATT process relied so heavily on
unanimity, this goal was dif®cult to achieve.
The WTO dispute settlement procedure reversed the unanimity
principle which had hindered acceptance of reports (Petersmann
1997). Panel reports are now automatically adopted sixty days after

70
 The WTO and labour

being issued unless there is a consensus that it be rejected. Since the

side bene®ting from the report would be unlikely to agree to reject, it
seems most probable that a consensus to reject would very rarely be
achieved. Such a procedure would result in almost every panel report
being adopted, even if it went against the interests of the larger states.
Thus, a major step was taken to turn a system from one which
encouraged delay by favouring unanimity of acceptance to a speedier
process which could override the wishes of particular states. This is a
move away from a system of negotiation traditionally the preferred
option of the Europeans, to one of adjudication, the aim of the USA.
The result of this change in dispute settlement is to make the WTO
a prominent international organisation in terms of having a developed
enforcement mechanism. It allows for the possibility of greater
implementation of agreements and the gradual accumulation of a
body of case law on trade issues. This should greatly strengthen the
rules-based nature of the trading system. An implication of this
increased ability to ensure compliance is increased attention to the
WTO's operation. A stronger international legal system means
reduced domestic autonomy. It violates what some have seen as `the
policy tolerance which had been a central, if largely implicit element
of the international consensus that had created and maintained GATT'
(Destler 1986: 34).
This violation of policy tolerance means that more political attention
is focused upon the rules that will be enforced in the WTO. Contra-
dictory pressures are put on the WTO both to prevent and to assist its
power being extended into new issues. Those states and social
interests that feel the international trading regime was and is biased
against their interests will resist expansion of the WTO's remit. For
example, in a country such as India where the GATT's movement into
intellectual property rights caused widespread social backlash on the
part of poor farmers, there is no appetite to see the WTO move into
issues such as competition and investment.4 Alternatively, those
groups seeking a strong international legal forum capable of enforcing
rights are attracted by the WTO's dispute settlement procedures.
Advocates of integrating competition concerns at the WTO see it as a
means of restraining the practices of offending states and ®rms.
Labour sees the WTO as adding muscle to the decisions of the ILO.

4 For a critique of the WTO which stresses the biases against developing countries see
Das (1998a; 1998b).

71
Contesting Global Governance

One WTO of®cial likened the institution's role to that of being a

sheriff in a world of weaker international institutions.5 Numerous
interests seeing the arrival of the new sheriff want it to adjudicate in
their area of particular concern.
One of the key tasks of the ®rst WTO ministerial meeting in
Singapore in December 1996 was to begin to clarify the relationship
between the WTO and other international institutions. The USA and
the EU favoured a policy of moving issues into the WTO because it
was both an effective and multilateral institution. They pushed for the
WTO to take on investment, competition and labour issues. Many
developing countries resisted such an initiative claiming that other
existing institutions were the appropriate place to deal with such
issues. They argued that investment and competition issues were
better dealt with at the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD) while labour issues should be con®ned to
the ILO. In general, developing countries view UNCTAD as being
more sympathetic to their concerns than the IMF, World Bank and
GATT which were created for and are controlled by developed states
(Williams 1994).
Just as the dispute settlement mechanism procedures raise the
stakes of developments at the WTO, the commitment to holding
biannual ministerial meetings is sure to maintain the issues and
politics of trade liberalisation high on the public agenda. Whereas
GATT members were called together to start or conclude negotiating
rounds at well spaced intervals, the WTO will play host to high pro®le
intergovernmental meetings every two years. This provides a focus
for both media coverage and political organisation at regular and
short intervals. Social movements have added another event to their
lobbying calendar. Time between meetings can be spent focusing on
preparation for the next ministerial.
These meetings may keep the momentum for liberalisation going,
but they also provide a rallying point for people with con¯icting
views. For example, during the second ministerial meeting in Geneva
in May 1998 protesters marched through the city overturning cars and
vandalising McDonald's restaurants and the exteriors of expensive
hotels. In addition to facilitating the lobbying of civil society actors,
the regular convening of trade ministers from around the world
provides more opportunities for open con¯ict between states. With one

5 WTO of®cial brie®ng NGOs at the 1996 Singapore WTO meeting.

72
 The WTO and labour

group of states continually seeking to expand the agenda and many

others trying to cope with the existing arrangements and obligations it
appears there is a recipe for continued disagreement and perhaps
even breakdown.

Global labour
We have selected labour as one of the three global social movements
for examination. Similar to women's movements and environmental-
ists, it poses it's own distinct challenges for study and analysis. This
section will highlight several dif®culties that will become apparent
during the subsequent analysis.
The global labour movement is composed of several parts. At the
highest level are the international organisations which bring national
union confederations together. The largest and most active of these is
the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), which
in 1996 represented 127 million people from 136 countries (ICFTU
1996c: 5). In 1948 the ICFTU split from the existing World Federation
of Trade Unions (WFTU) because of Cold War tensions between
capitalist and communist states, as well as between communist and
non-communist unions.6 Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the
WFTU is no longer a major player. An alternative international
confederation to the ICFTU is the World Confederation of Labour
(WCL). The WCL is much smaller in membership (23.7 million
members in 1996) and ®nancial resources than the ICFTU and
represents workers primarily in Belgium, Holland and Latin America.
Its distinction is that it was originally a confederation of Christian
unions and continues to stress a spiritual or humanistic dimension to
its policies (WCL 1995). The majority of its members are in developing
countries.
A second element of the global labour movement are the Inter-
national Trade Secretariats (ITSs) which bring together unions in a
particular economic sector. Prominent examples include the Inter-
national Textile, Garment and Leather Workers' Federation (ITGLWF),
the International Metalworkers Federation and the International Fed-
eration of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions
(ICEM). The ITSs engage in day-to-day relations with ®rms and tend

6 On the con¯ict between communist and non-communist labour unions at the WFTU
and in Europe see Busch (1983: 42±72); Lorwin (1973: 219±82); Radosh (1969: 304±47).

73
Contesting Global Governance

to be on the front line of labour±capital con¯ict (Lipow 1996). They are

responsible for organising workers on the ground and mounting
industry-speci®c campaigns.
A third part is the international and transnational activity of
national unions or confederations. For example, the US-based United
Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) have entered
into a Strategic Organizing Alliance with the independent Mexican
labour federation, the Authentic Labour Front (FAT). FAT has agreed
to target TNCs in the Mexican maquiladora zone that have a
bargaining relationship with the UE in the United States, while UE
has set up a solidarity fund to help ®nance FAT organising (Alexander
1994). A fourth element is the transnational organising of local union
af®liates. This involves the initiative of grass-roots coordinators to link
up with their counterparts in other countries.
A ®fth, and signi®cant, element of the global labour movement
involves the numerous civic groups not af®liated to the above
mentioned structures. These groups share an interest in improving
labour issues, but may or may not be working in conjunction with the
established union structure. These groups range from research insti-
tutes with a labour focus to NGOs involved in labour issues to unions
not yet recognised by their governments or the international trade
union structures. These groups share much in common with the
women's movements and environmental movements examined in
other parts of this book.
Since the ICFTU is the largest umbrella organisation of international
labour, much of this chapter will focus on its engagement with
international organisations and the WTO in particular. However, the
relationship between the ICFTU and other elements of the labour
movement is a central part of the analysis. For example, the debate
over core labour standards at the WTO revealed the limits of the
ICFTU speaking on behalf of the whole labour movement, especially
unions in developing countries. In addition, some grass-roots activists
see the ICFTU as being distant from the concerns of workers and
biased to conservative policies (Moody 1997: 227±48). Thus, the reader
should keep in mind that the focus of this study is on a relatively
established but by no means universal aspect of the labour movement.
In the distinction sometimes found in the literature between `new'
and `old' social movements, labour is in the latter category. It is old in
two senses. Chronologically, the labour movement and its inter-
national activities date back to the middle of the nineteenth century

74
 The WTO and labour

(Busch 1983: 6±30; Lorwin 1973: 3±196; Price 1945; Van Holthoon and
Van der Linden 1988). As early as 1818 Robert Owen had called upon
governments to institute an international programme of labour
legislation. One of the ®rst calls to form an international labour
movement dates back to William Lovett and the London Working
Men's Association in 1838. By 1864 the First International was formed,
bringing together a wide variety of workers' organisations from
across Europe. This was followed by the Second International
(1889±1914), the founding of International Trade Secretariats and the
creation of international union confederations.
Labour is also `old' in the sense that it is based upon class divisions
and antagonisms while the new social movements centre around
issues such as the environment, gender or peace. New social move-
ments are often portrayed as being located in civil society, intending
to change values and lifestyles, organised at the grass-roots level and
participating in direct action or cultural innovation. In contrast, the
workers' movement is characterised as being located closer to the
polity, intending to integrate itself with the political system, organised
upon the basis of hierarchy and acting through political mobilisation
(Scott 1990: 19). While it is helpful to note that labour is a distinctive
social movement the differences can be overdone. Labour also oper-
ates in civil society, seeks to change values and lifestyle, has grass-
roots organisation and participates in direct action. Alternatively, new
social movements are engaged in in¯uencing the state, political action
and political mobilisation. The differences may be a question of
degree rather than kind. The two most notable differences are in
organisational structure and the history of some labour groups in
corporatist structures of the state.
Labour is often not included in literature about social movements
transforming society because of these distinctions. An interesting
example of how labour is sometimes segregated from other social
movements in analysis is provided in a typology of NGOs at the
World Trade Organization utilised by Bellmann and Gerster (1996:
35). They divide NGOs engaged with the WTO into three categories ±
umbrella professional associations; research institutions and universi-
ties; and non-pro®t organisations. Workers' organisations are classi®ed
as professional and lumped together with chambers of commerce,
importers and exporters, and chemical, agricultural and pharma-
ceutical associations. Environmentalists, consumers, development and
women's organisations are located in the non-pro®t sector. From this

75
Contesting Global Governance

perspective workers' organisations appear to be more of an interest

group than part of a social movement.
This higher degree of institutionalisation and formal structures for
decision making and accountability in the labour movement can
sometimes give it a privileged position vis-aÁ-vis other social move-
ments and can lead to con¯ict with them. Some institutions such as
the IMF may regard labour as a key and reliable social partner. Within
the social-movement community itself labour may be seen as a
leading element. For example, during the ICFTU 16th World Congress
the Chilean ambassador to the UN and coordinator of the UN Social
Summit, Juan Somavia, called upon labour to be the core of a broad-
ranging social alliance in¯uencing the direction of globalisation.7 His
vision was of labour leading a world social movement to exert
pressure upon governments to live up to recommendations of the
Summit. Labour was identi®ed as the key actor because of its long
history of ®ghting oppression, existing organisational structure and a
degree of representativeness and democracy greater than that of other
social movements.
The mechanics of cooperation between labour and other social
movements is sometimes dif®cult to envision. The labour movement
does have a clear organisation structure, but the environmental and
women's movements do not. The insistence by labour that it is the
largest and most democratic non-governmental organisation may
restrict its desire to compromise and cooperate. At the World Con-
gress, the general secretary of Education International (EI) made the
point that while the ICFTU should make more use of the Conference
of NGOs at ECOSOC `we insist that the UN recognise that representa-
tive, democratic organisations like the ICFTU and the ITSs are not the
same as the thousands of NGOs and ``one person think tanks''
swarming like honey bees around UN summits' (Van Leeuwen 1996).8
Cooperation with environmentalists may be particularly problematic.
Although some Congress delegates mentioned concern about clean
working environments, it often seems that this is a health and safety
issue. ICFTU members seem willing to consider cooperation with

7 The ICFTU World Congress is held every four years and is the primary policy-making
body of the Confederation. The 16th World Congress was held in Brussels on 24±29
June 1996. References to events or statements at the Congress in this chapter are based
upon the author's notes.
8 A similar stress on the importance of representativeness and accountability in
distinguishing between NGOs can be found in Harris (1996).

76
 The WTO and labour

other social movements, but this may be based on a clear hierarchy or

on a case by case basis. The possibility of forging a long-lasting,
broad-based coalition is more problematic.

Labour and international organisations

The labour movement is actively engaged with numerous inter-
national organisations. In addition to the WTO three key relationships
have been with the ILO, the Bretton Woods institutions and UN World
Summits. All of these relationships are characterised by the labour
movement seeking to in¯uence institutional policy to improve the
social protection of workers.
The labour movement has a long-standing relationship with the
oldest UN af®liated international organisation, the ILO. The spectre of
communism following the Russian Revolution convinced the victors
of the First World War that some heed must be paid to workers'
interests in post-war reconstruction and the creation of a new, stable
international order. The result was the founding of the ILO as part of
the Treaty of Versailles. It is a unique international organisation
because its tripartite organisation gives workers a direct input into
decision making. Representation is distributed between government,
employer and worker representatives on a 2 : 1 : 1 ratio.
Although organised labour has better access to the ILO than other
international organisations, there is considerable unhappiness with its
operation. The ILO's Conventions protecting against unacceptable
working conditions are voluntary. Even when governments accept
particular Conventions, there is no sanction to guarantee adherence. It
keeps the pro®le of workers' issues on the agenda, but has no teeth to
protect workers. We will return to the ILO later in this chapter.
A second institution with which the ICFTU is becoming more
engaged is the IMF.9 Indeed, one of the highlights of the ICFTU's 16th
World Congress was the unusual decision of the director of the IMF,
Michel Camdessus, to address union delegates. The IMF is of central
concern to many union members in developing countries because its
policies of privatisation, deregulation and liberalisation are seen to be
the cause of enormous suffering, savage decreases in living standards,
and a justi®cation for anti-union campaigns (Harrod 1992). In his
introduction of Camdessus to the World Congress the ICFTU's

9 See also chapter 5 on the IMF.

77
Contesting Global Governance

President Trotman relayed how Barbadian trade unions had conferred

with the IMF and World Bank about their structural adjustment
programme (SAP). In the negotiations unions were able to scuttle
devaluation proposals, reduce the number of required layoffs and
participate in a wages policy. This was cited as the ®rst example of a
tripartite approach to SAPs and suggested as a precedent for union±
IMF relations.
Camdessus' speech was straightforward and revealing (IMF 1996i).
He emphasised that countries approaching the IMF for assistance are
in a state of near ruin and require emergency action. The ®nancial
restructuring was painful, but postponement of adjustment was even
more disastrous. He praised unions for their long struggle to create
new opportunities for their members and called upon them to assist
in making globalisation opportunities available to all. He foresaw a
dual role for unions ± to facilitate training of their members and to
hold the state accountable for its ®nancial misspending. While the
IMF could set guidelines for state expenditure, it could not ensure that
this expenditure went into productive programmes. It was up to
unions and other social organisations to pressure states to reorient
their spending policies with regard to social infrastructure projects.
The IMF and unions could be partners on the road to ®nancial
stability.
While the ICFTU leadership viewed the IMF's mere presence as an
indication of the growing trend of international organisations'
acknowledgement of the key social role of the ICFTU, many delegates
were unimpressed by the director's speech. The general secretary of
ICFTU's Inter-American Regional Organisation for Workers (ORIT),
Luis Anderson, expressed outrage at the idea that workers were
responsible for their own poverty because of lack of training. He was
reluctant to offer a hand of cooperation when IMF policies promoted
exclusion. Antonio Lettieri, representing the Italian union confedera-
tion CGIL, also indicated that it was unlikely the IMF would win
workers' assistance in implementing SAPs that attacked their liveli-
hood and means of survival. Delegates from the Colombian and
Ecuadorian union confederations saw SAPs as the cause of increased
poverty, unemployment and marginalisation rather than the cure.
A similar division of opinion over whether to work with the IMF
was in evidence among US unions as the institution's funding came
up for review in the US Congress in 1998. The umbrella confederation
for US unions, the AFL±CIO, offered a critique of IMF policies but

78
 The WTO and labour

supported continued Congressional funding (AFL±CIO 1998). In

contrast, the United Auto Workers opposed more funding for the IMF
because of the institution's austerity measures and their effects on
workers in the developed and developing countries (UAW 1998).
The views of many union members are probably accurately
re¯ected in an educational cartoon book published by the ITS Public
Services International (PSI) (Dubro and Konopacki 1995). In the
booklet the leadership of the IMF's sister institution, the World Bank,
is portrayed as power hungry, black suited bureaucrats unable to see
reality through their institutional glasses. Humble union leaders,
women's groups, idealistic youth and a former World Bank consultant
confront them. The African trade union of®cial notes that for many of
his people, SAP stands for `Suffering for the African People'. The
policies of the Bretton Woods institutions are seen to be contributing
to greater poverty and hardship rather than offering an alleviation of
these conditions.
Potential interaction between the IMF and the ICFTU is limited by
widely con¯icting goals. The IMF is seeking the help of unions to limit
government corruption and contribute to good governance, whereas
the unions desire a rethinking of the core assumptions underlying
structural adjustment programmes. The IMF wants the unions to
contribute to the success of their plans while the unions want to
change the plans themselves (ICFTU 1995). Many ICFTU World
Congress delegates seemed unwilling to accept the severe ®nancial
constraints upon states seeking IMF help. For their part, the IMF
failed to offer anything other than sympathy for the fact that restruc-
turing hurt the weakest the most, and that those paying the cost were
not responsible for accumulating the debt. The signi®cance of the
dialogue lay in the fact that it was taking place more than any actual
accomplishments of the relationship to date.
Labour's interaction with the World Bank has tended to be of a
limited nature, but has recently improved. Traditionally, the World
Bank has taken a negative view of organised labour and seen it as an
obstacle to development programmes (Deacon, Hulse and Stubbs
1997: 69±70). Organised labour has been viewed as a special interest
group which lobbies against reforms designed to help the poorer
majority. Labour's opposition to privatisation of government services
and its support of tripartite decision making brings it into con¯ict
with Bank structural adjustment loans.
In contrast to gender advocates and environmentalists, there is no

79
Contesting Global Governance

section of the Bank devoted to dealing with labour organisations and

issues. Labour of®cials are often directed to the Social Protection
Sector of the Human Development Network. This sector has responsi-
bility for labour markets, pensions and social assistance. At other
times labour groups have tried to engage with other parts of the Bank
such as the privatisation group or teams in assisted countries. The
ICFTU has proposed the establishment of a Labour Forum or a
dedicated section within the Bank, but this has not been implemented.
Despite recent openings, the labour perspective is that the Bank tries
to restructure labour markets without dealing with labour representa-
tives.10 There seems to be little recognition of labour's role as a social
force or the signi®cance of fair industrial relations.
Despite the limited and dif®cult relations between the Bank and
labour just highlighted, there is also evidence of recent change and the
possibility of improvements. In the 1990s the Bank research pro-
gramme has taken up a number of issues of concern to the labour
movement. For example, the Bank's 1995 World Development Report
(World Bank 1995b) examined the issue of workers in a global economy
while the 1997 report focused on the role of the state in development
(World Bank 1997b). While neither report backed a labour line, both
had some elements that pleased organised labour and labour organisa-
tions were consulted for their views during the research. In addition,
some of the studies of the social protection unit have turned to issues of
concern to labour such as export processing zones and child labour
(Fallon and Tzannatos 1998; Kusago and Tzannatos 1998).
The eruption of the East Asian ®nancial crisis in July 1997 provided
the opportunity for labour to have a greater in¯uence in the World
Bank. The head of the World Bank NGO section, John Clark facilitated
meetings between the ICFTU's Asian regional organisation (APRO) in
Singapore and Malaysia as the World Bank president toured the area.
This was followed up by an ICFTU visit to Washington in March 1998
where the IMF director and World Bank president met union repre-
sentatives. As a result of those meetings Bank President Wolfensohn
has suggested a point person be appointed at the Bank to deal with
labour issues. The ®nancial crisis has forced the Bank, as well as the
IMF, to think about labour's role as a social actor and potential
partner, rather than an annoying interest group which must be over-
come. In January 1999 the ICFTU had their ®rst meeting with

10 Interview, ICFTU of®cial, Washington, DC, May 1998.

80
 The WTO and labour

Executive Directors of the World Bank in Washington DC. The ICFTU

pushed its case for the integration of a social dimension in World
Bank policies and stressed the importance of sound industrial rela-
tions to good governance and development (ICFTU 1999a).
An example of this change in policy towards organised labour can
be seen in the 1998 agreement between the World Bank and South
Korea for a structural adjustment loan (World Bank 1998b). Whereas
®ve years earlier, the Bank would probably have advocated the
restriction of labour rights, present policy advocates expanding labour
rights and providing limited social security for those thrown out of
work. This is a belated recognition that social stability will in¯uence
the success rate of economic restructuring programmes and that one
key element of social stability involves labour organisations. This
`new' approach may not stand the test of time. South Korea's ®nancial
crisis threatened wider systemic damage and its union movement was
particularly strategic. It is too early to tell whether this is a new
pattern or an expedient exception.
Another area of global labour activity has been some of the UN
World Summits. Particularly important was labour's contribution to
the UN World Social Development Summit in Copenhagen in March
1995. The Summit brought together leaders from 114 countries to
focus speci®cally on social issues. It was one of numerous recent UN
summits such as the Rio Conference on the environment, the Cairo
Conference on Population and the Beijing Women's Conference. In
preparation for the Summit, the ICFTU held a conference with the
Danish Labour Organisation to prepare the trade union negotiating
position. The ICFTU expressed concern about a range of issues such
as employment, democracy, equality, international labour standards,
education, training and sustainable development. Labour took a
prominent role at the Summit and believes it exercised considerable
in¯uence in the content of the Summit's `Ten Commitments'.11
Perhaps most important for the labour movement was a promise to
support basic labour rights and the ILO conventions which form the
basis of their campaign for a social clause at the WTO.

11 The Declaration of the World Summit for Social Development contained ten commit-
ments which bound governments to strive for a more equitable world. These were
broad statements which committed governments to respect for human rights, the
eradication of poverty, full employment, social integration, quality education, social
dimensions to structural adjustment programmes, international cooperation and
development of least developed countries. On the Summit itself see Felice (1997).

81
Contesting Global Governance

As important as participation in the Summit may have been, the

real challenge for labour and the other social movements is moving
towards implementation of the Summit agenda. The ICFTU sees itself
as playing a key role in putting pressure upon governments to abide
by their commitments. In the wake of Copenhagen the ICFTU
published a Summit Users' Guide (ICFTU 1996a). The guide outlines
the commitments made by governments and suggests how national
and local unions can work towards its implementation. The central
task is for unions to press their governments to establish national
commissions to monitor progress towards implementation.
In March 1996 the ICFTU sponsored a follow-up seminar to the
World Summit in conjunction with the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) and the ILO. Held on the ®rst anniversary of the
Summit, the seminar was meant to re¯ect upon the degree to which
implementation was taking place and what further steps were
needed. Representatives from the ICFTU, ILO (including the em-
ployers' organisation), UNDP, European Commission and social
movements gave their views. The general sense was that a spirit of
action had been generated at Copenhagen, but little activity in the
following year had taken place (ICFTU 1996d). Again, a key element
in the agenda for the future was seen to be lobbying for the establish-
ment of national commissions to monitor national implementation.
There is some overlap between the ICFTU's vision of its role
following the Social Summit and that of the IMF director's vision of
unions and the IMF. In both cases unions are seen to have the role of
making the state live up to earlier commitments. In the case of the
IMF, the commitments are ®nancial propriety as agreed through
SAPs. For the Social Summit, it is the Ten Commitments made in
Copenhagen. In both cases unions are part of a broader civil society
coalition pressuring the state. They are seen as being one of the more
powerful civil society elements capable of exerting in¯uence. A
notable difference is that in the case of SAPs it is hoped that unions
will help consolidate the IMF agenda whereas the unions are hoping
that the Social Summit goals will bolster their agenda, which includes
changing the terms of SAPs!

Labour and the WTO

The international labour movement viewed the establishment of the
WTO as one of a number of international regulatory regimes created

82
 The WTO and labour

to protect the interests of capital in the 1980s and 1990s (O'Brien 1998).
On the regional level, the North American Free Trade Agreement
sought to protect investors' rights while the relaunch of European
integration in the early 1980s also followed a liberal strategy. Com-
bined with the deregulation of the ®nancial system and other regional
agreements in the developing world, these initiatives allowed inter-
national capital either to escape national regulation or to create new
forms of regulation to its bene®t.
Labour's task was to re-establish protective social regulation at the
national, regional and international levels. Nationally, the challenges
varied. In developed countries there was the movement of workers
from full time secure employment to part time and insecure employ-
ment which was often governed by far less strict regulation. For many
developing-country labour forces the primary challenge is widespread
unemployment. In those developing countries with growing export
sectors the challenge is Export Processing Zones or Special Economic
Zones where protective national labour legislation was either wea-
kened or abolished. Prominent examples of trying to create favourable
regulation at the regional level include the European Social Chapter
and the NAFTA labour side accord. In the OECD, labour pressed for
inclusion of labour standards in investment agreement negotiations
and more academic work on the issue of labour standards.12
It was in this context of seeking to advance progressive labour
regulation that much of the global labour movement approached the
issue of bringing labour concerns into the WTO. The labour move-
ment's goal at the WTO is to have core labour standards (social
clause) brought into its purview. The social clause would commit
states to respect seven crucial conventions of the ILO (Conventions 87,
98, 29, 105, 100, 111, 138). These conventions provide for: freedom of
association, the right to collective bargaining, abolition of forced
labour, prevention of discrimination in employment and a minimum
age for employment. The key to having the conventions as part of the
WTO is that for the ®rst time they would become enforceable and not
depend upon the whims of individual states. Labour wanted the
WTO sheriff to include core labour standards on its beat.
The case for a social clause at the WTO was constructed to temper,
if not eliminate, opposition from its major detractors, liberal free
traders and developing states. The ICFTU argues that a social clause

12 One response was OECD (1996).

83
Contesting Global Governance

will help keep markets open by strengthening the political authority

of the WTO (ICFTU 1996b). Protectionist arguments in developed
countries will be harder to sustain in the face of an established
mechanism to deal with labour exploitation. The implicit argument is
that workers in developed states will continue to press for labour
standards, narrowing the choice for policy makers between national
or multinational regulation rather than multinational or no regulation.
A failure to address the issue at the WTO may result in developed
states taking their own, less liberal measures.
Converting developing country governments to a social clause
requires a message which minimises the fear of Northern protec-
tionism. The ICFTU proposals raise the possibility of trade sanctions
only for the most obstinate offenders and after years of reports,
consultations and multilateral assistance. The ILO conventions set
broad principles which can be adjusted to national conditions. There
is no attempt to legislate wage rates, so developed states will continue
to be subject to cost competition. At the ICFTU's World Congress in
June 1996 a delegate from the Malaysian Trade Union Congress
(MTUC) emphasised the need to underline that the clause was not a
minimum wage. The MTUC committed itself to supporting adoption
of the social clause in face of ®erce government opposition. The
ICFTU is also trying to attract support by claiming that developing
countries have the most to gain from their proposals. The biggest
competitive threat to low-wage developing countries is from other
low-wage developing countries. They should be most interested in
preventing a race to the bottom. Evidence of this fear was provided at
the Congress when an Indian delegate voiced concerns that China
was using oppressive conditions to lure investment away from other
developing countries.
The ICFTU maintains an of®ce in Geneva to deal both with the ILO
and the WTO. It has access to the WTO Secretariat and to needed
documents. The ICFTU enjoys considerable informal access to the
WTO and engages with key Secretariat members such as the director-
general. The existing system of WTO±NGO relations suits the ICFTU
as it is regarded as more legitimate than many of the lobbying NGOs
and receives better unof®cial treatment by the WTO.13

13 Interview with ICFTU of®cial, 13 December 1996, Singapore. Interview with WTO
of®cial 2 October 1997, Geneva.

84
 The WTO and labour

Labour and the Singapore ministerial meeting

For organised labour the ®rst ministerial meeting of the WTO was a
crucial event in the furtherance of their global campaign for workers'
rights. It would be a test of the degree to which labour issues could be
accommodated in the most in¯uential trade organisations. Labour
wanted the WTO to set up a working group to consider how `the rules
of the WTO can ensure that the mutually reinforcing relationship
between core international labour standards and the multilateral
trading system are enhanced' (ICFTU 1996e). The debate about core
labour standards revealed a number of signi®cant points about the
labour movement, its relationship to other social movements and the
WTO.
With regard to the labour movement itself, the drive to integrate
core labour standards into the WTO revealed divisions between the
ICFTU and other sections of the movement, especially those from
developing countries. The policies of the ICFTU are heavily in¯uenced
by its largest due paying members. In practice this means the West
Europeans and the North Americans. While most af®liates of the
ICFTU in developing countries supported the core labour standards
initiative, some did not. For example, the Indian Trade Union Con-
gress did not attend the ICFTU's pre-WTO ministerial workshop on
labour standards. Moreover, there was some indication that grass-
roots labour groups saw the WTO as a source of domination rather
than an opportunity for justice.
Whereas opposition to core labour standards from unions tied
closely to authoritarian governments in developing countries might
be dismissed, it was harder to reject such concerns from more
independent groups. For example, the linkage between labour stan-
dards and the WTO was rejected in two national conferences of
independent Indian unions in March and October 1995. Delegates
expressed fears that the social clause initiative was driven by protec-
tionist desires in Northern countries. The Indian union suggestion
was that rather than working through the WTO workers should push
for a United Nations Labour Rights Convention and the establishment
of National Labour Rights Commissions. The issue was not whether
all workers should be entitled to basic rights, but whether the WTO
was the appropriate institution for such a task. The conclusion
amongst many grass-roots Indian activists was that the WTO, along
with the IMF and World Bank, were irrevocably tied to exploitative

85
Contesting Global Governance

Northern interests. In their view everything possible should be done

to stop the expansion of WTO powers to new areas, including labour
standards (ALU 1995).
The distrust voiced by many grass-roots organisations in devel-
oping countries over the social clause issue reveals the degree to
which Northern unions and the ICFTU must work to repair the
damage of their Cold War legacy. Whereas the ICFTU argues that the
extension of legal protections to corporate interests over issues of
intellectual property rights must be accompanied by regulation in the
®eld of workers' rights, some groups in developing countries see
extended regulation in terms of past protectionism generated by US
anti-dumping legislation. As for the ICFTU itself, some newly inde-
pendent unions resent their cosy Cold War relationship with govern-
ment sponsored unions and fear that they will urge the
implementation of business unionism rather than engage in anti-
capitalist struggles (ALU 1996; Spooner 1989).
The ICFTU arrived in Singapore with little thought having been
given to its relationship with other social movements or with speci®c
NGOs preparatory to or during the ministerial meeting. On the
weekend prior to the ministerial meeting the ICFTU held a workshop
on labour standards to review and publicise its case for integrating
core labour standards into the WTO. Invitations to several NGOs to
attend the event were issued only shortly before the workshop and in
a seemingly casual manner. During the meeting a number of NGOs
urged the ICFTU to form a Workers' Rights Caucus to bring together
labour unions and NGOs who supported labour standards. The key
NGOs were the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) (Washington),
the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Develop-
ment (ICHRDD) (Montreal), and Solidar (Brussels). On the trade
union side the ICFTU provided support in the form of a representative
from the Geneva of®ce, a member of the Trade Union Advisory
Committee of the OECD and members of the ITSs. Active ITSs were
EI, PSI, and the ITGLWF. Signi®cant aspects of the founding of the
caucus were that it was initiated by the NGOs rather than the ICFTU
and that it was left to the last minute, depending upon the chance of
having some activists attending the workshop.14
14 The idea of a Workers' Rights Caucus did not last long after the Singapore meeting.
The ICHRDD, ILRF and Canadian Labour Congress hosted a Workers' Rights Forum
at the 1997 People's Summit during the Vancouver APEC meetings, but there was no
continuity from the WTO meeting.

86
 The WTO and labour

During the week of the Singapore conference the ICFTU and

Workers' Rights Caucus held meetings every morning following the
ICFTU's own brie®ng meetings. They had a great deal of work to do
over the week because they soon discovered that a coalition of NGOs
coordinated by the Third World Network (TWN) had issued a public
statement opposing the extension of the WTO's mandate to new
issues, including core labour standards.15 Their primary concern was
that the WTO was an inappropriate institution to defend workers'
rights and advance the concerns of the peoples of the developing
world. They viewed the WTO, as well as the World Bank and the IMF,
as institutions of Northern domination. The TWN and a number of
development NGOs argued that `Countervailing measures imposed
unilaterally by powerful countries on weaker nations (and hardly
conceivable the other way around) would lack legality, moral auth-
ority and effectiveness to lead to any effective improvement in
workers' conditions or human rights situations in poor or rich
countries' (TWN 1996).
In order to discuss their differences the ICFTU and TWN held a
closed-door meeting on the second day of the Conference. The
meeting was facilitated by the ICHRDD and the ILRF. The ICFTU and
TWN each brought ten people to the meeting. Journalists with links to
the organisations and the researcher for this project also attended.16
The ICFTU ensured that it had trade unionists from Africa, Latin
America and South Asia attend the session to counter the notion that
it solely represented Northern interests. The TWN was primarily
represented by people from Southern research institutes. Although
the discussion lasted for a couple of hours the main points can be
easily summarised. The TWN claimed that the structure of the WTO
was biased to such an extent that the incorporation of core labour
standards would only be used as a weapon by developed countries
against developing countries. Their main agenda at the Singapore
conference was to restrict the WTO's powers, especially its attempts to
expand in the area of investment regulation. While sympathetic to
protecting labour rights the appropriate institution for such a function
was the ILO, not the WTO. The ICFTU argument was that the ILO's
monitoring activity needed to be supplemented by the WTO's

15 The TWN is a coalition of intellectuals from Southern based research institutes which
pursue an active research programme.
16 The following account is based upon the author's notes.

87
Contesting Global Governance

enforcement capability. Capital was using regional trade agreements,

as well as the WTO to enshrine its rights. Labour had to do the same.
The WTO was not the ideal institution, but it would be far worse to
have no link between labour standards and trade. In the same way
that one doesn't achieve everything one wants in collective bar-
gaining, the WTO core labour standards relationship was imperfect,
but necessary. They agreed to disagree.
Both the ICFTU and the TWN sought to stress their areas of
agreement and the fact that on many issues they had no dispute.
However, the differences between the two groups were great. The
ICFTU advocates achieving gains within the existing structures while
the TWN is seeking a new international architecture to give devel-
oping states more equality. Whereas the ICFTU saw the prime
international cleavage as being between workers and employers, the
TWN saw the divide as being North/South. The ICFTU was in favour
of international organisations forcing governments to live up to
minimum standards, the TWN, because of its view of international
organisations, preferred greater state autonomy. In the end, the ICFTU
could not answer the TWN's criticism of the structural inequality of
international economic institutions and the TWN could not advocate a
practical policy proposal to improve workers' rights.
Around the fringes of the debate, but never openly articulated, was
a dispute not just about tactics to be adopted to further progressive
change, but a contest over legitimacy and representativeness. From
the perspective of some TWN members, the ICFTU was a naive
Northern dominated institution acting on the behalf of Northern
workers to the detriment of Southern workers. It had few links to the
poorest of the poor, namely the millions of peasants in developing
countries and the informal sector. Its backing of a strengthened WTO
was the strategy of a labour aristocracy trying to protect its own. From
the perspective of the ICFTU and the ITSs, the TWN was a collection
of intellectuals with dubious links to the people they claimed to speak
for. They had no mass membership base and no mechanisms of
accountability. Their wholesale rejection of working within the WTO
offered no hope for improving workers' living conditions.17

17 The debate continues after Singapore. One example is a seminar organised by the
Organisation of African Trade Union Unity (OATUU) in Tunisia in September 1997 on
the issue of labour standards. TWN members joined OATUU and WFTU of®cials in
arguing against a social clause at the WTO while ICFTU representatives including
confederations which are part of OATUU argued in favour.

88
 The WTO and labour

Over the course of the week the Workers' Rights Caucus issued
press releases, attended other NGO meetings and hosted an NGO
discussion of workers' rights. However, it was noticeable that the
unions were an NGO unlike other NGOs. They did not attend the
morning NGO brie®ng because they held their own brie®ng at the
same time. Participation in other workshops on issues such as
the environment was limited. They did not take part in the drafting
or signing of the NGO statement on WTO accountability. The ICFTU
and ITSs were outside the cosy community of environmentalist and
development NGOs. They were also better informed on the workers'
rights issues than the other NGOs. These differences are partially
attributable to the relatively privileged position of the labour organi-
sation compared with other NGOs
The ICFTU was in a distinctive position with regard to the non-
pro®t NGOs at the WTO meeting. One advantage they had was that
they were clearly pushing a limited positive agenda. The TWN,
similar to many developing countries, was primarily in an opposi-
tional mode, attempting to have issues kept off the agenda. Environ-
mentalists were split with some calling for an end to existing WTO
environmental positions, others advocating further engagement.
These defensive positions were no match for the expansive agenda of
the most powerful states and interest groups.
A second and more important advantage enjoyed by organised
labour was its close relationship with several governments. ICFTU
af®liates in the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Denmark, Norway,
Egypt, Tunisia, Burkina Faso and South Africa were accredited to
government delegations. This allowed them access to government
brie®ngs and government of®cials. Since the WTO is dominated by its
member states, ability to in¯uence rests upon the ability to lobby key
states. On the issue of labour standards, the unions had clear in¯uence
in the governments of Norway, the USA and France. The Norwegian
government proposed the WTO create a working party to examine
labour and trade issues. This was similar to the ICFTU's position.
More important was the commitment from the USA and the EU to
have some mention of labour included in the Ministerial Declaration.
The European Commission, which spoke for the EU, was committed
to labour standards, but the British government opposed the initiative
and at the last moment the German government declared that labour
issues should not derail the conference.
In the USA, the Congress had demanded that the US negotiators

89
Contesting Global Governance

address the labour standards issue. John Sweeney, the recently elected
AFL±CIO head, worked with the acting United States Trade Represen-
tative, Charlene Barshefsky, to push the labour standards issue in a
number of arenas. In a pre-ministerial meeting address to the ICFTU's
labour standards workshop Barshefsky sent the message that she was
`®ghting your ®ght' (USTR 1996). The US administration was also in
the position of needing fasttrack negotiating authority from Congress
if a new trade round was to be launched. In light of the bitter debate
over NAFTA (Rupert 1995), the rise of the isolationist right, and the
renewed activism of the AFL-CIO (Mort 1998), the US government
was bound to press the labour standards issue. Signi®cantly, the USA
was also the single most important state at the WTO.
The outcome of the labour issue at the Singapore meeting re¯ected
the relative power of developed states to developing states and labour
to business. The USA and Western Europe had a very successful week
at the WTO meeting. They were able to bring three new issues ±
investment, competition policy and labour ± into the purview of the
WTO. On investment and competition policy they secured working
groups to begin examination of the issue. On labour they secured a
mention of the subject of core labour standards in the declaration and
the enshrining of institutional cooperation with the ILO.18 This was
far less than a working party, but allowed developed states to show
some progress on the labour issue while not alienating their business
constituency.
Although labour and some northern European governments
wanted the WTO to create a working party on the issue of trade and
labour standards it soon became clear that the contest at Singapore
would be about whether there was even any mention of labour in the
®nal ministerial document. A coalition of states which could be

18 The statement on labour standards is the fourth of eighteen paragraphs comprising

the Singapore Ministerial Declaration. It reads as follows:
We renew our commitment to the observance of internationally recognised
core labour standards. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) is the
competent body to set and deal with these standards, and we af®rm our
support for its work in promoting them. We believe that economic growth
and development fostered by increased trade and further liberalisation
contribute to the promotion of these standards. We reject the use of labour
standards for protectionist purposes, and agree that the comparative advan-
tage of countries, particularly low-wage developing countries, must in no
way be put into question. In this regard, we note that the WTO and ILO
Secretariats will continue existing collaboration. (WTO 1996c)

90
 The WTO and labour

termed anti-imperialist (India), authoritarian (Indonesia)19 and neolib-

eral (UK) combined with business organisations and some develop-
ment groups to oppose any connection between the WTO and labour
standards. A number of Southern countries including India and
Pakistan demonstrated their opposition to dealing with labour issues
when they exploited a WTO technicality to prevent the director-
general of the ILO from addressing the Singapore meeting. In addition
to the government of Britain, Western employers also opposed
making any connection between the WTO and labour issues.20 In last
minute negotiations India's adamant opposition was only overcome
when the chair of the Singapore meeting agreed to put the following
statement in his concluding remarks: `Some delegations had ex-
pressed the concern that this text may lead the WTO to acquire a
competence to undertake further work in the relationship between
trade and core labour standards. I want to assure this delegation that
this text will not permit such a development' (Yeo 1996).
The statement on core labour standards was a classic compromise
that was interpreted differently by opposing parties. India, Britain
and many Asian states followed Chairman Yeo's interpretation of the
Ministerial Declaration and concluded that the issue of trade and
labour standards would not reappear at the WTO. At press brie®ngs
on the ®nal day the United States Trade Representative stressed that
the chairman's remarks re¯ected his personal view and carried no
legal weight. They did not re¯ect the US understanding of the text.
The French representative declared that he was overjoyed with the
text because it institutionalised the relationship between the WTO and
the ILO and would permit further work on the issue.21
The implications of the labour section of the Singapore Ministerial
Declaration must await future developments at the WTO. Despite the
opposition of many developing countries and most employers,

19 Indonesia's stance against linking trade and labour standards was made more clear
by the simultaneous trial of independent union leaders in Jakarta during the WTO
meeting. On the trial see Far Eastern Economic Review (1996).
20 The press releases issued by the International Chamber of Commerce, Eurocommerce
and the Union of Industrial and Employers' Confederations of Europe at the WTO
conference all opposed the linking of labour standards with the trade institution. The
declared devotion to the ILO may have more to do with its lack of enforcement
mechanisms than its expertise. Employers' support for even a weak ILO was under-
mined by their boycott of the ILO's negotiations for a new Convention on home-
working in 1996.
21 Author's notes from the British, US and French Press brie®ngs of 13 December 1996.

91
Contesting Global Governance

reference that leaves some opening to future consideration of labour

issues in a WTO framework was inserted into the text. This was some
distance from labour's ®rst choice (a working party), but it also
avoided the worst case scenario, which was a statement clearly
closing off future discussion of labour issues at the WTO.22 Although
labour did not achieve nearly as much as it wanted, the little it did
accomplish was due to its ability to in¯uence the leadership of the
most powerful states.

NGOs and the WTO Singapore meeting

Since the December 1996 Singapore meeting was the ®rst ministerial
meeting of the WTO, it was also the ®rst major occasion that the WTO
had to deal with NGOs and, by extension, social movements. Several
environmental NGOs arrived in Singapore with developed critiques
of the WTO's operation in its ®rst two years (Bellmann and Gerster
1996; Enders 1996; Vander Stichele 1996). In general, the criticism was
that the WTO continued the secretive approach of its predecessor the
GATT. NGOs complained that despite recent attempts to provide
more WTO documents to the public, these were distributed after
decisions had already been made. This made it impossible for NGOs
to have any policy input. There was also dissatisfaction with the lack
of opportunity for NGOs to participate in policy-making fora such as
the dispute settlement mechanism. Although the dispute settlement
mechanism made provision for consulting outside experts, this was at
the discretion of the states involved and the WTO. The week of the
Singapore conference reinforced many of these frustrations for the
NGOs.
One area where there was no complaint was in the provision of
physical facilities by the WTO in cooperation with the Singapore
government. An NGO centre was established within walking distance
of the main conference centre where the plenary sessions took place.
Within the NGO centre, televisions broadcast proceedings live from

22 At the ICFTU labour standards workshop prior to the WTO meeting Ruggerio's draft
statement on labour standards was subject to considerable debate. Representatives
from the Workers' Group at the ILO and the head of the Trade Union Advisory
Council to the OECD stressed the importance of having some statement which kept
the issue alive and allowed them to pursue further work at the ILO and OECD. In
their view the worst WTO outcome would be a statement that said the labour
standards and trade issue was settled or con®ned only to one institution.

92
 The WTO and labour

the Ministerial Meeting. Press conferences of various delegations and

WTO of®cials were also broadcast on a WTO channel. In addition, any
interested NGO could record and broadcast a two-minute statement
for the channel. NGOs were provided with meeting rooms, computer
facilities (including e-mail), WTO public documentation and delegates
press releases.
Although the facilities provided by the Singapore government were
excellent, the heavy hand of the state was never far away. Prior to
arriving in Singapore and upon picking up the registration pack,
NGO delegates were informed that no form of public protest would
be tolerated.23 Singapore foreign affairs of®cials monitored the NGO
notice board and copies of every notice were made. Offending notices
such as the ICFTU's publicity of Indonesia's simultaneous trial of
independent labour leaders were removed. These restrictions did not
appear to interfere greatly with NGO activity, but the dynamics of the
interaction in a more free society might well have been different.
NGOs which had registered before the meeting were given access to
the main hall for plenary sessions and to the press centre. This
allowed NGOs to corner national delegates on the fringes of the
meeting and to publicise their views among the press corps. There
was some unhappiness that NGOs had restricted access to member-
states' press conferences. These were held on a different level and an
elaborate procedure requiring a delegate from a state to escort the
NGO delegate reduced practical access. NGOs felt this to be a
problem because they could not publicly press their government
of®cials on particular issues. Some NGOs were able to circumvent this
obstacle if they were also accredited to a news agency and had a press
credential.
There was some controversy concerning NGO accreditation. In
order to secure NGO status at the December meeting NGOs had to
register with the WTO by October. The WTO Secretariat made
decisions about whether a particular organisation was suf®ciently
concerned with trade issues to merit accreditation. For example, the
ITS EI was refused accreditation because the WTO felt that the
activities of a trade union organisation concerned with education
`were not directly related to the trade activities of the WTO'.24

23 Joining Instructions, NGO delegate pack.

24 Letter from Alain Frank, director of WTO External Relations Division to Sheena
Hanley, deputy secretary of Education International, 17 October 1996.

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Contesting Global Governance

Similarly, the ITS PSI was initially refused representation. In PSI's case
they persisted, arguing with the WTO in person, and were eventually
given accreditation. EI was able to attend by using one of PSI's places.
WTO of®cials claim that very few NGOs were denied accreditation to
the Singapore conference, although a few nationally focused human
rights organisations were discouraged.25 This is dif®cult to verify
independently.
The WTO External Relations Department did not consult other
multilateral economic organisations, such as the World Bank, about
how to handle NGOs during large meetings. Because of the perceived
unique nature of the WTO and the sensitivity of some member states
to NGO presence, WTO of®cials felt that they were in a unique
situation.26 In its ®rst attempt to deal with civil society actors on a
large scale the WTO determined that everything that was not a state
or a member of the press was labelled an NGO. This created an
interesting mix of NGOs at the NGO centre. One could overhear a
member of the Sierra Club debate with a member of the Enterprise
Institute whether there was a greater risk to mortality from the green-
house effect or lack of refrigeration in developing countries. Around
the corner a member of the Pork Producers Council speculated that
the US Intelligence community was backing China's accession to the
WTO in spite of the harm it might do to farming interests. Indeed the
largest contingent (65 per cent) of NGOs registered for the Singapore
conference were business organisations.27 They attended in order to
monitor the conference and lobby when they felt their commercial
interests were threatened. They were treated in the same manner as
non-pro®t public interest groups. Since there was no observer status
(other than for countries or intergovernmental organisations), some
individuals became one-person NGOs. The author of this chapter
attended the Singapore meetings as the University of Sussex NGO.
The distribution of non-business NGOs re¯ected the degree to
which various groups had been involved in trade issues. Environmen-
talist groups had been heavily involved in lobbying during the
Uruguay Round and had managed to secure a Committee on Trade
and Environment at the WTO. They had a high pro®le at the NGO
centre and organised numerous seminars around trade and environ-
ment issues as well as providing developed critiques of WTO account-

25 Interview, WTO of®cials, 30 September 1997. 26 Ibid.

27 Author's calculations from the list of NGOs attending the meeting.

94
 The WTO and labour

ability. The second high-pro®le group was the TWN which had held a
pre-Singapore seminar with numerous development groups. They
published an NGO statement setting out a position for halting the
expansion of the WTO agenda. The third signi®cant NGO presence
was the labour unions in the form of the ICFTU, the ITSs and the
WCL.
The women's movement initially had a relatively low pro®le at the
WTO meeting. There was no preparatory networking for the meeting.
A number of women from various NGOs came together early in the
week to form a women's caucus. This included women from a range
of NGOs such as Oxfam International, Transnational Institute, ICFTU,
EI, Catholic Centre for International Relations and Sierra Club, as well
as from NGOs speci®cally dedicated to women's issues such as
Women Working Worldwide (WWW), Women's Environment and
Development Organisation (WEDO), and Women in Development
Europe (WIDE). The women's caucus was able to make contact with
WTO of®cials from the Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM),
which reviews the trade policy of member states. They secured an
agreement to begin a dialogue concerning gender and the WTO, an
issue which of®cials had not previously considered. A press release
was issued which stated that WTO members had ignored their
commitments from the Beijing Women's Conference that policy
making should be gender sensitive (WWW 1996; 1997).
The formation of the Women's Caucus and initial contacts with the
WTO were a small, but signi®cant step in the women's movement's
engagement with the WTO. For many working women the WTO is a
distant and mysterious institution which appears not to have a direct
impact on their lives. For the WTO secretariat gender issues have
never been an issue. The women's caucus will now lobby for the
analysis of the gender effects of WTO policies and the consideration of
gender dimensions in individual countries' trade-policy reviews. It
was the ®rst step in getting gender and trade liberalisation on to the
WTO agenda.
Subsequent to the Singapore meeting a WTO Gender Caucus met
with UN agencies, NGOs and WTO of®cials in Geneva in March 1997.
This group is now known as the Informal Working Group on Gender
and Trade. Similar to labour, their evolving strategy entailed having
gender issues inserted into the TPRM (discussed in more detail in a
following section). Members of the group are also involved in
lobbying their home governments to push the WTO to take notice of

95
Contesting Global Governance

gender concerns. For example, WIDE has been lobbying the EU to

integrate gender into its WTO strategy (Brew 1998). The trade union
members of the WTO Women's Caucus are also interested in demon-
strating how core labour standards would have a positive gender
impact.
The problem of access to information that NGOs identi®ed prior to
the Singapore meeting was in evidence. Of®cial WTO brie®ngs of the
NGOs at the NGO centre were short and had a surreal element. The
director for External Relations appeared every evening and morning
to announce that nothing had yet been decided by member states. He
would then leave and return either that evening or the next morning
and repeat the process. The lack of content in of®cial brie®ngs
re¯ected the degree to which the Secretariat was bound by the desire
of some member states for secrecy. The best source of information
about what was happening at the meetings came from members of
national delegations invited to the NGO centre for morning brie®ngs.
These delegates often had close ties to the NGO community and were
able to shed some light on developments.
The dif®culty in securing timely documentation also persisted for
NGOs at the Singapore meeting. Most of the week's discussion
focused around a draft Ministerial Declaration that all countries were
asked to sign. As the week progressed sections of the declaration,
such as the fourth paragraph on labour standards, were subject to
intense negotiation. Most NGOs were unable to get a copy of this
draft or to amendments that were being proposed by various states.
For its part, the WTO Secretariat argued that it was not able to
distribute such information unless it was instructed to do so by the
member states. This made it dif®cult to lobby governments because it
was not always clear what was under discussion.
In fairness, the information problem was not limited to NGOs.
Some national delegations were unaware of the state of negotiations.
The government of Singapore had opened the meeting with the
intention that business would be conducted in a single Heads of
Delegation meeting composed of the trade ministers of each state.
However, this arrangement proved unmanageable owing to the large
numbers involved and was soon replaced with ad hoc meetings of
states around key issues. Since these meetings were not arranged
beforehand there were times when national delegations, especially
from smaller states, were wandering around the meeting site in search
of the latest meeting on subject X. The major states were never in

96
 The WTO and labour

doubt about the schedule, but smaller states were not always able to
participate.
At the conclusion of the WTO Singapore meeting a number of
NGOs gathered to review the progress of the meeting and their
relationship to the institution. A statement was issued which urged
the WTO to review its process of document circulation and expand
NGO participation in policy making. Ideas for expanding the NGO
role included the right to make verbal and written statements in
policy deliberations, contributing to the TPRM reports and the right
for public interest NGOs to participate in public dispute-settlement
hearings. The NGOs also raised issues of equal access for developing-
country NGOs. This included the need for ®nancial support and the
provision of documents in print as well as in electronic form. The
WTO was urged to take such measures before the review of their
relations with NGOs due in July 1998.28

Labour and the WTO post-Singapore

For the labour movement the Singapore conference did not achieve a
great deal. Optimistically they could point to states reaf®rming their
commitment to the ILO and recognition of ILO±WTO cooperation.
Whereas at the 1994 Marrakesh GATT meeting labour issues were
relegated to a broad chair's statement, they at least made it into the
main Singapore Ministerial Declaration. In addition, labour issues had
dominated the Singapore meeting, attracting a great deal of attention.
The labour movement managed to prevent their worst case scenario
which would have been a clear statement rejecting any role for the
WTO with regard to labour issues.
Yet, the concrete accomplishments were slim. As mentioned earlier,
the Ministerial Declaration included a paragraph on labour standards

28 `Singapore Statement on NGO±WTO Relations,' Singapore, 13 December 1996. NGOs

which signed on were Sierra Club, Focus on the Global South, Humane Society,
Eurogroup Animal Welfare, International Institute for Sustainable Development,
CIECA, NCDO, Third World Network, International South Group Network, Indi-
genous Peoples' International Centre for Policy and Research, Center for International
Environmental Law, Transnational Institute, Forum Syd, WorldWide Fund for Nature
International, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, SEWS, Institute for African
Alternatives, Institute del Tercer Mundo, Organisation of African Trade Union Unity,
Greenpeace International, International Coalition for Development Action, People's
Forum 2001, Oxfam and Friends of the Earth International. The ICFTU, WCL and
ITSs did not participate in this exercise.

97
Contesting Global Governance

only because various parties could put their own, often con¯icting,
interpretation on it. For example, the Declaration con®rmed that
existing collaboration between the WTO and ILO should continue, but
most people had no clue as to what such existing collaboration
entailed. The task for the labour movement post-Singapore was to
build upon the ambiguous Singapore statement by inserting itself and
labour issues into the regular operation of the WTO.
The primary strategy to keep the issue alive has been to insert
labour issues into the trade policy review mechanism hearings. The
TPRM is a process whereby the WTO regularly reviews the trade
policy of individual member states. The ICFTU has published country
reports to coincide with country reviews. Its hope is that this will
highlight labour issues in each country and that member states will
use the policy reviews as an opportunity to raise labour issues. The
®rst instance of such a procedure was the trade policy review of Fiji.
The review corresponded with a major dispute between the Fijian
government and the Fijian Trade Unions Congress. The ICFTU's
report outlined the shortcomings in Fijian practice with regard to the
key ILO conventions and the implications for Fiji's export sector
(ICFTU 1997). During the review Denmark and the USA raised the
labour issue while the chair (Pakistan) tried to rule it out of order. The
minutes of the meeting only note that the issue was raised.
The TPRM can be used as a tool to keep labour issues in the
headlines, but little more. Hostility to discussing any aspect of labour
issues remains intense. An example of this opposition occurred in
September 1997 when the Norwegian delegate to the WTO's General
Council asked a two-part question of the director-general. The ®rst
part sought clari®cation about the nature of WTO±ILO existing
collaboration while the second part asked whether the WTO had
received any information on core labour standards that could be
shared with WTO members.29 The ®rst part of the question was
straightforward and received a direct answer. The director-general
replied that collaboration with the ILO involved three elements.
Firstly, the WTO participated in the meetings of some ILO bodies such
as the Working Party on the Social Dimensions of the Liberalisation of
International Trade. Secondly, the Secretariats exchanged documenta-
tion. Thirdly, there was informal cooperation between the Secretariats.
The second part of the question was an attempt to have labour

29 This section is based upon interviews with WTO of®cials.

98
 The WTO and labour

issues raised in the WTO's Governing Body by having ILO work

reported to it. This would then have opened the door to discussion of
the ILO work and the issue of core labour standards in general. The
director-general ®nessed the question by replying that ILO infor-
mation was publicly available. The representatives of Egypt and
Pakistan led a number of other developing countries in condemning
the attempt to raise the issue of labour standards in the Governing
Body. Many states, especially developing countries, remain opposed
to discussing labour issues in any form.
A longer term strategy for bringing discussion of labour issues into
the WTO lies in the area of social labelling and company codes of
conduct. A number of consumer and labour organisations in devel-
oped countries have been putting pressure upon corporations to
produce products in a socially responsible manner. Examples include
the Rugmark campaign in India, Germany and the USA, and the
Clean Clothes Campaign in Europe. Rugmark stamps inform custo-
mers that hand knotted carpets from India (and recently Nepal) have
not been made with child labour while the Clean Clothes Campaign
holds public events to inform consumers about working conditions in
the textile and garment industry (ILRF 1996; Shaw 1997). A prolifera-
tion of such campaigns may soon start to cause concern about their
effect on trade and investment. For example, some states may fear that
their products are unjustly being denied access or that investment is
shifted to other locations because of consumer and labour campaigns.
It may prove advantageous for states to regulate such activity multi-
laterally.30 At the moment this remains a possibility, but it is not yet
clear that consumer and labour campaigns pose a great enough
obstacle for the WTO to become seriously involved in the issue.
One must conclude that very little has been accomplished in the
WTO±labour relationship. Labour issues remain a subject of intense
controversy. While most states will discuss the environment, many
refuse to begin a dialogue about labour issues and trade. What
accounts for this vehement opposition to dialogue, much less action?
Labour poses a more fundamental challenge to the interests of
particular states than environmentalists. Core labour standards are
enabling standards which create a space for autonomous labour
organisation. They provide for the abolition of the most punishing
forms of labour, giving workers the ability to organise independently.

30 Interview, General Secretary, ITGLWF, 24 September 1997, Brussels.

99
Contesting Global Governance

This challenges state elites seeking to keep a tight rein on political

power. For example, freedom of association could provide the basis
for political opposition to an authoritarian state whereas environ-
mental issues such as using a particular type of net to catch tuna can
be accommodated without threatening state power.
Because the WTO remains an interstate body and in¯uence is
exerted through the state, labour groups continue to rely on the good
will of particular states to advance their cause. This has two major
implications for the labour movement. Firstly, no matter how impor-
tant international activity might be, there is no substitute for exerting
political in¯uence within the dominant economic states. Even though
the WTO is dedicated to developing a rules based regime, its agenda
is driven by the powerful states. These states are primarily the USA
and those of the EU, but they are being pursued by Southeast and East
Asian states. Labour issues will remain on the WTO agenda to the
extent that labour can in¯uence these states. Thus, the strength of US
labour is crucial as the US administration tries to tread a ®ne line
between Democrats and Republicans in Congress.31
The second implication is that if labour wants to in¯uence WTO
policy it must develop allies in developing states. The labour stan-
dards issue has often been successfully portrayed as a North±South
issue. That division must be broken down in order for progress to be
made. The modest support of the South African state is an example to
build upon. South Africa was crucial in selling the labour section of
the Singapore Declaration to other developing states. The task is
formidable as advocates of core labour standards are caught in a
vicious circle. Support from some developing countries is needed to
advance labour standards, but this support is only likely to be
forthcoming from countries with vital and independent labour move-
ments. However, many of these movements would require the respect
of core labour standards before they could establish themselves on a
solid footing. Many of the governments are opposed to core labour
standards and are able to prevent the introduction of steps which
would allow this key constituency to mobilise.
In May 1998 the WTO held its second ministerial meeting. This time
the meeting was located in Geneva and the emphasis was placed on
celebrating the ®ftieth anniversary of GATT rather than reaching

31 Interview, USTR of®cial, 1 October 1997, Geneva.

100
 The WTO and labour

agreement on new initiatives. The ICFTU also attended and tried to

persuade ministers and government leaders to make statements
indicating that labour standards would have to be part of any future
negotiating round. President Bill Clinton indicated his desire to see
the WTO and ILO convene a special meeting to address the labour
standards issue.32 In addition, South Africa's President Nelson
Mandela urged other developing countries not to rule out the prospect
of taking steps to protect working conditions. The ICFTU's goals were
limited to reminding decision makers that their issue was not going
away. In contrast to the Singapore meeting the ICFTU arrived with a
plan to engage other members of the NGO community at the WTO
meeting. Working closely with a European NGO, Solidar, the ICFTU
provided information to other groups and launched a campaign
highlighting child labour issues.
Some of the ICFTU's members with a tradition of social movement
unionism such as COSATU in South Africa and CUT in Brazil
suggested that the confederation widen its engagement with the
WTO.33 They urged the ICFTU to broaden its concerns from core
labour standards to issues such as the role of developing countries,
environmental protection and widening participation in the dispute
settlement process. The motivation for taking on a broader agenda
was to in¯uence other key issues and to demonstrate to other
members of society that the labour movement was not simply
working at the WTO to further its own narrow interests. Such steps
would require the ICFTU to dedicate more staff to its Geneva of®ce
and expend greater resources. Although the leadership took note of
such concerns, the problem of scarce resources acts against such a
strategy. Despite such resource constraints, the ICFTU pulled together
a much more comprehensive critique of the WTO by the time of WTO
high-level symposia on `Trade and Environment' and `Trade and
Development' in March 1999 (ICFTU 1999b). This brie®ng paper
highlighted development, environmental, gender and social concerns,
as well as labour standards.
The Geneva ministerial meeting was largely insigni®cant for the
labour standards issue because of its ceremonial nature. In addition,
its timing in May came just before a scheduled ILO meeting in June
where labour standards were to be a key issue. Indeed one of the

32 Address by President Clinton to the WTO, 18 May 1998, Geneva.

33 Author's notes from an ICFTU pre-ministerial meeting, 15±17 May 1998.

101
Contesting Global Governance

signi®cant aspects of the labour campaign at the WTO has been the
spillover effect on the ILO. It is to this issue that we now turn.

Challenging the International Labour

Organisation
As we have seen, the labour movement's attempt to have its issue of
core labour standards inserted into the WTO was not entirely suc-
cessful. However, the push for linking the WTO with labour standards
resulted in challenging another international organisation to reform
and make itself more relevant. This other institution is the ILO.
The ILO presents a signi®cant contrast to the WTO in four ways.
Firstly, it is a much older institution, having been founded over
seventy-®ve years earlier in 1919. Secondly, whereas the WTO was
founded in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
apparent triumph of capitalism over communism, the ILO was
created in response to the threat of communism and increasing
worker militancy after the First World War. Thirdly, the ILO lacks the
enforcement powers of the WTO's dispute settlement mechanism and
the threat of sanctions. It must rely upon moral persuasion to
in¯uence state policy. Fourthly, whereas the WTO membership is
restricted to states, the ILO includes representatives of civil society in
its membership and integrates them into the decision-making process.
This last aspect deserves some elaboration because the ILO's inclu-
sion of civil society elements in its structure is unique amongst
multilateral economic institutions. ILO decisions are taken at a yearly
general assembly (International Labour Conference) and in an execu-
tive council (Governing Body). Each national delegation to the Inter-
national Labour Conference contains four delegates. Two represent
the government, one represents the country's employers and one
represents the country's workers. All four delegates may vote and
they can take different positions. Workers or employers (depending
upon national controls) may vote against their government's dele-
gates. This tripartite decision-making structure is signi®cant because
it acknowledges that a state is not the only legitimate expression of
interests within a territory. It encourages the forging of transnational
alliances along functional lines among workers or employers. A
mixture of government, employer and worker delegate support is
usually required to adopt new measures such as an ILO Convention
because approval requires a two-thirds majority.

102
 The WTO and labour

In the ILO we have an international organisation founded twenty-

®ve years before the Bretton Woods institutions and seventy-®ve
years before the WTO, an organisation which has made far more
elaborate provision for civil society participation. This casts doubt on
a simplistic correlation between recent changes in the global economy
and the need for society±institutional linkages. One might argue that
the ILO structure is unique because of its subject matter ± the
condition of labour. An international organisation dealing with labour
issues might be thought to require some labour participation.
Such an explanation is not satisfactory for two reasons. Firstly,
national labour ministers could deal with labour issues. There is no a
priori requirement for labour organisations to participate in decision
making through voting. Secondly, a similar argument could be made
for civil society participation in the WTO. It is primarily concerned
with establishing the rules of trade and commerce, yet the units which
engage in these activities have no direct voice. If the WTO is primarily
concerned with creating a legal environment for ®rms to conduct
business freely, a case can be made that those ®rms should have direct
representation. Indeed, some prominent business leaders are pressing
for a greater role.34
This suggests that it may be the political environment rather than
the issue area which is most in¯uential in determining the degree to
which civil society representatives are integrated into international
institutions. More speci®cally, the degree to which civil society actors
are capable of aiding or frustrating the ideal of these organisations is
key. The ILO accommodated worker representatives not because it
was seen as being more democratic, but because worker militancy
was seen to threaten order. The ILO was needed because `. . . condi-
tions of labour exist involving such injustice, hardship and privation
to large numbers of people as to produce unrest so great that the
peace and harmony of the world are imperilled . . .' (ILO 1994:
Preamble).
For all of its history and civil society participation, the ILO has
not been a tremendously effective organisation. Many of its Conven-
tions are unrati®ed and many that are rati®ed are not observed in
practice by member states. The USA, in particular, has had a stormy

34 See comments by the chairman of Nestle (Maucher 1997). The fear that business
organisations might dominate the WTO at the expense of other interests is expressed
in Vander Stichele 1998.

103
Contesting Global Governance

relationship with the ILO and refused to participate in the Organisa-

tion on more than one occasion (Imber 1989: 42±69; Wilson 1934:
325±50). For much of the Cold War, the ILO, as did other UN agencies,
served as a battleground between the Soviet Union and the USA (Cox
1977). The core labour standards debate at the WTO offered the ILO
an opportunity to reassert itself as an international organisation
(Hansenne 1996).
The opportunity for a new ILO initiative gathered force as countries
which opposed a WTO±labour standards link reaf®rmed their com-
mitment to core labour standards, but argued that the ILO was the
appropriate forum. The Singapore WTO meeting passed the issue
back to the ILO with the implication that the ILO should make itself
more relevant to the debate and the issue area. Since the labour issue
was brought to the WTO precisely because key actors felt that the ILO
had been ineffective, the challenge was clear. The ILO had to reform
or risk increasing irrelevance as actors continued their attempt to
pursue labour issues at the WTO.
The post-Singapore response at the ILO took the form of two
strategies. The ®rst involved a new Declaration and supervisory
mechanism. The second was a proposal for institutionalising social
labelling. The employers' group suggested that a new ILO Declaration
on core labour standards would provide a legal basis for renewed
action covering those states that had not yet signed the key conven-
tions (ILO 1997b). The workers' group felt that such a Declaration was
unnecessary. They were much more concerned with creating a new
institutional mechanism which would highlight and condemn abuses.
Governments from advanced industrialised countries gave muted
support to the idea of a new mechanism, but several Asian states
including Japan began to push for a review (and weakening) of
existing ILO mechanisms.35
The second major initiative was a proposal by the director-general
for a global social label (ILO 1997a). Noting the proliferation of
consumer and corporate initiatives in the ®eld of social labelling and
codes of conduct, the director-general suggested multilateral regula-
tion of such activity. The ILO could act to oversee such a system and
prevent the misuse or abuse of social labels.
The Ambassador of Colombia on behalf of the Non-Aligned Move-
ment rejected both of these initiatives in a public statement (South Letter

35 Interview with Geneva ICFTU of®cial, 1 October 1997.

104
 The WTO and labour

1997). It rejected the notion that the Singapore WTO meeting had given
a new mandate on trade and labour standards. Rather than trying to
develop new mechanisms, a Declaration or a global social label, the
ILO should be trying to curb Northern protectionism. Indeed, it was
ominously suggested that the existing supervisory system should be
reviewed for `objectivity, impartiality and transparency'.
Despite such objections the ILO did adopt a new Declaration on
core labour standards in its conference in June 1998 (ILO 1998a).
Of®cially the declaration was titled the `Declaration on Fundamental
Principles and Rights at Work'. It bound all of its members to respect
the seven core labour standards and provided for a follow-up mech-
anism which would highlight abuses. By virtue of their membership
of the ILO the Declaration covers countries whether or not they have
rati®ed the relevant Conventions. The follow-up mechanism provides
for the compilation of a global report which will cover one of the four
categories of rights (freedom of association and collective bargaining,
forced labour, child labour, discrimination in employment) each year
(ILO 1998b). The report will then be reviewed by the ILO conference.
In addition, the follow-up mechanism provides for annual monitoring
of the status of rati®cation of the core labour standards conventions.
A number of developing states such as Egypt, Pakistan, Mexico and
Colombia resisted the adoption of a new declaration. During the
conference some of these states were represented by their WTO
ambassadors who knew little about the ILO, but were determined to
resist core labour standards. They were able to have a paragraph
inserted in the Declaration which stated that core labour standards
should not be used for protectionist trade purposes or to disrupt
comparative advantage. In effect, they inserted a WTO trade concern
into the ILO after previously arguing at the WTO that labour
standards and trade should not be mentioned in the same arena!
These hardline states were eventually outmanoeuvred as other devel-
oping countries such as India and even China signed on to the non-
threatening Declaration.
In ILO terms the new Declaration was another small step in the
protection of workers' rights. It was greeted with approval in of®cial
trade union circles (ICFTU 1998). The Declaration was a sign that the
ILO could respond to demands for increased activity in the face of
globalisation. It will allow workers to highlight abuses of core labour
standards and to identify consistent offenders. However, the ILO's
limits of persuasion are clear. At the same conference that approved

105
Contesting Global Governance

the Declaration, the states of Myanmar (Burma) and Sudan were cited
for a consistent pattern of abusing workers' rights. There was no sign
that such shaming will have any noticeable effect on these states'
policy. The same fate is likely to await the work of the new Declar-
ation's follow-up mechanism.
After several years of intense activity it is clear that some limited
progress has been made on the issue of institutionalising global core
labour standards. In an effort to block WTO consideration of the issue,
many states stressed the sole role of the ILO. Efforts to reform the ILO
have led to the creation of a new Declaration and follow-up mech-
anism. The mechanism will serve to highlight continuing abuses of
workers' fundamental rights. The lack of an enforcement procedure
after the issuing of ILO reports will once again raise the question of
using the WTO's institutional power. In addition, one can expect a
continued proliferation of initiatives where organised labour can exert
some pressure ± in the USA and the EU and in the ®eld of company
codes of conduct. The limited accommodation of multilateral institu-
tions to the labour movement may not be the blessing that anti-
standards forces perceive. Alienating organised labour from the WTO
complicates the task of building institutional legitimacy in the civil
society of advanced industrial states.

Conclusion
This chapter has investigated the relationship between the WTO and
labour, but it has also strayed into labour's relations with other
international organisations (especially the ILO) and the WTO's
general relations with NGOs. Returning to the key questions raised in
the introductory chapter we can provide some answers for this
particular case study.

How has this MEI modi®ed?

The WTO is a new institution replacing the GATT. We can see changes
between the GATT and the WTO, as well as changes in the brief
operation of the WTO. The GATT made virtually no provision for civil
society participation in meetings or for the dissemination of publicity
material. Beginning with the Singapore ministerial meeting the WTO
has gradually opened up to NGOs and other civil society actors. It
provides civil society actors with extensive facilities at ministerial

106
 The WTO and labour

meetings and distributes documents on the Internet. In addition, the

WTO has held a series of workshops with NGOs on key issues. It has
gradually expanded its concerns from engaging with environmental-
ists to labour organisations, development NGOs and most recently
women's movements. In the case of organised labour, ICFTU of®cials
have access to key WTO of®cials and have been able to put forward
their case. From organised labour's perspective the problem is not
really with the structure of the WTO, but with the policies that it is
bound to enforce.

What are the motivations driving MEI±GSM engagement?

The WTO is concerned about the labour movement for two reasons.
Firstly, key states such as the USA and France have put labour issues
on the agenda. Secondly, Secretariat of®cials at the WTO planning for
future liberalisation initiatives worry about securing domestic poli-
tical support in developed states. The disturbance by protesters at the
1998 Geneva ministerial meeting was a visible lesson in why they
should be concerned. These gestures of protest served to emphasise
the fact that the WTO needed to monitor views in civil society and
make alliances with those that are more supportive.
For the labour movement the WTO is one of a number of inter-
national organisations and agreements exercising an in¯uence upon
their members. They seek to in¯uence it as they seek to in¯uence
regional trade agreements, the World Bank, the IMF, the ILO and
multinational corporations. To date their concern has not been with
the WTO as an institution, but with ®nding a method to enforce
workers' rights on a world-wide scale. If the ILO were up to the task,
the WTO campaign would not have been launched. Labour organisa-
tions have concentrated on the issue of core labour standards at the
WTO and passed over issues of institutional reform or other substan-
tive issues such as environmental protection or the fate of developing
countries in the trading order.

What is the signi®cance of the MEI±GSM relationship?

In policy terms neither the WTO nor the ICFTU have accomplished a
great deal. The WTO enjoys some support and a sympathetic hearing
from the ICFTU leadership, but support at lower levels of the trade
union movement is not as obvious. The ICFTU has made its case for

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Contesting Global Governance

core labour standards to WTO of®cials and has the quali®ed support
of some key states, but opposition amongst the majority of states has
prevented any action on labour issues.
The continuing dialogue between organised labour, the WTO and
some member states indicates two things. Firstly, labour issues remain
on the agenda. Their `solution' may lie at the WTO or in a revitalised
ILO or in unilateral action in developed economies. Whatever the case
the concerns of labour will not simply disappear. Secondly, there is an
increased recognition that future liberalisation and the stability of the
international trading system is partially linked to the degree to which
such institutions and initiatives can accommodate social concerns.
The ®ction of trade agreements being the preserve of states has given
way to a grudging consideration of their roots in civil society.

108
4 The World Bank, the World Trade
Organization and the environmental
social movement

This chapter examines the evolving relationship between the World

Bank, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the environmental
social movement (ESM). Speci®cally, it explores the demands made by
environmentalists on the two multilateral economic institutions
(MEIs) and the reaction of the MEIs to this constituency. The inter-
actions between the World Bank, the WTO and the ESM have to be
understood in the context of the emergence of a global discourse on
environmental issues, the respective institutional histories of the
MEIs, increasing attention to the institutions of civil society, and the
growth of pluralism and diversity in international society. Although
the Bank and the WTO are intergovernmental organisations with a
membership comprising sovereign governments, not only are their
activities the subject of intense scrutiny by non-state actors, but the
membership and administration of these organisations have to
varying extents become engaged in dialogue with groups representing
diverse interests. This chapter examines the salience of these develop-
ments from the perspectives of the MEIs and the ESM.
The argument is divided into three substantive sections. The ®rst
section is concerned with the environmental social movement, and
provides an introduction to the role of the ESM in international
politics. The aim of this section is to outline an introduction to the
various actors which comprise the ESM, and to assess the sources of
in¯uence possessed by various components of the movement. The
second section of the chapter focuses on the troubled history of the
World Bank's relationship with environmental activists. This section
traces the relationship between the Bank and the ESM, examines the
impact of environmentalists on Bank policy and assesses the extent to
which the Bank has adapted to the demands of its critics. The

109
Contesting Global Governance

environmentalist critique of the world trading system is the subject of

the third section of the chapter. The WTO came into existence in 1995,
and from the outset it was subject to challenge by environmentalists.
This part of the chapter explores the demands made by environmen-
talists and the WTO's response. In both these sections the relationship
between the MEI and other social movements forms an important part
of the context in which discussions between the international organ-
isation and the ESM is conducted. The ®nal section attempts to derive
some general conclusions about the relationships examined.

The environmental social movement

One of the key strands within contemporary politics can be labelled
environmentalism (Pepper 1996). Whilst not easy to classify, environ-
mentalism can be taken to signify a concern with the environment. In
other words, the fact that the environment has become a political
issue.
Since the 1960s the environment as an issue has moved from the
margins to the centre of political debate. Evidence of the increased
political salience of the environment is to be found in the eruption of
national environmental agencies, and ministries of the environment in
the developed and developing worlds. No single event or publication
is responsible for this increased attention to the relationship between
human activity and the natural world. We can cite environmental
accidents, irrefutable evidence of environmental degradation and the
growth of a post-materialist culture, but these events do not in
themselves constitute a force for change. The development of envir-
onmentalism has been accompanied by the growth of an environ-
mental movement; in other words, the material developments have
been shaped by human agency. Most commentators agree that an
environmental movement consisting of a number of disparate actors
exists, and many believe that it has helped shape the agenda, and
exercised a signi®cant degree of in¯uence on the efforts of national
governments and international organisations to respond to the per-
ceived environmental crisis. In common with other social movements
the environmental movement encompasses a variety of organisational
forms. These include political parties, non-governmental organisa-
tions (NGOs), community based organisations (CBOs), and business
organisations. Some organisations are single issue speci®c whereas
others address a wide range of issues. Moreover, the movement

110
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

consists of organisations whose orientation is wholly environmental

and others who merge environmental concerns with other issues,
such as peace or women's rights.
Furthermore, no single ideology permeates the environmental
movement, and different strands of environmentalism can be dis-
cerned within it. It has become commonplace to distinguish between
radical and reformist versions of environmentalism. This distinction
has given rise to differing terminologies. For example, Andrew
Dobson (1990) uses the terms light green and dark green, and Robyn
Eckersley (1994) refers to a divide between anthropocentric and
ecocentric approaches. The reformist approach broadly accepts the
prevailing political and economic structure and attempts to promote
technocentric solutions to environmental problems. This managerial
approach is concerned to make environmental choices serve human
interests. The radical perspective pre-supposes profound changes in
humanity's relationship with the environment in order to care for it,
and refuses to compromise with existing social and economic
structures.
There is thus no single uni®ed global environmental movement or
ideology of environmentalism. Nevertheless, despite differences in
size, orientation, aims, ideology, resources, organisational forms,
organisational culture and range of activities, it has become com-
monplace to speak of an environmental movement encompassing
individuals and groups. For Dalton the various strands of environ-
mentalism are linked by a perception that they represent a challenge
to `the prevailing socio-political forces of advanced industrial
societies' (Dalton 1994: 7), and for Lipschutz (1992) it is a common
ethic which de®nes the movement. The notion of an environmental
movement articulating and espousing an alternative development
paradigm from the conventional socio-economic one and challenging
the conventional political systems of Western democracies is widely
shared. One should, however, be wary in accepting this standard
viewpoint. The existence of an environmental movement need not
depend on the existence of a common ethic or alternative paradigm. A
number of national and international organisations organise around
issues pertaining to environmental degradation and in varying ways
attempt to promote greater environmental awareness. The environ-
mental movement which is the sum of these organisations and
activities is diverse and heterogeneous. An environmental movement
exists because a large number of individuals and groups attach

111
Contesting Global Governance

signi®cance to the preservation, conservation and promotion of envir-

onmental values. These organisations are based on wide public
support, recognise in most cases a commonality of interest, and form
alliances on speci®c projects.
The ESM is widely recognised to be a signi®cant transnational force
despite its diversity. It is frequently categorised as a new social
movement because it possesses three characteristics shared by new
social movements. Its origins lie in post-industrial society, it espouses
a new form of politics, one distrustful of orthodox democratic forms,
and its ideology challenges the prevailing economic paradigm. This
conclusion can be maintained but it should be subject to the following
quali®cations. First, concern with the environment pre-dates post-
industrial society and modern environmentalism arose at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century (Garner 1996; McCormick 1989). The
new wave of environmentalism ushered in by developments in the
1960s to some extent builds on the old environmentalism but also is
characterised by new features. The ®rst condition mentioned above
holds to the extent that the second wave of environmentalism trans-
cends the ®rst. Second, clearly not all groups within the environ-
mental movement espouse a new form of politics. This is evident in
the fact that Green political parties have contested elections in a
number of countries. But leading environmental NGOs do articulate a
citizenship based politics which challenges prevailing practices in
democratic societies and world politics (Wapner 1996). Third, while it
is possible to envisage accommodating environmental concerns
within the prevailing growth-oriented economic paradigm, most
environmentalists propose solutions which necessitate a paradigm
shift. The concept of sustainable development provides an excellent
illustration of the in¯uence of environmentalists on the orthodox
development paradigm. Since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit sustainable
development has become the dominant approach to development.
Opinions vary, however, concerning the merit of sustainable develop-
ment. For some it represents a paradigm shift but for others it merely
accommodates environmental language and fundamental change is
not addressed.1
In this chapter there is neither the time nor space to engage in

1 See, for example, the different approaches of the Brundtland Commission (World
Commission on Environment and Development 1987) and its critics (for a summary of
critical responses see de la Court 1990).

112
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

extended discussion of the diversity of the environmental movement.

Among the many points of difference in the environmental movement
in the context of its relationship with the World Bank and WTO three
issues merit initial mention. The ®rst concerns the distinction between
Northern and Southern environmental groups. This distinction is
based not solely on geopolitical and spatial difference but re¯ects
asymmetries in power, and different value systems. Different issues
are at stake within societies and cultures at different stages of devel-
opment. Secondly, the ability of environmental organisations to lobby
international organisations is a function of size and command over
material and ideational resources. The resources to gain access to
governmental of®cials, and international bureaucracies is unevenly
distributed among environmental organisations (Sklair 1994: 210±12;
1997: 514±38). Finally, reformist and radical environmental groups
have adopted differing strategies and access the outcome of inter-
actions from opposing standpoints.

Environmental NGOs and global environmental politics

This examination of the relationship between the World Bank, the
WTO and the environmental movement will concentrate on the
activities of environmental NGOs (ENGOs). This is not because of any
decision to privilege ENGOs above other organisations within the
environmental movement but in conducting the research the organ-
isational mode represented by NGOs provided a more accessible
departure point to the questions posed by the project. Within the new
politics of the environment NGOs have emerged as prominent and
signi®cant actors. Since the 1980s, ENGOs have grown in size, scaling
up their operations in order to in¯uence states and international
organisations. Although the vast majority of environmental groups
remain rooted in their activities and focus at the local, regional or
national levels many ENGOs have organised to take advantage of
the opportunities created through engagement with international
organisations.
The international politics of the environment with its emphasis on
scienti®c knowledge, erosion of national interest and search for global
solutions provides an entry for non-state actors into the global
political arena (Princen and Finger 1994). Environmental issues
require, `integrative, interdisciplinary, multilevel approaches ± what
those schooled in diplomatic protocol, classical European power

113
Contesting Global Governance

politics, East±West superpower confrontation or trade negotiations are

not used to' (Princen and Finger 1994: 31). It is within such a world
that NGOs ®nd their place and carve out their own niche in environ-
mental politics. The impact that NGOs can exert on global environ-
mental politics arises from the fact that they are being increasingly
recognised as independent and valuable contributors to international
negotiations. The fact that NGOs have been granted observer status
by the United Nations and other international organisations enhances
the role they play in global politics. The Rio Earth Summit provided a
startling display of the prominence of the environmental movement in
global deliberations. Over 20,000 participants from 9,000 organisations
based in 171 countries were present at the Earth Summit (Meyer
1995). According to Rowlands this demonstrated the importance of
civil society since it showed that governments alone cannot address
the environmental crisis (Rowlands 1992: 220).
The different types of NGOs sometimes collectively, often individ-
ually, address a wide range of environmental issues. Despite a variety
of NGOs and projects, NGOs derive the power that ultimately enables
them to be in¯uential actors in global environmental politics from one
of a combination of three basic sources. One key source of in¯uence
derives from the existence of an extensive network linking environ-
mental and other groups. Transnational NGO networks are important
in the development of pressure group politics at national and global
levels of decision making. Campaigns at both the local and inter-
national levels bene®t from the creation of coalitions and alliances to
pursue speci®c goals. Transnational NGOs like Friends of the Earth
(FOE) and Greenpeace serve as transmitters of information between
local and international levels of political activity through their
involvement in policy making at national, regional and international
levels. Transnational networks across geographical and institutional
boundaries are crucial in the effort to monitor and change the policies
of states and international organisations. And they also possess the
potential to mobilise people to affect domestic politics. Contacts
between Northern ENGOs and Southern ENGOs alert Northern
NGOs to issues warranting attention, and provide Southern groups
with international support. This network connects Northern groups to
a wide range of people and places including many that of®cial
agencies have dif®culty in reaching through traditional means.
A second source of in¯uence for ENGOs arises from their scienti®c
knowledge and expertise. Central to addressing nearly all environ-

114
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

mental issues is an understanding of the relevant scienti®c infor-

mation pertaining to both the present and the future. Where other
actors are unable or unwilling to conduct necessary research or
perhaps unaware that studies are necessary NGOs are ready to ®ll the
void. Where scienti®c data are available these organisations can
conduct additional independent research in order to be able to make
comparisons and check the validity of both sets of ®ndings. The
impact of knowledge structures on environmental issues is not
con®ned to scienti®c expertise. In so far as NGOs are able to focus on
the root of a problem, and can foster community solutions to common
problems thus adapting more quickly to local needs and aspirations
than governmental structures, they are likely to expand their
in¯uence.
A third lever of in¯uence arises from their relationship with the
media. NGO activists have developed an extensive network of con-
tacts within the media. The media is used to disseminate information,
and embarrass governments and international organisations. Cam-
paigns against particular projects and speci®c policies are pro®led in
print and visual media. Different organisations use the media in
different ways. The media is an outlet for the publication of research
®ndings, and it is also used to attract attention and publicise a
particular issue through reporting on high pro®le stunts or mass
rallies and protests. The media is used to reach both the informed
public and the mass public. When elites are the target the attempt is
made to provide additional/con¯icting information in order to in¯u-
ence policy formulation. Campaigns to heighten awareness or change
public perception are part of an effort to mobilise mass opinion. In
their attempts to reform the World Bank and the WTO environmental-
ists have targeted elites and the general public.

The World Bank and the environmental

movement
The World Bank's command of material and intellectual resources
places it at the forefront of the development assistance regime. In its
dialogue with social movements Bank projects and policies have both
been the subject of intense scrutiny. Since it ®rst opened its doors for
business in June 1946 the World Bank has shown a remarkable
adaptability to changes in the global political and economic environ-
ments. Initially a single institution ± the International Bank for

115
Contesting Global Governance

Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) ± the World Bank Group

now also includes the International Development Association (IDA),
International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the Multilateral Invest-
ment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). The operational policies of the Bank
and their accompanying intellectual rationale have changed over time
in response to changes in the global political economy, the develop-
ment assistance regime and changes in the internal structure of the
Bank. The relationship between the Bank and social movements is the
result of the interplay of changes in these three frameworks.

The World Bank: development assistance, organisational

structure and changing priorities
Changes in the development assistance regime mirror changes in the
global political economy, and here it is the systemic variables which
are crucial in determining change. If the 1970s mark the beginning of
an increased role for NGOs the real expansion did not take place until
the end of the 1980s. The declining role of the state in the developing
world, the consequence of economic crisis and neoliberal policies
fostered by international ®nancial institutions, and the new political
context ushered in by the downfall of the communist project provided
the systemic conditions under which NGO activity expanded. Devel-
opments in the 1980s and 1990s served to undermine the role of the
state. The move to structural adjustment lending at the beginning of
the 1980s effectively weakened the state in many developing coun-
tries. The growing power of market-related processes led to a decline
in state autonomy to control domestic and external politics. The
emergence of NGOs (and by extension other social movement organi-
sations) in the 1980s is one result of the triumph of neoliberalism.
Adjustment policies affected state±civil-society relations in three
ways. First, structural adjustment results in the shrinking of the state
especially in terms of the delivery of welfare services. Second, the
non-pro®t sector increases its provision of basic needs such as educa-
tion and health as a result of diminished state provision. Third, NGOs
expand both delivery and advocacy in response to alienation and
demand (Quadir and Shaw 1996). The collapse of communism at the
beginning of the 1990s further enhanced the visibility of NGOs and
provided an opportunity for greater collaboration between multi-
lateral development banks and NGOs. The triumph of liberal capit-
alism with the collapse of state socialism in Eastern and Central

116
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

Europe reinforced the dominance of market-oriented approaches to

development. Thus the increased interactions between the World
Bank and NGOs in the period since 1988 is in part a response to these
external developments.
But the impact of external developments is mediated through the
organisational structure of the World Bank in which the largest
lenders, and senior members of the bureaucracy play in¯uential
roles.2 Support for increased cooperation between the Bank and
NGOs came from the dominant shareholders in the Bank: the United
States, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom and France. These countries
supported increased cooperation between the Bank and NGOs,
effectively internationalising their bilateral development policy.
Furthermore, the management and staff of the Bank possess a relative
degree of autonomy and exercise an important in¯uence in the
shaping of policy (Williams 1994: 107).
The Bank's approach to social movements is conditioned by its
organisational ideology, and the relationships which exist among its
various departments and professional staff. One can discern both a
dominant organisational ideology and changing fashions in World
Bank thinking about development.3 The dominant ideology of the
Bank inscribed in its Articles of Agreement, articulated by successive
presidents, disseminated in its research output and underpinning its
lending priorities, is economic liberalism. Economic liberalism is
premised on the ef®cacy of the market. Liberal economic theory
insists that the favoured route to economic growth is through the
market mechanism. Another central tenet of liberal economic theory is
a commitment to economic growth. The application of certain uni-
versally valid economic principles will mobilise domestic resources,
savings and investment, and lead to rapid growth resulting in the
alleviation of poverty. In this perspective economics is essentially a
technocratic enterprise. Economics is a value-free science which can
provide universal solutions to the eradication of poverty. Within this
liberal paradigm the Bank's approach to the ®nancing of economic
development has not remained static and has changed during its
history.
Five periods can be distinguished in the Bank's history.4 The
2 For a detailed discussion on the decision-making structure of the Bank see chapter 2.
3 On the evolution of the Bank's approach to development see Stern with Ferreira
(1993).
4 See Stern with Ferreira (1993: 111±20) for an analysis of the ®rst four periods.

117
Contesting Global Governance

expansion in the Bank's dialogue with social movements began

during the adjustment lending and policy dialogue phase (1980±92)
and has been intensi®ed during the current phase which we term
participatory development (1993±present). Although adjustment
lending initiated at the beginning of the 1980s is still dominant in the
Bank's portfolio, since 1993 greater attention has been given to issues
such as poverty, participation, gender, environment, governance,
capacity building and implementation quality. Moreover, the Bank's
portfolio has given greater attention to ®nancing social sectors,
conservation programmes, and policy reform. For example, in the
period FY 1981 to FY 1983 the Bank's total lending for human capital
development averaged 5 per cent of lending. But by FY 1993 to FY
1995 it equalled 16 per cent. The World Bank is now the largest
external provider for social investment in the developing world.
Furthermore, its environment programme is the world's largest pro-
gramme of environmental investment, reaching $10.5 billion in 1995.
The creation of a Bank-wide Learning Group on Participatory Devel-
opment in December 1990 (World Bank 1994h: 1) marked the ®rst
institutional interest in participatory development. In August 1994 the
Bank's management adopted the recommendations proposed by the
Learning Group. The Bank's dialogue with NGOs began before the
emphasis on participatory development but has subsequently been
heavily in¯uenced by the development of participatory approaches
because a key element in the participatory paradigm is the emphasis
on stakeholders. The stakeholder concept provides a legitimacy to
`NGOs, various intermediary or representative organisations, private
sector business and technical and professional bodies' (World Bank
1994h: 2).
The Bank is not a monolithic organisation, and change in the Bank
is as much driven by internal considerations as external pressures.
Moreover, important constituencies and individuals in the organisa-
tion can slow the pace or effectively block reform. Not all sections of
the Bank have embraced the increasing contacts between civil society
associations and the Bank with the same degree of enthusiasm. The
public output of the organisation may often mask internal disagree-
ments, and policy implementation frequently is uneven across sectors
because of the absence of consensus. Moreover, the relationship
between the Bank and NGOs in any given country is heavily depend-
ent on the head of the resident mission. Some social movement
activists perceive the Bank in monolithic terms and develop their

118
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

strategy on that assumption. However, many of the social movement

representatives in Washington recognise the plural nature of the
organisation, and therefore attempt to cultivate informal linkages with
sympathetic Bank staff. In a similar vein, neither the NGO Liaison
Unit nor the Environment Department perceive the environmentalist
movement as a single entity, and formal and informal contacts with
movement representatives are based on this recognition of difference.

The World Bank and social movements: responding to change

Before examining the changing relationship between the Bank and the
environmental movement this section will brie¯y contextualise this
relationship through reference to the development of a dialogue
between the World Bank and social movements.5 The relations
between the environmental movement and the Bank are developed in
the context of the general increase in the Bank's contacts with social
movements given the reciprocal nature of these interactions.
Soon after taking of®ce James Wolfensohn, the current president of
the World Bank, embarked on a number of visits to Bank member
(borrowing and lending) countries. In his ®rst address to the Board of
Governors he set out a new vision for the Bank which included an
expanded dialogue with civil society organisations. He told the Board
of Governors that `. . . we can do much more to reach out to NGOs and
civil society' (Wolfensohn 1995: 19). This was based on his travel
experiences where he `. . . met with representatives of the NGO
community and civil society. We are really interdependent. But we
must build mutual trust' (Wolfensohn 1995: 20). And he pledged to
`. . . accelerate and deepen the effort to work with existing and new
partners ± with speci®c measures for reaching out to the private
sector, NGOs and civil society' (Wolfensohn 1995: 22).
This was not the ®rst time a Bank president had acknowledged the
signi®cance of non-state actors for the Bank's agenda.6 The explicit
reference to civil society signalled, to some extent, new thinking but it
is not at all clear that Wolfensohn's speech marked a fundamental

5 For a more detailed examination of the evolution of Bank policy towards NGOs see
chapter 2.
6 Barber Conable had signalled the relevance of NGOs in his address to the Bank's
Board of Governors in Berlin in 1988 He stated, `I have encouraged Bank staff to
initiate a broadened dialogue with NGOs . . . I hope and fully expect that this
collaboration will ¯ourish.' Quoted in Salmen and Eaves (1989: 2; 1991: 94).

119
Contesting Global Governance

shift in Bank priorities. Part of the problem in assessing the relevance

of Wolfensohn's intervention is that although one can ®nd references
in recent Bank literature to stakeholders and civil society, no clear
de®nition of either term emerges. The Bank's recognition of diverse
groups in civil society in practical terms amounts to the development
of policies towards NGOs.7 Thus in examining the evolution of the
Bank's policy towards social movements this chapter will concentrate
on the relations between the Bank and NGOs.8
In the past two decades the World Bank's contact with social move-
ment organisations has expanded considerably. Three reasons can be
adduced for this shift: the increasing importance given to NGOs
within the development assistance regime (Gordenker and Weiss
1996); the change in development policy and the increased salience of
participatory approaches; and the stridency of NGOs. From the
perspective of the World Bank, NGOs are de®ned as, `groups and
institutions that are entirely or largely independent of government and
characterised primarily by humanitarian and cooperative rather than
commercial activities' (World Bank 1989). Speci®cally, NGOs refer to
private organisations that pursue activities to relieve suffering,
promote the interests of the poor, protect the environment or under-
take community development. A number of attempts have been made,
over time, to develop a typology of NGOs. One Bank document
(Salmen and Eaves 1989: 17±25) identi®ed ®ve functional categories of
NGO along a public±private continuum approximating the degree to
which they represent social (common goal) ends on the public side to
economic ends on the private side. Recent thinking in the World Bank
has seen a shift away from this ®vefold distinction to a simpler
distinction between operational NGOs and advocacy NGOs. Opera-
tional NGOs are de®ned as those `whose primary purpose is running
or funding programs designed to contribute to development, environ-
mental management, welfare or emergency relief' (World Bank 1996d:
1). In contrast advocacy NGOs are de®ned as those whose primary
purpose is advocating a speci®c point of view or concern and which
seek to in¯uence the policies and priorities of the Bank, governments
and other bodies' (World Bank 1996d: 2). This de®nition is not one
accepted by many NGO activists who see it as inaccurate and divisive.
7 For a history and summary of the various linkages which have been developed see
Shihata (1992) and World Bank (1996c).
8 The Bank produces materials designed to facilitate its contact with NGOs. See, for
example, Malena (1996).

120
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

The Bank interacts with NGOs in a variety of ways.9 The linkages

between the Bank and NGOs cover a wide spectrum of the organisa-
tion's activity.10 The Bank analyses these interactions according to a
threefold categorisation: operational collaboration (Malena 1995),
economic and sector work (World Bank 1996c: 14±16), and policy
dialogue (World Bank 1996c: 16±19). The World Bank portrays its
increasing involvement with NGOs as a cooperative venture with the
capacity to improve the ef®ciency of the Bank's role as a development
agency. NGOs, it is argued, possess a comparative advantage in the
delivery of development services, especially to the poor. In the context
of an expanding development agenda which now includes `new
issues' such as gender, participation, governance and capacity
building NGOs have a tremendous potential for enhancing the
pursuit of the Bank's goals (World Bank 1996d: 2).
By interacting consistently with NGOs the Bank can tap into NGO
know-how and expertise. Operational collaboration between the Bank
and NGOs assists the Bank in its pursuit of environmentally sustain-
able development. At the same time the Bank perceives this as an
opportunity to broaden NGOs' awareness of its development work.
Secondly, the Bank recognises the important political role played by
NGOs in determining the climate for aid (World Bank 1996d: 3). It is
not so much that the Bank actively courts NGO involvement but it
recognises the effectiveness of NGOs in lobbying donor governments.
The Bank's ability to mobilise resources for development is thus to
some extent dependent on the activities of NGOs. Bank rhetoric on
NGOs stresses collaboration, mutual bene®t and enhanced effective-
ness. From the perspective of social movement activists the reality is
often one of confrontation, con¯ict and co-option. To some extent it
can be argued that what the Bank seeks is not so much partnership as
a form of co-optation. Moreover, substantive collaboration between
the Bank and NGOs helps to enhance the Bank's reputation. It is
generally recognised that the environmental movement has achieved
the greatest success of all groups lobbying the Bank. The next section
examines the changing history of the Bank's relations with the
environmental movement.

9 The Bank has conducted a number of studies to assess the impact of its collaboration
with NGOs. See, for example, Bhatnagar (1991) and Hino (1996).
10 See the annual reports (®rst issued in 1983) on relations between the Bank and NGOs.

121
Contesting Global Governance

The World Bank and the environmentalists: from

confrontation to cooperation?
Among environmental groups with a focus on the lending policies of
the World Bank a division is discernible between those groups which
seek partnership with the Bank and those which perceive such links
as dangerous.11 No single environmentalist perspective exists on the
Bank, which re¯ects the diversity of the environmental movement.
Furthermore, the relationship between the Bank and representatives
of the environmental movement is subject to change over time. From
the perspective of environmentalists, perception of the Bank is shaped
by the evaluation of its responses to the environmentalist critique
of its policies. Some NGOs have had a long-standing adversarial
relationship with the Bank; others have moved from a position of
confrontation to cooperation; and others largely involved in opera-
tional activities have only ever enjoyed a close working relationship
with the Bank. The response of the Bank to the environmentalist
challenge has been shaped by the ability of environmentalists to
prevent the Bank from attaining its goals, and internal divisions
within the organisation concerning the `greening' of its portfolio.
The World Bank is currently the largest lender for environmental
projects in the developing world, a co-agency for the Global Environ-
mental Facility, and environmental considerations notably in the form
of environmental assessments (EAs) have become integrated within
its development portfolio. But although the World Bank was the ®rst
of the multilateral development banks to express an interest in the
environmental consequences of development the foregrounding of an
environmental perspective in Bank lending was the result of a struggle
between the Bank and its environmental critics. Indeed, many would
contend that the Bank's environmental agenda remains largely rheto-
rical. This chapter argues that the record is neither one of tokenism on
the part of the Bank nor a complete victory for the environmental
movement but rather a mixed result. There is little doubt that the
environmentalists have recorded real gains in the sense that many of
their demands have been addressed by the Bank in a positive manner
but the organisational ideology of the Bank, and its organisational
culture limit its transformation into a Green organisation.
Environmental and development NGOs began to target the policies

11 Interviews, Washington, September 1996.

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 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

of the World Bank in the 1970s. Environmentalists were drawn to the

Bank because of its pre-eminence in the development assistance
regime, and the disastrous environmental consequences of Bank
lending. The Bank's traditional development paradigm was blind to
the impact of its policies on the environment. Although the ®rst
mention of environmental considerations was made by the then
president of the Bank Robert McNamara in a speech to ECOSOC in
November 1970 (Williams 1994: 130), environmental considerations
were not given serious attention in the organisation until 1987. The
Bank, until that juncture, appeared unwilling to address the ecological
impacts of its lending policies. The pursuit of economic growth at the
expense of the environment symbolised an institution con®dent of its
intellectual rationale, policy mandate, and project implementation.
Traditional Bank lending often had serious environmental conse-
quences such as acceleration of deforestation and destruction of
natural resources and biodiversity. Bank of®cials were not accountable
to the affected populations and neither were they concerned for the
environment. The key goals were the promotion of economic develop-
ment conceived almost solely to mean an increase in GNP, and the
maximisation of the rate of return on the loan.

Integrating environmental concerns

In May 1987, Barber Conable, then Bank president, acknowledged
serious errors in the organisation's environmental policy. He admitted
that the controversial Polonoreste project in Brazil, was `a sobering
example of an environmentally sound effort that went wrong' (World
Bank 1991: 22). Furthermore, he announced organisational reforms
including the creation of an Environment Department. Since 1987 the
Bank has expanded its focus on environmentally sustainable develop-
ment and has striven to incorporate environmental concerns into
policy making. The integration of environmental concerns in the Bank
can be assessed along three dimensions: internal organisational
restructuring, changing intellectual rationale and new-style lending
policies.
One measure of the importance attached to environmental consid-
erations in the Bank's activities concerns the visibility of environ-
mental economists and other professionals on the Bank's staff. The
creation of an Environment Department in 1987 raised the pro®le of
environmental issues in the Bank. Between 1970 (when the post of

123
Contesting Global Governance

Environmental Advisor was created) and 1987 environmental issues

were relegated to the Of®ce of Environmental and Scienti®c Affairs,
an inadequately staffed section which focused primarily on assessing
projects' environmental impact. The creation of the Environment
Department brought environmental issues into a more central role in
the Bank. The department's role is to conduct policy and research in
technical, economic and social areas, to provide conceptual guidance
or specialised expertise for staff in regional of®ces, to establish and
maintain information and databases and to train and educate Bank
staff on environmental issues. Environmental units were created in
each of the Bank's regional units to review Bank-supported projects
and liaise with national of®cials in identifying more general tasks
related to resource management. These activities have led to an
expansion in environmental staff. Between 1988 and 1991 the regional
environment divisions experienced a fourfold increase in staff (Pid-
dington 1992: 219), and between the end of the 1980s and 1994 the
number of technical environmental staff increased ®vefold (World
Bank 1995a: 2). In another internal restructuring the Bank established
a vice-presidency for Environmentally Sustainable Development in
January 1993 (ESDVP).
The application of environmental economics to development issues
gathered momentum with the creation of the Environment Depart-
ment. But, in its attempt to establish `maximum convergence between
environmental goals and economic policy' (Piddington 1992: 221) the
Bank's approach is determined by its organisational ideology. Sustain-
able development strategies do not challenge the dominant goal of
economic growth. Indeed, economic development viewed primarily
as growth oriented is seen as a vital component of a sound environ-
mental strategy. In this context it is argued that a symbiotic relation-
ship exists between development and environmental protection. Far
from being oppositional development and environmental protection,
it is argued, are compatible. This view is succinctly expressed in the
Bank's 1992 World Development Report, where it is asserted, `economic
development and sound environmental management are complemen-
tary aspects of the same agenda. Without adequate environmental
protection development will be undermined; without development
environmental protection will fail' (World Bank 1992: 25). Sustainable
development is therefore both a desirable goal and feasible outcome.
Sound environmental protection will only be guaranteed through
greater ef®ciency in the use of resources and technological innovation.

124
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

In short, `rising incomes combined with sound environmental policies

and institutions can form the basis for tackling both environmental
and development problems. The key to growing sustainably is not to
produce less but to produce differently' (World Bank 1992: 36).
Since 1993 ESDVP has attempted to expand the conceptual focus of
the Bank's approach to environmentally sustainable development.
The new approach to environmentally sustainable development is
fundamentally concerned with the promotion of three types of goal:
economic goals (growth, equity and ef®ciency); social goals (empow-
erment, participation, social mobility, social cohesion, cultural identity,
and institutional development); and ecological goals (ecosystem integ-
rity, carrying capacity, biodiversity and global issues) (Serageldin
1996: 2). This approach moves beyond the framework of environ-
mental economics to embrace the concerns of ecologists and sociolo-
gists. Central to this project is concern with mapping the conceptual
terrain in four key areas. The question of valuation is given promi-
nence with an emphasis on different techniques of valuing the
environment, analysis of the manner in which sustainability can be
built into national accounts and development of indicators to value
the future. Another unresolved issue concerns decision making in the
presence of thresholds of uncertainty. Research in this area is con-
cerned with operationalising the precautionary principle and pro-
viding the tools to make more informed choices under conditions of
uncertainty. The third aspect of this research agenda concerns analysis
of the linkages between environmental degradation and macroeco-
nomic policies. Research is being conducted on ways to enhance
institutional capacity, and the ordering of priorities. Finally, in
keeping with the current paradigm of participatory development,
analysis is underway to improve understanding of the human dimen-
sion of development (Serageldin and Steers 1996).
The third way in which the Bank has adapted to the environmental
challenge is through its lending policies. This involves a number of
related initiatives. First, the Bank has increased substantially its
lending for projects with primarily environmental objectives. In 1995
the organisation's portfolio of environmental projects stood at $10
billion (World Bank 1995a: 23). This covered 137 projects, and repre-
sented a 10 per cent increase since UNCED. Secondly, the Bank has
sought to enhance the environment in the process of promoting
ef®ciency through `an increasing integration of environmental con-
cerns and components in operations with a variety of other primary

125
Contesting Global Governance

objectives' (World Bank 1995a: 23). Examples of this integrated envir-

onmental approach include efforts to improve energy ef®ciency, and
initiatives to improve the sustainability of agricultural production. A
systematic environmental screening of all new projects was intro-
duced in 1989. The Bank claims that `environmental assessments
(EAs) are now ®rmly rooted as part of the Bank's normal business
activity, . . . and are now effecting changes in project design as a matter
of course . . .' (World Bank 1995a: 13). Additionally the Bank has
developed sector-speci®c policies relating to water resource manage-
ment, energy and forests.
Bank publications on environmentally sustainable development
portray a dynamic and adaptable organisation which has successfully
incorporated environmental concerns into its lending activities, policy
advice and research activities. The environment it is argued has
moved from the margins to the centre of Bank concerns.12 This can be
seen as a three stage process. Initially the Bank's aim was to mitigate
the unintended consequences of its project lending. Once the mechan-
isms (e.g., EAs) were in place to achieve this objective the Bank moved
to expand its environmental capacity through investing in environ-
mental projects, supporting environmental planning and building the
knowledge base. The current focus is on implementation on the
ground, scaling-up from project-speci®c concerns to environmental
management at sectoral and national levels and increasing the atten-
tion given to establishing appropriate relationships with individuals
and organisations in recipient communities.
This record of the evolution of the Bank's environmental policy
suggests that the reform process was internally driven. It can be
perceived as the successful response of Bank management and
member states to a problem in the organisation's task environment.
Such a conclusion would be both premature and unwarranted since it
fails to assess external pressure on the Bank. It is widely acknowl-
edged that environmental NGOs played a pivotal role in the reform
process in the Bank. And it is to the role of environmental NGOs in
this process that we now turn. Moreover, consideration of the Bank±
ENGO interactions will introduce a critical perspective on the Bank's
environmental record.

12 This is inclusive of its private sector activities (World Bank 1995a: part 3).

126
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

Environmental NGOs and the reform of the World Bank

The ®rst part of this section will examine the efforts in the 1980s by
environmental NGOs to elicit a change in the World Bank's lending
policies. It is widely believed in the environmental community that
the Bank only became `Green' as a result of pressure from NGOs.
Without NGO pressure, the Bank would never have incorporated
environmental considerations into its projects. The evolution of Bank±
ENGO relations since the creation of the Environment Department
will be discussed in the second part of the section.
The early history of the campaign against the Bank has been told on
numerous occasions and will not be replicated in great detail. The
standard account of the success of the environmental movement in
shifting the Bank's agenda focuses on the role played by NGOs in
shaping US policy towards the Bank (Bramble and Porter 1992). The
campaign launched in 1983 by a coalition of US environmental
organisations (key actors included the National Wildlife Federation,
the Environmental Policy Institute and the National Resources
Defense Council) against the environmental policies of the multilateral
development banks reaped its ®rst success with the creation of the
Environment Department in 1987. It is widely acknowledged that
environmental NGOs have been the most successful members of the
NGO community, and are seen as the model to be followed by other
NGOs. The coalition's decision to target the US Congress was eventu-
ally successful for a number of reasons. The intensi®cation of the
NGO campaign, and the widening of the movement from its largely
US base to encompass NGOs from the developing world and other
industrialised countries were crucial factors in persuading more
members of Congress to support the demands of the environmental-
ists. The US NGOs were assisted in their campaign by Southern
peoples and organisations. A number of civil society associations in
the developing world in regions directly affected by Bank projects
with adverse environmental consequences provided ®rsthand infor-
mation about the local situation (Bramble and Porter 1992: 332±4). But
Congressional pressure supplemented by sympathetic media cov-
erage was not suf®cient in itself to alter the policies of the Bank. The
support of the US Treasury and the replacement of Tom Clausen by
Barber Conable as Bank president were key changes in 1986 and 1987.
The US Treasury moved from a position of indifference to one of
support for reform of the Bank because it needed Congressional

127
Contesting Global Governance

approval to expand the Bank's capital base to enable it to increase its

role in the debt crisis. And Conable, the new Bank president, not only
brought a personal commitment to reform the Bank's approach to its
lending (Piddington 1992: 215±16, 219); he also recognised the poli-
tical importance of the environment issue (Wade 1997: 21±3).
But the `success' of the environmental movement in 1987, and
continued pressure on the Bank, is not solely attributable to the role
played by actors in the US political process. Moreover, it is important
to note that the alliance between US environmentalists and Republican
Congressmen was a temporary rather than permanent feature of the
American political system. US environmental NGOs continue to lobby
their Congressional representatives but the `power of the parlia-
mentary purse' so successful with the US Congress in the late 1980s
and early 1990s became less relevant in the mid-1990s. Changing
Congressional representation and declining American voting power
led activists to shift attention post-1994 to Germany and Japan.13 The
relative weakness of German and Japanese NGOs combined with
different political cultures has made this approach less successful.
Instead the Washington-based ENGOs began a more intensive lob-
bying of the Executive Directors from Germany and Japan.14
We can identify a number of strategies employed by the environ-
mental movement which in conjunction with systemic factors help to
shape the ability of environmental groups to in¯uence Bank policy.
First, environmental groups mobilised public opinion through cam-
paigns against speci®c projects. This tactic was especially successful
with World Bank lending for the construction of dams. The Big Dam
controversies, e.g., Three Gorges in China and Narmada in India,
provided not only powerful evidence of the Bank's failure to pursue
environmentally sustainable policies but concrete issues around
which campaigns could be built. Apart from the Big Dam controver-
sies other notorious failures which were highlighted by environmental
critics of Bank policies included the Polonoreste rainforest colonisa-
tion scheme in Brazil, a cattle development project in Botswana which
accelerated deserti®cation, and a transmigration scheme in Indonesia
± a scheme involving massive human resettlement. Second, over the
past decade a framework of consultations have developed between

13 Interviews. September 1995.

14 Recently Japanese NGOs have taken a greater interest in the activities of the Bank and
have begun to lobby their representatives.

128
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

certain NGO personnel and Bank staff. NGO activists have sought
allies inside the organisation. Recognising the existence of bureau-
cratic divisions in the organisation advocacy environmental NGOs
with a sophisticated view of organisational politics have forged
contacts with sympathetic Bank staff (key groups include the Environ-
mental Defense Fund, the Center for International Environmental
Law, FOE, and Oxfam International). Ongoing formal and informal
contacts between Bank staff and NGO professionals has created a
policy community which effectively marginalises outsiders. These
contacts range from junior staff right up to management level and are
not con®ned to the Environment Department although the Environ-
ment Department has established good working relations with many
of the Washington-based NGOs. These contacts provide ENGOs with
access to information and also enable them to articulate their views to
an of®cial audience. The dominance of ENGOs based in Washington
in this process raises questions of equity within the environmental
movement since these contacts are limited to Washington insiders,
thus effectively marginalising those groups without representation in
Washington.15 In the dialogue with the Bank the NGO community has
discovered the importance of maintaining continuity of personnel on
speci®c issues. Contact is often of a personal nature and invitations to
meetings are frequently issued to individuals rather than to organisa-
tions. The effectiveness of an NGO in lobbying the Bank is as much a
function of the personal contacts of particular staff members as of the
general standing of the organisation. In the past decade environmental
and development NGOs (apart from those already named, key actors
include Bread for the World, the Centre of Concern, the Bank
Information Centre, and Development GAP) have maintained
pressure on the Bank through the network of contacts developed
between Bank staff and movement activists.
Third, high level research disseminated to the public, legislators
and the Bank in an attempt to create epistemic communities has been
instrumental in shifting perceptions. Bank staff are unwilling to waste
their time discussing environmental issues with critics they consider
ignorant and uninformed.16 Many Bank staff remain sceptical of the
analytical frameworks employed by environmentalists and effective
15 In September 1995 there were no Southern ENGOs permanently based in Wash-
ington.
16 See, for example, the acerbic criticisms of the environmental critique of the Bank
made by Piddington (1992: 217±18).

129
Contesting Global Governance

dialogue proves possible only where a mutual respect for the con-
ceptual tools and intellectual rigour of the argument is shared by the
protagonists. The dialogue between the Bank and its critics rapidly
moved from the level of general considerations to the analysis of
speci®c proposals. The `greening' of the Bank is based on high-level
research and analysis, and the ability of an NGO to in¯uence the Bank
depends on the calibre of its staff and quality of its research. Fourth,
NGOs utilise national and international alliances in their campaigns
to reform the Bank (Wirth 1998). As we saw above it is simplistic to
attribute the success of US NGOs solely to their own efforts. US NGOs
acting alone are limited in their ability to in¯uence the Bank. The
NGO community based in Washington consists of international NGOs
such as Greenpeace and FOE as well as US-based environmental
organisations. In this context networks refer to linkages between
different national associations of an umbrella ENGO as well as
coalitions of national groups unaf®liated to a single organisation
(Nelson 1996). Environmentalist activists argue that it is essential to
have links with international NGOs.17 Thus efforts are made to create
networks linking Northern NGOs, and Northern and Southern part-
ners. Within the advocacy process Northern groups maintain a
dominant position. One source alleged that it is dif®cult to maintain
the autonomy of local Southern groups. If the Washington-based
partner is not interested then Southern issues are not taken up.18
The standard account highlights the success of environmental
NGOs in mobilising an effective, credible threat to the Bank's funding.
The media campaign and political support of conservative Con-
gressmen for Bank reform took place at a time when the Bank was
particularly sensitive to public campaigns. At the beginning of the
1990s the Bank was worried about the level of its funding in an era
when the public was jaded with aid and development. The failure of
aid and development and the post-Cold War dynamics created doubt
concerning the continued relevance of the Bank. Critiques which
provided compelling evidence of the failures of Bank policy (Rich
1994; Schartzman 1986) found a willing readership. Environmental
groups in Washington were able to establish close links with legisla-
tors committed to a reduction in US support to multilateral institu-
tions. Prestige and image consciousness are undervalued in

17 Interviews.
18 Interview with a Northern NGO September 1995.

130
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

international-relations research, particularly in an era when the focus

is on structural causation, but governments and international organi-
sations do evince concern about their image.19 Senior management in
the Bank were worried about its negative image and the unfavourable
publicity generated by the campaigns mounted by the environmental
lobby irrespective of its impact on funding. The Bank's relations with
its borrowing governments, and its activities in recipient countries,
depend, to some extent, on the views held of the organisation. And in
that respect, support for reform of the institution was also internally
driven; core members of the Bank (apart from the USA) were
committed to change.
There is little doubt that the Bank responded to the pressure exerted
by the environmental movement. No agreement, however, exists on
the extent to which the Bank has become a Green institution. The
of®cial Bank version (World Bank 1995a) presents a picture of an
organisation committed to environmentally sustainable development
in which environmental considerations have been incorporated into
the mainstream of its operations. Critics from academia (Wade 1997)
and the environmental community (Horta 1996; Rich 1995) remain
unconvinced about the scope and depth of the reforms. Whether
convert or agnostic something has changed and at the very least the
Bank has been forced to address an issue that it had long ignored. But
as one activist put it, `the Bank only pretends to be Green. It is
basically a free market institution which cannot be Green.'20 In
support of the argument that it is not possible to reconcile capitalism
and sustainable development my interviewee pointed to the fact that
the IFC and MIGA are the fastest growing sections of the Bank. An
inherent contradiction existed, it was claimed, between the effort to
promote the growth of private capital and support environmental
sustainability.
This view is not uncommon among environmentalists. Environment
(and development) groups remain unconvinced by the rhetoric of the
Bank. Few share the views of one movement activist who asserts that
environment is no longer a key issue since the environmentalists have
won.21 To be fair, this Washington insider was referring not only to the

19 The efforts of the `Fifty Years is Enough' campaign proved more than an irritant to
Bank of®cials who devised strategies to counter what they perceived as ill-informed
publicity.
20 Interview, 10 September 1996.
21 Interview, 9 September 1996.

131
Contesting Global Governance

stated achievements of the environmentally sustainable policies

pursued by the Bank but to the informal network between many
working on environmental issues in the Bank and members of the
environmental movement. The climate of hostility, suspicion and
distrust evident in the early years of the exchange has been replaced
by one of cooperation. But, the Environment Department is not the
entire Bank, and for many the problems arise from the loan culture of
the Bank, and its organisational structure (Wappenhans 1992).
The aims of the ESM can be seen in terms of four broad demands
(Horta 1996). The environmental critique of the World Bank focuses
on issues pertaining to human rights, democracy, accountability,
gender, ideology and power. First, environmentalists demand in-
creased transparency and participation in the operation of the institu-
tion. Increased transparency and extended participation will, it is
argued, improve the quality of projects by making them environmen-
tally sound and socially bene®cial. Representatives of the environ-
mental movement argue that in order to meet these aims the active
participation of local communities and their local or regional govern-
mental structures must be ensured. Environmental groups have
achieved some success in eroding the Bank's tradition of secrecy and
withholding of information concerning its projects from the public.
The new information disclosure policy which became effective in
January 1994 is evidence of the Bank's response to its critics. The Bank
decided to declassify a number of documents, and established a
public information centre in Washington with further of®ces planned
in Tokyo, Paris and London. Environmentalists argue that the declas-
si®cation procedure, although welcome, is too limited (Udall 1998).
The second demand is for social assessment and participation. Civil
society representatives campaigned for increased participation of
stakeholders in social assessments carried out by the Bank. A key area
covered by this demand is the World Bank's dialogue on sustainable
development. In September 1994 the World Bank approved a Partici-
pation Action Plan based on social assessment guidelines, but few
concrete results have to date been forthcoming. In the absence of an
internal incentive structure it is likely that the implementation of
participatory approaches will be inconsistent at best and non-existent
for the most part. Third, the ESM has insisted that the Bank's lending
to the environment should be increased. Although the Bank has
responded to this in both the brown agenda (projects designed to
address pollution in urban areas) and green agenda (projects

132
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

concerned with natural resource management in mostly rural areas)

many environmental groups argue that the focus of Bank lending
remains that of mitigating the impact of economic growth on the
environment rather than one of promoting sustainability. The focus of
Bank lending for the environment tends to be on forestry, ®sheries
and agriculture. In 1995 the Bank supported more than 100 environ-
mental projects representing a commitment of $5 billion and a total
investment of more than $13 billion. The green agenda has formed the
central part of the Bank's efforts with issues grouped in this portfolio
representing $3.2 billion of the $5 billion commitment. Environmental
groups have also campaigned for more widespread use of environ-
mental assessments. Environmental assessments (EAs) are valuable
tools for understanding the environmental consequences of proposed
new development projects. Since 1989 EAs have become a formal
requirement for all World Bank projects that are expected to have
signi®cant adverse environmental impacts. However EAs suffer from a
number of shortcomings. They are frequently used to legitimise pre-
viously established project concepts and, the lack of follow-through,
absence of controls and frequent use of foreign consultants serves to
diminish the impact of EAs. The appearance suggests tremendous
change but the reality of implementation suggests otherwise.
Finally, environmental NGOs have expressed reservations con-
cerning the accountability of the Bank. A major response by the Bank
was the creation of an Inspection Panel in September 1994.22 Com-
munity organisations or NGOs representing citizens harmed by
World Bank projects can request a full-scale investigation of the
situation if there are indications that the Bank is ignoring or violating
its own policies and procedures. The ®rst case investigated by the
Inspection Panel was the Arun III hydro-electric dam project in Nepal.
The investigation began in November 1994 and a report published in
December 1994 called for further investigation. When James Wolfen-
sohn cancelled the project in August 1995 he cited the investigations
of the Inspection Panel as one of the reasons for his decision.
The story of the World Bank and the environmental movement is
one of increasing linkages between the Bank and environmental
NGOs, and the appearance that NGO pressure was successful in
changing Bank policies and priorities. A note of caution should be
entered on both counts. First, while it would be rather narrow and

22 For an NGO critique of the Inspection Panel see Hunter and Udall (1994).

133
Contesting Global Governance

short-sighted to conclude that no change has occurred a quantitative

increase tells us very little about the quality of the interactions. On the
other hand, the very fact that the Bank has felt the need to address
and respond to the demands of this new constituency is a sign of a
change in the operation of the organisation. Moreover, increasing
integration of environmental NGOs into the Bank's work shifts the
relations between the international organisation, governments and
civil society. Second, it is very dif®cult to measure in¯uence. It is not
clear to what extent the Bank's approach to the environment after its
initial reluctance, and especially in its post-Rio phase, is not heavily
in¯uenced by a desire to engage in task expansion. At Rio it became
clear that sustainable development had moved from the rhetorical
phase to that of implementation. As the leading multilateral develop-
ment organisation the Bank was unwilling to be by-passed in this new
phase. To that end the Bank successfully campaigned to become an
implementing agency in the Global Environmental Facility (GEF).
In terms of access to the World Bank a clear difference in resources
exists between Northern (especially US) based NGOs and their
Southern counterparts. Much of the policy dialogue between the Bank
and NGOs is conducted informally (for example, the Tuesday Group
meetings) and Southern NGOs are therefore excluded from this
process. Representation from the developing world is greater in
respect of the more formal channels such as the World Bank±NGO
Committee and consultations such as those on forest, water and
energy. Participation of Southern NGOs is constrained through lack of
®nance, and in recognition the World Bank ®nances the visits of
Southern delegates to these meetings.

The World Trade Organization and the

environmental movement
The Uruguay Round of trade negotiations (1986±94) rede®ned the
contours of the world trading system, and in so doing transformed
the institutional setting of world trade. The conclusion of the multi-
lateral trade negotiations resulted in the creation of a new organisa-
tion, the WTO, and new rules for world trade. The decision to create a
new organisation to oversee world trade rules re¯ected the dissatis-
faction of leading trading states concerning the GATT's inability to
provide a suf®ciently robust foundation for the global system of
world trade. As the successor to the GATT the WTO provides the

134
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

legal and institutional foundation of the global trading system. The

WTO has from its inception been subject to contestation. Opponents
of liberal trade challenge the current rules created by the WTO, and
fear its liberalising mission. But even among those who accept the
tenets of a liberal trade regime dispute arises concerning the develop-
ment and interpretation of legal standards. The role of the WTO in
developing and maintaining international trade law and the world
trade system is shaped by changes in the global political economy, the
trade regime and the nature of the WTO as an international organisa-
tion. The relationship between the WTO and the environmental move-
ment is the result of the interplay of changes in these three
frameworks.

The WTO and the international trading system

Since the end of the Second World War the multilateral trading system
has been based on four key principles: non-discrimination, reciprocity,
transparency and multilateral cooperation. From 1947 until the end of
1994 the GATT was the institutional expression of this rule based
system. The Uruguay Round of trade negotiations which led to the
creation of the WTO transformed the management of world trade in
three respects. First, it engineered a shift from trade liberalisation
based on tariff concessions (shallow or negative integration) to discus-
sions of domestic policies, institutional practices and regulations
(deep or positive integration). Second, it constructed a new agenda
expanding the scope (through the inclusion of services, trade-related
intellectual property rights, foreign investment, competition policy,
and domestic (non-trade) policies) and changing the character of
negotiations from a focus on bargaining over products to negotiations
over policies that shape the conditions of competition. A third
innovation was a movement towards policy harmonisation, for
example, in the areas of subsidies, trade related investment measures
and services. This transformation of the institutional basis of the
world trading system from the negative integration practised under
GATT to the positive integration envisaged in the WTO is illustrative
of the impact of globalisation on world trade. Globalisation has been
accompanied by a growing discourse of multilateralism. The end of
the Cold War and increasing liberalisation in national economies gave
rise to hopes that the embedded liberalism of the post-war period
could ®nally emerge into a fully ¯edged liberal order. Trade liberal-

135
Contesting Global Governance

isation under GATT consisted essentially of tariff cutting exercises. In

this sense it can be seen as a negative process of restricting barriers to
trade. In this process dispute settlement procedures were weak, and
the power of the organisation to discipline errant members severely
limited. The WTO not only extends the mandate of the GATT into
new areas but also rede®nes the relationship between national govern-
ments and the world trading system through the creation of an
effective dispute settlement mechanism, the provision of a trade
policy review mechanism (TPRM) and the development of a set of
mandatory codes. One measure of the increased competence of the
WTO compared with the GATT is re¯ected in the fact that the
organisation's Dispute Settlement Body has received more complaints
in its ®rst three years of operation than the GATT did in almost half a
century. Moreover, the TPRM which subjects the policies of member
governments to periodic surveillance has provided effective scrutiny
of deviations from the goal of trade liberalisation. The WTO thus
provides a higher and sharper pro®le for trade issues, and as such
attracts the attention of a range of actors. Compared with the GATT,
the increased scope, permanence and rule-making authority of the
WTO has alarmed environmentalists and other civil society actors
who fear that the organisation and control of vital national decisions
have been gradually and irretrievably displaced from national control
to a supranational organisation shrouded in secrecy. In this vein
Bellmann and Gerster (from the Swiss Coalition of Development
Organisations) have claimed that, `The multilateral system . . . is
gaining ground at the expense of national policy-making' (Bellmann
and Gerster 1996: 31). The extension of the WTO beyond trade in
goods into intellectual property protection, surveillance over invest-
ment issues and the strengthening of the dispute settlement pro-
cedures provides a sharper organisational foundation for the world
trade system.23
The WTO is a complex organisation with a comprehensive scope. It
is, ®rst, a legal entity which provides a framework of rules, norms and
principles to govern the multilateral trading system. In other words, it
is the legal and institutional foundation of the world trading system.
It consists of key mandatory provisions, namely, the agreement estab-
lishing the WTO; GATT 1994 and other multilateral trade agreements

23 For a discussion of the distinction between blunt and sharp as applied to international
organisations see Ogley (1969).

136
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

for goods including Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS); the

agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT); the agreement on
Trade Related Investment Measures (TRIMs); the General Agreement
on Trade in Services (GATS); the agreement on Trade Related Intel-
lectual Property measures (TRIPs); the Understanding on Rules and
Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes; and the Trade
Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM). These are supplemented by non-
mandatory provisions contained in the plurilateral agreements
governing civil aircraft and government procurement.24 The WTO is a
rule-making and rule-supervisory organisation. As a rule-making
organisation its main goal is to increase and enhance global policy
making. Trade liberalisation is increasingly subjecting domestic policy
and regulations to the standards de®ned by the global trade regime.
The WTO's permanent machinery is concerned with ensuring compli-
ance with the rules. Supervision in the WTO covers implementation of
agreements, dispute resolution, amendments to the rules and waivers.
Secondly, the WTO provides a permanent forum for the discussion
of trade policy, increases direct ministerial involvement in trade
issues, and consequently pushes trade concerns higher up the political
agenda. Multilateral trade agreements specify the principal contrac-
tual obligations determining trade negotiations and trade legislation,
and the TPRM facilitates the evolution of trade relations and trade
policy.
Thirdly, it acts as a centre for the settlement of disputes. The WTO
dispute settlement procedures provide the machinery for settling
members' differences on their rights and obligations. Unlike the
GATT the ®ndings of panels of experts are binding unless rejected by
the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB). Panel reports are adopted in the
DSB unless there is a consensus to reject the report (Petersmann 1997).
The highest decision-making body is the Ministerial Conference
which meets every two years at ministerial level. To date two such
meetings have been held (Singapore 1996, Geneva 1998), with a third
planned for late 1999 in the United States. In the interval between
Ministerial Conferences the work of the organisation is entrusted to a
General Council which also acts as the dispute settlement body and
the trade policies review body, together with a number of committees.

24 At the conclusion of the Uruguay Round two further plurilateral agreements ± on

meat and dairy products ± were annexed to the WTO agreement but were terminated
at the end of 1997.

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Contesting Global Governance

The WTO and social movements: in defence of the status quo?

The WTO has been in existence since 1 January 1995. Its institutional
structure is different from the GATT but in many respects develop-
ments in the organisation must be viewed in the light of the history of
the GATT. The GATT in its forty-seven-year history failed to establish
any formal linkages with NGOs or other civil society organisations.
This erasure of NGOs from the governance of the world trading
system was not envisaged by the architects of the post-war inter-
national economic order. In the context of the post-war reform of the
international trading system Article 87(2) of the Havana Charter
establishing the International Trade Organisation (ITO) made pro-
vision for consultations with NGOs. But the institutional vacuum
created by the failure to ratify the ITO was ®lled by the GATT which
evolved into an intergovernmental organisation (Charnovitz and
Wickham 1995). Within the world trading system as it evolved in the
post-war period the culture of secrecy in multilateral trade negotia-
tions effectively relegated NGOs and other social movement organisa-
tions to outsider status.
The WTO is slowly beginning to give greater attention to contact
with social movement representatives. The constitutional basis for the
engagement with representatives of social movements is provided in
the agreement establishing the World Trade Organization. The
General Council of the WTO is empowered by Article v.2 to institute
review relations between the organisation and NGOs. This article
states `The General Council may make appropriate arrangements for
consultation and co-operation with non-governmental organisations
concerned with matters related to those of the WTO.' Furthermore, it
is possible that NGO access could be provided through the dispute
settlement mechanism. Article 13.2 of the Understanding on Rules
and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes states, inter alia,
`Panels may seek information from any relevant source and may
consult experts to obtain their opinion on certain aspects of the
matter.'
These constitutional provisions have been extended in three direc-
tions since the establishment of the organisation. Two decisions taken
in July 1996 provide the framework for current WTO policy towards
NGOs. First, the secretariat has been empowered to engage directly
with NGOs (WTO 1996b). The guidelines reinforced the intergovern-
mental nature of WTO deliberations but made some concession to the

138
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

roles that NGOs can play in the wider public debate on trade and
trade-related issues. The Secretariat was given prime responsibility
for liaison with NGOs, and was empowered to engage in an expanded
dialogue with the non-governmental sector. In the absence of a formal
institutional forum informal relations are maintained between the
Secretariat and NGOs. The Secretariat provides brie®ngs on its work
programme, and receives representations from NGOs. Following the
Geneva ministerial meeting the WTO Secretariat increased the fre-
quency of its brie®ngs for NGOs. Apart from these contacts the
Secretariat has organised a number of symposia with social movement
representatives. The ®rst, held 10±11 June 1994, did little to promote
constructive dialogue. It was apparent at this meeting that the
intellectual disagreement between representatives from the environ-
mental groups present and the Secretariat could not be easily bridged.
The purpose of this symposium on trade, environment and sustain-
able development was to allow an exchange of views but animosity
between the two groups resulted in a dialogue of the deaf. Moreover,
tensions within the environmental movement contributed to a
meeting regarded by all participants as a failure (GATT 1994). A
second attempt was not made until the preparatory phase of the ®rst
ministerial meeting when a gathering was convened in September
1996 of thirty-®ve organisations representing environmental, develop-
ment and consumer groups. This symposium was felt to be much
more constructive by all participants, and its `success' has since been
replicated on a number of occasions.25 Later high level symposia on
Trade and Environment (15±16 March 1999), and Trade and Develop-
ment (17±18 March 1999) presented opportunities for constructive
engagement and demonstrate the changed context of civil society
engagement with the WTO since its inception.
Secondly, the General Council agreed to derestrict documents
(WTO 1996a). The organisation has increased the public provision of
information concerning WTO policy making. Under the procedures
most WTO documents will be circulated as unrestricted, some will be

25 Secretariat of®cials explain the difference between the two meetings in terms of the
increased sophistication of environmental groups present concerning trade issues.
Environmental (and other) social movement representatives argue that the key
difference between the meetings in 1994 and 1996 was a conciliatory process started
by the Quaker mission in Geneva which brought together governmental of®cials,
social movement representatives and WTO bureaucrats. (Source: interviews,
January/February 1997.)

139
Contesting Global Governance

derestricted automatically after a sixty-day period, others can be

derestricted at the request of a member but others, especially those
pertaining to important current policy decisions will remain restricted
(Van Dyke and Weiner n.d.; Weiner and Van Dyke n.d.). The WTO is
currently considering proposals ®rst made at the General Council in
December 1998 to liberalise its derestriction regime. The proposals to
amend current practices by circulating Secretariat background notes
as unrestricted unless an objection is made and to derestrict the
minutes of committees after three months have run into objections,
principally from India and Mexico, and it proved impossible to make
progress when this issue was discussed by the WTO in February 1999.
One further innovation of the WTO has been the construction of a
website which makes publicly available a wide range of WTO docu-
ments including dispute panel reports as soon as they are adopted.
The WTO also publishes the Trade and Environment Bulletin, which
reports on the activities of the Committee on Trade and Environment,
and trade policy review reports. Similar publications covering the
work of other sectors is not planned but activists have asked for this
service to be extended to other areas of the WTO's work programme.
The WTO's failure to provide a mechanism whereby NGOs can be
granted some form of consultative status appears reactionary at a
moment when most intergovernmental organisations have made such
provision. The isolation of the WTO on this issue, and the relevance of
non-state actors to the promotion of a liberal trade agenda, is
increasingly being recognised by the Secretariat and in¯uential
member states. At the Geneva second ministerial meeting, the director-
general of the WTO Renato Ruggiero supported the call for increased
contact between non-state actors and the WTO, and President Clinton
suggested the creation of `a forum where business, labour, environ-
mental and consumer groups can speak out and help guide the
further evolution of the WTO' (Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest 1998).
This new openness was further con®rmed in July 1998 when Ruggiero
announced further measures to improve contacts with NGOs (WTO
1998).26 In pursuit of a new open policy he has intensi®ed his direct
contacts with NGO. Since the second ministerial meeting he has met
®ve times with various coalitions of NGOs. He has twice met with US
NGOs (November 1998, and March 1999), and once each with

26 Ruggiero ®rst met with NGOs in December 1997.

140
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

international NGOs (July 1998), developing country NGOs (February

1999), and European NGOs (also February 1999).

The WTO and the environmentalists: a dialogue of the deaf?

As previously stated the environmental movement is diverse, and
different groups have pursued different objectives in the context of
global governance. In what follows attention will be focused on that
section of the ESM engaged in lobbying for reform of the rules of the
world trading system. These `reformers' can be differentiated from
the `radical' groups that seek the abolition of the WTO.27 Reformers
believe that the world trading system can be altered to protect the
environment whereas radicals reject the rules and institutions of the
current system. Of course such a dichotomy is not always easy to
sustain since individuals and groups not only shift positions over time
but some organisations may well contain a variety of views. The
dialogue between the WTO and the environmental movement has to
be seen in the context of an evolving discussion begun under the
GATT. The response of the WTO to the environmentalist challenge has
been shaped by its organisational ideology, organisational character-
istics and the ability of ENGOs to threaten its core objective of trade
liberalisation.
The WTO is the institutional expression of the commitment to
liberal international trade espoused by the leadership of the key
advanced industrial countries. Although the rhetoric of the post-war
trading system has been one of liberalisation and multilateralism, in
reality protectionism and mercantilist sentiments have been ever-
present. The creation of the WTO was a conscious attempt to establish
a strong global regulatory framework supporting increased trade
liberalisation. As such the WTO is principally a legal instrument for
the promotion of free trade, and committed to combating protec-
tionism. It is therefore not surprising that the WTO has been so
resistant to the demands of environmental groups given the ®erce
controversy surrounding the relationship between trade and environ-
mental protection, and the likelihood that efforts to halt environmental
degradation may be used as a disguise for protectionist aims.
It is possible to discern a shift in the relations between `reformist'

27 For example, the loose coalition called the People's Global Action against Free Trade
and the World Trade Organisation (PGA). See Ford (1998).

141
Contesting Global Governance

environmentalist groups and the WTO from one of incomprehension

to the beginnings of some understanding. Some measure of accommo-
dation is discernible between the trade community and environmental
groups with of®ces in Geneva engaging in lobbying and advocacy
activities. At the outset mutual mistrust resulted in limited real
dialogue. Both groups are now aware that the existing knowledge on
trade±environment linkages is very tentative and in the past two years
both the WTO Secretariat and NGOs like World Wide Fund for Nature
(WWF), the World Conservation Union (IUCN), the International
Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), the Inter-
national Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), and the Center
for International Environmental Law (CIEL), have been prepared to
examine the evidence in a manner unlikely to maintain the previous
degree of polarisation. Broadly speaking the reformers have sought to
redirect policies (for example, to inscribe sustainable development
concerns on the WTO agenda, and to restrict trade in areas where it
contributes to environmental degradation) and alter institutional
procedures in the WTO (mainly to `democratise' the organisation).
Other environmental groups such as Greenpeace are less prepared to
engage in these discussions.
Reformist ENGOs have developed a two-pronged strategy in their
attempts to alter world trade rules. Analysis and research is aimed at
changing the way in which the trade and environment nexus is
perceived. Policy advocacy requires new information and political
support in order to promote the reform agenda. To this end environ-
mental groups like the WWF and IUCN have engaged in analysis of
trade and environmental issues with the aim of making policy
recommendations. These recommendations are directed at policy
makers. In other words, lobbying is concentrated on gaining political
support among the informed public rather than the general public. In
Geneva, environmentalists have built up contacts with representatives
of national governments and WTO staff. At the national level envir-
onmentalists have established contacts in various government depart-
ments. Within pluralist democracies environmentalists have been
trying to affect the composition of national trade negotiating teams in
order to increase the participation of environmental ministries in
trade talks. Secondly, environmental groups engaged in lobbying the
WTO have formed diverse transnational advocacy coalitions. These
networks are useful in developing and supporting public campaigns
on speci®c policies.

142
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

Integrating environmental concerns

The international trade regime created in 1947 rendered environ-
mental issues invisible. The interaction between trade and the en-
vironment was not inscribed on the agenda of multilateral trade
negotiations, and played no part in the regulation of world trade.
Environmental issues slowly emerged in the 1970s but only gained a
de®nite place on the agenda in the 1990s. Environmental issues were
®rst raised in the GATT in November 1971 immediately preceding
the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (the
Stockholm Conference). The GATT Council established a Group on
Environmental Measures and International Trade (GEMIT) to
examine, `upon request any speci®c matters relevant to the trade
policy aspects of measures to control pollution and protect the
human environment, and report back to the Council' (GATT 1993a).
However, GEMIT a political response to the Stockholm Conference,
never met because the strength of opposition to merging trade and
environment interests was very strong. During the preparatory phase
of UNCED new pressures arose for an examination of the trade/
environment nexus. At the Uruguay Round ministerial meeting in
Brussels in December 1990 the EFTA countries requested that the
GEMIT be convened to examine the relationship between trade and
environmental policies. This led to an inconclusive debate in May
1991 at the GATT Council meeting. The opposition of a number of
delegations was suf®cient to stymie the calls for a GEMIT meeting.
Immediately after UNCED, and following the ®rst dolphin±tuna
ruling, it was apparent that the trade and environment issue occu-
pied a place on the agenda and that UNCED issues were not
adequately covered in GEMIT's remit. GEMIT was reconvened in
July 1993 to discuss the results of UNCED. At this time it became
clear that both leading advanced industrialised countries and devel-
oping countries felt that the time had come for GATT to take up the
trade and environment debate. These views were sometimes defen-
sive, for example, the US delegate stated that environmental issues
should not be left to environmental experts given the overlap
between trade and the environment, and the Indian representative
expressed the view that it was imperative for GATT to counter the
false propaganda that the organisation was indifferent to environ-
mental concerns. Some delegations adopted a more positive
approach, the Brazilian delegate arguing that Agenda 21 should be

143
Contesting Global Governance

fully integrated into GATT since poverty is the worst polluter in the
developing world.28
The standard GATT (and later WTO) position on the environment
was adopted at this time. The viewpoint expressed by the majority of
member governments was that environmental concerns could be fully
accommodated within a ¯exible interpretation of GATT rules. More-
over, it was stressed that an open non-discriminatory system can
facilitate environmental conservation and protection by helping to
encourage more ef®cient resource allocation to generate real income
growth. Three key policies were identi®ed ± multilateral environ-
mental agreements, transparency and eco-labelling.
The Uruguay Round was launched in Punta del Este, Uruguay, in
September 1986 before environmental issues became prominent on the
international agenda.29 During the negotiations environmental issues
hovered in the background but were never explicitly part of the
negotiations. The dolphin±tuna controversy and the preparatory
phase of UNCED raised the political pro®le of the linkage between
trade and the environment. Nevertheless, by the end of the Uruguay
Round it had become obvious to governments, trade of®cials and
social movement activists that the new organisation would have to
discuss the environment. But concerted opposition remained to the
inclusion of environmental issues at the core of the new world trade
system. At this stage the campaign to integrate environmental con-
cerns into the structure of the organisation through the creation of a
Committee on Trade and Environment was unsuccessful. Opponents
of the establishment of an environmental committee based their
argument on two considerations. The ®rst argument was based on
precedent. It was argued that it had never been GATT practice to
create institutional frameworks before matters of a substantive nature
had been settled in a particular area. The second argument appealed
to political realities. Those opposed to the mainstreaming of environ-
mental issues in the new organisation argued that the issue was so
divisive that attempts to resolve it would further delay the rati®cation
of the WTO. They further argued that environment was part of neither
the negotiations nor the Final Act. It was therefore decided to consider
the institutional structure in consultations prior to Marrakesh.
28 Meeting held on 6 July 1993 (GATT 1993b).
29 It is interesting to note that John Croome's (1995) of®cial history of the Uruguay
Round published by the WTO contains no reference to the environment either in the
table of contents or the index.

144
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

By the time the Final Act was negotiated it was no longer possible
to ignore the concept of sustainable development. Sustainable devel-
opment was now inscribed in the discourse of the World Bank and
United Nations and the negotiators joined the new global consensus.
The Preamble of the agreement establishing the WTO states that trade
liberalisation policies will be pursued, `while allowing for the optimal
use of the world's resources in accordance with the objective of
sustainable development, seeking both to protect and preserve the
environment and to enhance the means for doing so . . .' The Marra-
kesh ministerial meeting (April 1994) which led to the creation of the
WTO decided to create a Committee on Trade and Environment
(CTE). In the interim before the WTO began work on 1 January 1995 a
subcommittee of the GATT was created to handle environmental
matters.
Environmental issues arise throughout the WTO's organisational
structure, but it has been in the CTE that discussions have centred on
the interrelationship between trade and the environment. The terms
of reference of the CTE are: (i) to identify the relationship between
trade measures and sustainable development; (ii) to make appropriate
recommendations on whether the multilateral trading system should
be modi®ed; (iii) to assess the need for rules to enhance the interaction
between trade and environment including avoidance of protectionist
measures and surveillance of trade measures used for environmental
purposes. The CTE, a deliberative rather than a policy-making body
was given two years to ful®l its mandate. Between its ®rst meeting in
February 1995 and the Singapore ministerial meeting it concentrated
on clarifying the relationship between trade and the environment. By
December 1995 the of®cial view was that the activities undertaken by
the CTE were un®nished and that the committee should continue to
function.
The Singapore conference also provided the environmental move-
ment with its ®rst opportunity to address the achievements of the
WTO in a comprehensive manner. Environmental NGOs were
strongly critical of the failure of the CTE to make any substantive
progress in its deliberations (FOE 1996b; IISD 1996; WWF 1996c). They
argued that the CTE instead of addressing the crucial issues on trade
and the environment had been side-tracked into discussions on
technical issues. Moreover, ENGOs were sharply critical of the
manner in which environmental issues had been shifted to the CTE.
Sustainable development touches on the WTO's work programme in a

145
Contesting Global Governance

number of ways, and environmental NGOs argue that this realisation

should in¯uence WTO policy.

Environmental NGOs and the reform of the WTO

Until 1990 trade policy had not captured the attention and hence
organisational energies of the environmental movement. Following
the decision by the US administration in late 1990 to negotiate a North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), environmentalists in
Canada, Mexico and the USA mobilised to exert in¯uence on their
respective governments' policies. If opposition to NAFTA brought a
serious questioning of the bene®ts of free trade it was the GATT's
ruling in respect of the dolphin±tuna controversy which lit the touch-
fuse under a simmering con¯ict and exploded the trade±environment
debate. Concerted pressure on the GATT by environmentalists ®rst
surfaced as a result of the 1991 GATT Panel ruling in respect of the
dolphin±tuna dispute between the United States and Mexico. The
Panel's decision which upheld Mexican sovereignty and rejected the
extra-territorial expansion of American law appeared to many envir-
onmentalists to be fundamentally ¯awed. The ensuing debate was
frequently portrayed as a clash between free trade economists on one
hand and Green protectionists on the other. Differing perceptions of
the impact of the liberal trading system on environmental degrada-
tion, the potential of market-based solutions for environmental harm
and commitment to continued economic growth produced divergent
and con¯icting policy proposals from liberal economists (and the
GATT Secretariat) and the environmental movement.
The attack by environmental activists on the world trading system
focuses on substantive and institutional issues. Before looking at
proposals for the democratisation of the WTO we will discuss the
con¯icts over economic policy. The relationship between trade and the
environment has given rise to two broadly competing positions
(Williams 1993). On one hand, proponents of free trade argue that no
inherent incompatibility exists between the goals of environmental
sustainability and trade creation and expansion. On the other hand,
environmentalists of different persuasions contend that a liberal trade
regime automatically creates the conditions conducive to environ-
mental degradation. This con¯ict between free traders and environ-
mentalists has been labelled a clash of cultures, paradigms and
judgements (Esty 1994).

146
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

The central contention of liberal economists is that trade liberal-

isation promotes growth which enables states to tackle environmental
degradation. This position is admirably summed up in the World
Development Report 1992 which stated inter alia that `. . . using trade
restrictions to address environmental problems is inef®cient and
usually ineffective. Liberalised trade fosters greater ef®ciency and
higher productivity and may actually reduce pollution by encour-
aging the growth of less polluting industries and the adoption and
diffusion of cleaner technologies' (World Bank 1992: 67). This view
was echoed by the GATT Secretariat's Trade and Environment Report
(GATT 1992) which argued that (i) GATT was neutral in the formation
of policies necessary to promote sustainable development; (ii) the
solution lies in assigning prices and values to environmental resources
so that the environmental effects of economic activity can be identi®ed
and valued; and (iii) if the policies necessary for sustainable develop-
ment are in place, trade promotes development that is sustainable.
Within the liberal economic paradigm trade liberalisation is not the
primary cause of environmental degradation. Unsustainable economic
growth arises from market failure and the inability of governments to
engage in adequate environmental pricing. The presumption is that
restrictions on trade are not only inadequate but also positively
dangerous since under the cloak of environmentalism the dangers of
protectionism are ever present. Although empirical evidence and
developments in trade theory cast strong doubt on the shibboleth of
free trade the underlying truth of the law of comparative advantage
and the superiority of market-based solutions remain articles of faith
for many economists and policy makers.
The environmentalist critique of the world trade system is based on
the contention that free trade, unrestricted markets and limited state
intervention is inconsistent with efforts to protect the environment.
Environmentalists call for trade restrictions to prevent the spread of
pollution by trade. Indirectly, unrestricted trade leads to the export of
pollution since ®rms will move production to countries with the
lowest pollution standards. A liberal trading regime provides in-
centives to expand production and trade whilst disregarding pollu-
tion. Environmentalists also argue that trade liberalisation damages
the environment by encouraging economic growth. The drive for
pro®t encourages a relaxation of national environmental protection,
and a `race to the bottom' as countries attempt to maintain inter-
national competitiveness. In other words, if the costs of environmental

147
Contesting Global Governance

protection are signi®cant those countries with low environmental

standards will enjoy a comparative advantage. Liberal trade also
exacerbates ecological degradation because production for export
markets is more environmentally damaging than production for home
consumption; in the words of one observer, `putting agricultural
resources at the service of export markets, in countries that are not
self-suf®cient in food, enormous pressures are created for local
peoples to over-exploit other resources simply to eke out the barest
existence' (Shrybman 1990: 31). Under such conditions the resultant
exploitation of natural resource use is unsustainable.
This con¯ict between liberal economists and environmentalists has
moved from a general debate concerning the trade±environment link
to discussion of speci®c issues in the context of trade and sustainable
development (Uimonen and Whalley 1997). These include problems
related to trade in products created through environmentally dama-
ging and unsustainable production processes; problems arising from
discriminatory trade policies which foster environmentally damaging
and unsustainable use of natural resources; problems related to
agricultural production; the relationship between the multilateral
trading system and multilateral environmental agreements; eco-
labelling; and the relationship between the multilateral trading system
and transboundary, regional and global environmental problems
(WWF 1996b).
Production, process and methods (PPMs) are central to efforts to
introduce sustainable development to the global trading system.
PPMs refer to the techniques and methods used in the production of a
product, and the debate arises because the rules of the liberal trading
system regulates products but not the processes used to create them
(WWF 1996b: 7). The trade community is opposed to the inclusion of
PPMs on grounds of ef®ciency and the dif®culty of ensuring compli-
ance. Given different absorptive capacities and differing environ-
mental values, the attempt to impose global standards will not only
shift specialisation away from comparative advantage but will also
impose external values on sovereign sates. Moreover, opponents point
out the dif®culties inherent in devising systems of monitoring and
compliance during production processes. On the other hand, envir-
onmentalists contend that it is dif®cult to sustain a distinction
between production and products. PPMs are necessary to protect
health and the environment. In this view PPMs would assist in the
development of more ef®cient production and stricter environmental

148
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

standards. A system based on the `polluter pays' principle would, it

is claimed, diminish the necessity for cumbersome monitoring
measures.30
Environmentalists argue that not only has the CTE failed to make
any progress on trade measures relating to multilateral environmental
agreements (MEAs) but it has disrupted the existing consensus by
apparently extending the WTO's jurisdiction. One interpretation of
the CTE's activities suggests that trade measures agreed in MEAs and
applied between the parties could still be taken before a WTO Dispute
Panel. That is, WTO members could resort to the WTO dispute
settlement mechanism to undermine obligations already agreed to in
MEAs. Since MEAs are an effective means of addressing trans-
boundary global environmental threats the WTO could undermine
them. Furthermore, continuing uncertainty over WTO rules could
deter parties from the use of trade measures in MEAs (WWF 1996a: 2).
Environmentalists allege that WTO rules on eco-labelling are
unclear. For example, it is not certain whether WTO rules included in
the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) agreement and its annexes cover
eco-labels based on non-product related PPMs (IUCN 1996: 36). One
aspect of this controversy relates to the fact that it is not clear whether
TBT rules apply to standards involving life cycle analysis. Since TBTs
refer to product standards and indirectly to PPMs it is not clear
whether the rules apply to, for example, the use of pesticides in
production even where there is no pesticide residue. They argue that
non-product PPMs should be placed on the agenda, and demand the
inclusion of eco-labelling practitioners in the negotiations.
Environmental activists have been campaigning for increased par-
ticipation by NGOs in the WTO. Environmentalists and other groups
have portrayed the WTO (and the GATT before it) as a secretive
organisation lacking in accountability. It is argued that civil society
organisations have a crucial role to play in making the world trading
system more transparent and accountable (Enders 1996; Esty 1997).
Environmental NGOs with a focus on the deliberations in Geneva
argue that access to information and participation in decision making
is vital for democracy, and will also improve the policy outputs of the
WTO. Reformist environmentalists are aware that the nature of trade
negotiations means that an open-access regime for NGOs is not a

30 See Schlagenhof (1996) for an extended discussion of the differing positions of

environmentalists and their critics.

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Contesting Global Governance

feasible proposition (Charnovitz 1996). Thus their demands for par-

ticipation and transparency are couched in moderate terms. Proposed
reforms maintain the intergovernmental character of the organisation
whilst enhancing public scrutiny of the multilateral trading system.
Environmentalists claim that the WTO can be reformed in ways which
do not impinge on the need for secrecy in bodies like the TPRM. They
suggest that membership of the CTE should be expanded to include
NGOs. The claim is for observer status rather than full membership.
Moreover, they argue that the dispute settlement mechanism should
make greater usage of independent experts. On the issue of transpar-
ency NGOs are very critical of the existing arrangements for the
deregistration of documents. They argue that if crucial documents can
be kept restricted until six months after being issued the monitoring
functions of NGOs will be handicapped.
Until recently, a number of arguments against increased partici-
pation by NGOs in the WTO have been advanced by member states.
The ®rst argument is based on the politics of trade negotiations. It
amounts to a defence of liberal multilateralism based on the principle
of state sovereignty. In this view the various groups attempting to
lobby the WTO should do so in their home countries. It follows that if
trade policy is the result of a domestic political bargain then it is at the
national level that environmental, development, business and con-
sumer interests should attempt to in¯uence policy. It has been pointed
out in response that participation can be restricted to NGOs with a
distinct international focus (Enders 1996: ii). And the presumption
that all governments conform to the plural, democratic model is
untenable, hence many groups will not gain access to decision makers
at the national level (Esty 1997: 5). The second argument rests on the
nature of the negotiating process. International trade negotiations
demand a high level of secrecy which cannot be guaranteed if
participation is granted to non-state actors. In the process of bar-
gaining governments frequently have to trade-off one domestic inter-
est against another. Governments would be unable to make progress
in multilateral trade negotiations if other actors were involved. But as
Esty points out, `giving NGOs a voice at the WTO, and, more
importantly, the opportunity to observe WTO debates and dispute
settlement proceedings does not preclude governments from dis-
cussing issues behind closed doors' (Esty 1997: 5). The third argument
against greater involvement of NGOs in the WTO's deliberations
arises from the belief that the WTO is a forum for negotiations. NGOs

150
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

may represent various interests and engage in advocacy but they

cannot partake in negotiations. Critics point out that the WTO is not
solely concerned with negotiations (Enders 1996: ii), and anyway it
would not be setting a precedent since civil society organisations have
been involved in negotiations in other fora (Bellmann and Gerster
1996). A fourth set of considerations rest on the desire to deny access
to special interests in the negotiating process. Advocates of an open
trade regime perceive the ever-present threat of protectionist interests.
Therefore, the negotiation process in Geneva should not encourage
the active involvement of protectionist groups. Moreover, it is feared
that any attempt to widen participation in WTO decision making to
increase social movement participation will inevitably increase the
lobbying activities of the business community. Given the competitive
advantage business organisations possess over NGOs any liberal-
isation in access for NGOs would increase the in¯uence of large
corporations. This objection appears to overlook the fact that special
interest groups already have access to the WTO through the role of
industry (and other sectors) representatives on national delegations. A
®fth set of arguments concentrate on the nature of global democracy.
A questioning of the representative nature of NGOs is advanced as a
reason why the WTO should resist the attempt by NGOs to achieve a
formal status within the organisation. It is argued that not only will it
be dif®cult to devise a method of accrediting legitimate NGOs but
that many NGOs do not represent a distinct community of interests.
Southern governments express the fear that umbrella Northern organ-
isations with resources greater than many Southern governments are
likely to exercise more in¯uence in the deliberations than many Third
World states. This result would enhance Northern interests at the
expense of Southern peoples. Environmentalists and others argue that
these objections can be met through careful institutional design
(Enders 1996: ii±iii; Esty 1997: 6). It appears that following the Geneva
ministerial meeting these objections will become more muted in the
near future.
As a political issue the environmentalist demand for increased
access to the WTO decision-making machinery is constructed around
a campaign for transparency and participation. The ability of NGOs to
monitor trade negotiations depends on the transparency and open-
ness of the procedures. The debate on transparency has centred on
access to information. Member states of the WTO have varying
standards of public disclosure. From the perspective of NGOs the

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Contesting Global Governance

decision to derestrict documents taken in July 1996 marked a welcome

improvement on previous policy. Nevertheless, it has been argued
that, `Fundamentally, the procedures do not re¯ect a desire for the
kind of public participation necessary to protect the interests of the
many constituencies concerned with the activities of the WTO and
affected by these activities' (Van Dyke and Weiner n.d.: 14). The
document derestriction policy is inadequate in two respects. First,
member states can block derestriction of any document thus ensuring
that sensitive issues are likely to remain secret. Second, the timing of
derestriction (varying between sixty days and six months) is likely to
result in the public availability of documents after decisions have been
made.
Working from a liberal belief in the ef®cacy of pluralism environ-
mentalists argue that governing systems that integrate public input
will consistently produce the best outcomes because the wider the
range of views the better the decision-making process, and the
sounder the outcome (Enders 1996; Esty 1997). Sally Bullen and
Brennan Van Dyke, in the context of their trenchant critique of WTO
policy, have presented an extended case for public participation
(Bullen and Van Dyke 1996).31 The arguments for increased transpar-
ency, participation and accountability are part of a wider campaign by
civil society activists to democratise the structures of world politics. In
the speci®c context of the environmental critique of the WTO two key
points arise from the nature of the discourse. First, effective public
participation will enhance policies designed to promote sustainable
development. Given the role of information, science and knowledge
issues in environmental policy making an open system will enhance
such policy making. Moreover, within the liberal paradigm open
economic systems are clearly superior to closed ones. Second, greater
public participation in the WTO will garner support for trade liberal-
isation. It will counter vested (protectionist) interests, and produce
increased support for the liberalisation project since the bene®ts of
liberal trade will be more easily understood.
To date the pressure exerted by the environmental movement on
the world trading system has met with limited success. A positive
achievement is the initiation of discussion of the link between trade
and the environment. The contemporary discourse on sustainable
development ensures that the issue is now on the agenda of the WTO

31 The following section relies on this paper.

152
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

but environmental considerations are still viewed with suspicion.

Environmental NGOs can and do intervene in the multilateral trading
system at the national and international levels. The WTO is reluctant
to admit the participation of NGOs in its deliberations, arguing that
NGOs should seek contact with their own governments. It has been
argued that advocacy in Geneva will bring limited gains since trade
policy is made in national capitals and the WTO secretariat's function
is largely that of a service provider.32 The environmental movement
campaigns at the national level but in their opinion, given the
internationalisation of trade policy and the impact of globalisation on
structural change in the world trading system, campaigning cannot
reside solely at the national level.33 To the extent that trade negotiators
and environmentalists inhabit competing and con¯icting cognitive
frameworks accommodation will be impossible. This has been recog-
nised by the WWF whose initiative in convening an Expert Panel on
Trade and the Environment is an important step in trying to bridge
the gap between the two intellectual communities.
The impact of the sentiments expressed at the second ministerial
meeting by Ruggiero and Clinton have yet to be translated into
effective policies. Nevertheless, it is instructive to note that the
proposal to engage in a more concerted manner with non-state actors
speci®cally included the business community. From the perspective of
social movement activists the inclusion of business groups weakens
their potential in¯uence. Given the competitive advantage business
organisations possess over NGOs any proposed `democratisation'
measures will increase the in¯uence of large corporations.

Conclusion
This chapter has documented two different case studies. The World
Bank has expanded its formal and informal links with the environ-
mental movement. The WTO remains relatively closed to representa-
tives from social movements but a process of increased contacts
between the WTO and NGOs is developing. Any conclusions about
global democracy must, of necessity, be extremely tentative. A
number of points emerge from the narratives developed here. The
32 Interviews with WTO Secretariat of®cials, January 1997.
33 One key aim of the environmental movement at the national level concerns the
composition of national trade negotiating teams. They seek the increased partici-
pation of environmental ministries in trade talks.

153
Contesting Global Governance

contrasting reactions of the World Bank and WTO to the environ-

mental movement suggests caution in drawing conclusions about the
impact of the environmental movement on international organisa-
tions. The contrasting experiences arise partly from the fact that the
organisational structure and characteristics are different, and partly
from the ability of environmentalists to identify crucial points of
leverage. Learning curves and the development of a global democratic
politics appear to be speci®c to the organisation rather than part of a
general trend. Second, it is very dif®cult to assess in¯uence. We can
certainly trace the linkages which have developed but the importance
of these lines of communication are not easily established. Neverthe-
less, some change is taking place, and NGOs have been accepted as
legitimate actors (at least as far as the Bank is concerned). Moreover,
NGOs are clearly a permanent feature of the new global politics.

How have these MEIs modi®ed?

This study set out to answer speci®c questions concerning the
evolving relationships between social movements and MEIs. This case
study of the ESM and the MEIs provides the following tentative
answers. Both the Bank and the WTO have made attempts to
accommodate the desires of the environmental movement for greater
access to the organisation. They have been unwilling to extend
participation to in¯uence on decision making but both have extended
the scope of their interactions with environmental groups. The
member states and management of the Bank and WTO have initiated
greater dialogue with representatives of the environmental movement
for a number of reasons.
It is arguable that underpinning the work programmes of both the
Bank and the WTO is the concept of sustainable development.
Although the concept of sustainable development remains largely
elusive, and arguably is little more than a rhetorical exercise (Williams
1998), both organisations are now committed to promoting it. This
development, on one hand, suggests the in¯uence of civil society
actors in (re)constructing the broad agenda of development and
environment and, on the other, reveals the limitations of such power.
The conclusion reached on the relevance of sustainable development
as global strategy will depend on the underlying framework used to
evaluate the concept. Nevertheless, from the perspective of this
chapter we can document change in the task environment of the

154
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

MEIs. Even lip-service to sustainable development changes the orien-

tation of an organisation. Moreover, it presents NGOs with a yardstick
by which to measure performance. Of course, both organisations have
attempted to capture the concept of sustainable development and to
interpret it within their existing paradigms but noticeable change is
evident for both organisations. For the Bank the excesses of adjust-
ment lending have been curtailed, as have the consequences of
unfettered lending with limited attention to the ravages on the
environment. Looking at the WTO we see an organisation that has
been forced to place environmental issues on its agenda whereas its
predecessor, the GATT, ignored increasing evidence of the linkages
between trade and the environment.

What are the motivations driving MEI±GSM engagement?

Clearly, the Bank and WTO have felt threatened and their engagement
arises from a desire to protect their interests and activities. In the case
of the Bank, environmentalists threatened its core funding. The recent
positive overtures to NGOs by the WTO arises from the fear that
widespread public opposition could halt plans for a further round of
multilateral trade negotiations. Second, the structures of governance
have undergone a transformation in response to structural change.
Policy making has had to adjust to a changing global economy. The
discourse of sustainable development may be inherently problematic
but it is not solely rhetorical. In the context of a globalising world
economy the complexities of environmental management, and pro-
motion of sustainable development requires partnerships between
state and non-state actors. To put this simply, neither the Bank nor the
WTO can perform its mandate without attention to environmental
groups. This is, of course, more true of the Bank, a service delivery
organisation, than the WTO. Moreover, both organisations need
legitimacy if they are to perform their functions. In the contemporary
political climate legitimacy is not solely conferred by state actors.
ENGOs have been effective at highlighting environmentally de-
grading practices and assigning culpability. The transnational net-
works of environmental groups have been effective in mobilising
international environmental norms and in shaping legitimate sustain-
able practices.

155
Contesting Global Governance

What is the signi®cance of the MEI±GSM relationship?

Environmental groups have achieved a degree of success in shaping
the policy agenda. Even in the context of the WTO they have been
successful in making the environment one of the new issues of
concern to the organisation. Their in¯uence on both the Bank and
WTO is limited, but the fact that they in¯uence policy rather than
have control over decision making should not detract from the fact
that a new relationship between MEIs and the ESM is emerging. This
study has also demonstrated that the dialogue between the MEIs and
the ESM is a restricted one in terms of participation. It is mistaken to
think that the ESM represents voices from the periphery. This chapter
has attempted to demonstrate that the answer is far more complex
than any such facile generalisation. At the level of interactions with
MEIs the ESM is characterised not only by diversity but also by a
highly sophisticated policy elite which shares more than access to
modern technology with those who run the institutions. In order to be
heard representatives of social movements must of necessity enter
into a dialogue with (speak the language of ) the holders of power.
As with so many things beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Those
analysts unwilling to relinquish the straitjacket of realism will see in
the narratives developed above little to shake their faith in the
continuing primacy of the state. The Bank and WTO as interstate
organisations will on this reading remain relatively unscathed. The
WTO has no formal provision for consultation with NGOs, and recent
informal meetings between Renato Ruggiero and NGOs can easily be
overturned by his successor. Moreover, state representatives continue
effectively to block further derestriction of documents. The Bank, on
the other hand, although it has extended dialogue with groups from
civil society in practice only has one of®cial consultative forum, the
NGO-World Bank Committee. This Committee has never played an
important role, and indeed in the context of Bank interaction with
NGOs is increasingly by-passed.
Students starting from the premises of pluralist thought will discern
the emergence of transnational processes which support an account of
world politics in which non-state actors are prominent. The MEI±GSM
relationship is thus important from two perspectives. First, it en-
courages and thus increases the interactions among diverse represen-
tatives of civil society in the global system. Politics in this account is
not con®ned to what takes place between of®cial representatives of

156
 The World Bank, the WTO and the ESM

governments. The activities of the Bank and WTO directly affect the
everyday lives of millions around the globe. Although the account
given here only focuses on elite representations to these organisations
it nevertheless provides suf®cient evidence of an emerging global civil
society. Transnational advocacy coalitions and the rise of a global civil
politics challenges conventional notions of international relations.
Second, study of the linkages between the Bank, the WTO and the
environmental movement has highlighted the importance of inter-
national organisations as actors in international relations, and as
legitimising structures within the global system. Within the globa-
lising polity and economy, with increasing attention to standardisation
and the creation of global norms multilateral economic institutions are
crucial instruments of change. Relatedly, the MEI±GSM relationship is
signi®cant because it suggests another nexus of power in the global
system. The MEI±GSM relationship examined here at one and the
same time extends some aspects of state power and also extends non-
state based power. To illustrate one can discuss the pivotal role of the
US political process in the campaign for the reform of the World Bank,
and the continuing centrality of the Of®ce of the US Trade Representa-
tive for discussions on the future of the multilateral trading system as
examples of the manner in which the MEI±GSM relationship extends
state power. Thus both the US government and American NGOs
bene®t from US structural power. On the other hand, both the Bank
and the IMF represent powerful structures of governance. This is
especially the case with respect to their developing country members.
The search for environmental standards in development and trade has
at times been pursued by environmentalists in opposition to the
interests of Third World governments.34
In short, engaging with the environmental movement has trans-
formed both the Bank and the WTO. Both organisations now recog-
nise the importance of the environment for their operations. The
environment, or to put it more precisely, attention to the environ-
mental consequences of its operations, is now ®rmly embedded
within Bank policy and practice. The fact that the Bank continues to
fall below the standards consistent with an environmental approach
to development does not lessen the fact of adaptation. The WTO has
to date made a weak attempt to accommodate environmental issues

34 For the purposes of the argument it is a moot point whether the governments are
truly representative of their peoples.

157
Contesting Global Governance

but limited progress does not signify no progress. If at the Singapore

ministerial meeting government representatives could continue to
fake action, by the time the second ministerial meeting was held it
was apparent that some effort had to be made to mainstream the
environment in the WTO's activities. The desire for a further round of
multilateral negotiations, and the prospect that the environment could
become a contentious political issue, has recently led to efforts to give
greater attention to environmental issues in the world trading system.
These changes would not have taken place in the absence of the
campaigning by groups within the environmental social movement.
Further, a signi®cant part of ESM advocacy has been directed at the
MEIs rather than being modi®ed through state structures. Thus the
ESM has contributed to change within the processes of global govern-
ance. The environmental movement has demonstrated an ability to
contribute to agenda setting, and the power to affect the core interest
of MEIs. MEIs have recognised that they cannot function effectively if
public perception of their activities is resoundingly negative. And
they are aware that environmentalists can affect their image. In
charting this evolving relationship it is apparent that `signi®cance' not
only depends on the standpoint of the observer but is itself subject to
change.

158
5 The International Monetary Fund
and social movements

The growth of the International Monetary Fund (IMF, or `the Fund')

presents one of the most pronounced cases of expanding global
economic governance in the late twentieth century. Particularly since
the 1970s, accelerated globalisation has propelled the Washington-
based Fund into various new areas: training and technical assistance;
surveillance of macroeconomic policy; structural adjustment in the
South; post-communist transition in the East; and regulation of
®nancial markets, including several major rescue operations. To deal
with this enlarged agenda, as well as a much-expanded membership,
the IMF has obtained a much larger staff and hugely increased
®nancial resources. To be sure, it would be mistaken to depict the
Fund as an omnipotent ruler of the contemporary world economy;
however, its voice carries far in global markets, in national economic
policies, and ± eventually ± in local and household budgets.
The IMF's expansion has not been universally welcomed. On the
contrary, critics have raised fundamental objections to both the
general premises and the speci®c content of much of the Fund's policy
advice. IMF management and staff have on the whole proceeded from
neoliberal assumptions that stabilisation, liberalisation, deregulation
and privatisation together yield long-term economic health and
human betterment in a globalising world. Opponents in social move-
ments have sought to break this neoliberal consensus at the Fund and
to move global monetary and ®nancial governance in alternative
directions.
This chapter analyses the aims, activities, impacts and dif®culties of
campaigns to change the IMF. Given its focus on social movements,
the discussion of course covers only part of civil society's engagement
of the Fund. After all, many in¯uential civic organisations like

159
Contesting Global Governance

corporate business associations and mainstream economic research

institutes have broadly endorsed the reigning paradigm at the IMF.
However, the emphasis in the present examination lies on reformers
and radicals who wish to reconstruct global economic governance
rather than on conformers who accept the Fund more or less with its
existing priorities, policy instruments and modus operandi.1
Social movements have striven, especially since the 1980s, to alter
both the substantive policies and the operating procedures of the
Fund. In regard to policy content, campaigns for change have helped
to put issues of labour conditions, poverty alleviation, ecological
sustainability, gender equity, good governance and debt relief on the
IMF agenda in the 1990s. Social movements have also booked some
successes in respect of a democratisation of the Fund, as the organisa-
tion has in the 1990s moved towards greater transparency and also
(albeit to a lesser extent) increased public accountability and partici-
pation. The IMF has in general not changed in the ways and with the
degree of urgency that social-movement campaigners have wished.
Nevertheless, some shifts are discernible.
The reasons why social movements have so far on the whole had a
limited impact on the IMF are varied. For one thing, campaigns for
change of the Fund have faced a strong neoliberal consensus at the
centres of power in the contemporary world political economy.
Second, the institutional culture of the IMF has made the organisation
relatively closed to a critical dialogue with social movements. Third,
the constituents which social movements have supported (workers,
poor people, women, etc.) are structurally weak in world politics.
Fourth, mobilisation for change of the Fund has usually been thinly
resourced in terms of staff, funds, information and coordination. Fifth,
social movements have tended to give a low priority to the IMF
relative to other institutional targets for change such as the World
Bank. Finally, social movements striving for a reconstruction of global
monetary and ®nancial regulation have frequently attended insuf®-
ciently to their own democratic credentials, thereby giving the Fund
added reason not to engage with them.
The elaboration of the argument just summarised proceeds below in
the following main steps. The ®rst section details the growth of the
IMF in the context of contemporary globalisation. The second section
reviews the various aims of social-movement campaigns with regard

1 On wider civil society relations with the IMF see Scholte (1999a, 1999b).

160
 The IMF and social movements

to the Fund. The third section describes the strategies and tactics used
by social movements in pursuit of those objectives. The fourth section
elaborates on the types and degrees of policy changes at the IMF to
which social-movement activities have contributed. The ®fth section
analyses the circumstances which have prevented campaigns for
reform of the Fund from having a greater impact to date. The
conclusion draws together general observations in relation to the
guiding questions of the comparative research in this book.

Growth of the IMF

Like the World Bank, the IMF emerged from the United Nations
Monetary and Financial Conference, held at Bretton Woods, New
Hampshire, in July 1944. According to its constitutional instrument,
the Articles of Agreement, the Fund exists: (a) to promote inter-
national monetary cooperation; (b) to facilitate the expansion and
balanced growth of international trade; (c) to promote foreign ex-
change stability; (d) to create a multilateral system of payments
between members; (e) to assist in the correction of maladjustments in
members' balance of payments; and (f) to reduce the duration and
severity of disequilibria in members' balance of payments (GuitiaÂn
1992).
Although these of®cial purposes have remained the same during
the half-century of IMF operations, the institutional arrangements and
policy instruments of the organisation have substantially changed
over time (de Vries 1986; James 1996). During the ®rst quarter-century
after it started operations in 1945, the Fund was mainly concerned to
establish and manage the international regime of ®xed (but adjustable)
exchange rates. Its interventions with member governments were
relatively infrequent and brief; they were generally limited to coun-
tries of the North; and they were mainly restricted to monetary and
trade policy measures.
The IMF lost much of its old role with the end of the dollar-centred
®xed-rate system in 1971; however, the rapid globalisation of money
and ®nance since the 1960s has prompted the Fund to reinvent itself
with an expanded agenda. The `second-generation' IMF has entered
four new general policy areas.
First, the Fund has since the late 1970s exercised comprehensive and
detailed surveillance, both of the economic performance of individual
member states and of the world economy as a whole. Article IV,

161
Contesting Global Governance

Section 3 of its statutes (as amended with effect from 1978) provides
that `the Fund shall oversee the international monetary system' and
that `the Fund shall exercise ®rm surveillance over the exchange rate
policies of members'. To this end the institution has published the
in¯uential World Economic Outlook biannually since 1980 and has
conducted so-called `Article IV consultations' with governments ±
now up to 150 per year (IMF 1997a: 43). Through these discussions the
Fund issues authoritative assessments of national policies and
economic performance. In the process of surveillance, the IMF has
promoted important policy reorientations, partly with a view to
accommodating the ongoing globalisation of production and ®nance.
Second, the Fund has since the 1970s intervened more intensely in
many countries by designing for them not only traditional stabilisa-
tion measures for short-term corrections of the balance of payments,
but also structural adjustment packages for medium- and long-term
economic reconstruction. The IMF has supplemented its conventional
stand-by arrangements with medium-term credits since 1974 (under
the Extended Fund Facility, EFF) and with longer-term concessional
loans since 1986±7 (under the Structural Adjustment Facility (SAF)
and Extended Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF)). IMF condition-
ality (i.e. the policies the Fund expects a state to follow in order to use
IMF resources) has substantially strengthened, often placing major
constraints upon state autonomy (Denters 1996). The Fund's `high
conditionality' has included requirements for liberalisation, dereg-
ulation, privatisation, ®scal reform and (most recently) so-called `good
governance' (IMF 1997b, 1998e). Compared with the Bretton Woods
period, the Fund has come to extend loans to many more states: up to
sixty per year. Contemporary IMF programmes have often required
large credits (sometimes running into billions of dollars) and longer
implementation periods (up to ®fteen years in consecutive loans). By
1998, eighty-four states had borrowed from the Fund for at least ten
years.2
Third, the `second-generation' IMF has undertaken major training
and technical assistance activities, largely in order to provide poorly
equipped states with staff and tools that can better handle the policy
challenges of contemporary globalisation. The IMF Institute has
trained more than 10,000 of®cials in macroeconomic issues, using

2 Calculation by the Cato Institute, as cited in a circular on the IMF-Strategy listserv, 21

July 1998.

162
 The IMF and social movements

facilities in Washington (since 1964), Vienna (since 1992), and

Singapore (since 1998). The Fund's technical assistance missions to
governments, also started in 1964, sharply increased in number from
the 1980s and now total around 600 per annum (IMF 1989, 1994a).
Fourth, the IMF has pursued various initiatives to restore stability
to global ®nancial markets. For example, since the early 1980s the
organisation has played a pivotal role in averting defaults on the large
transborder debts of many governments in the South and the East.
More recently, the Fund has coordinated large-scale rescue operations
(`bailouts') in ®nancial crises of so-called `emerging markets': in
Mexico in 1994±5; in Thailand/Korea/Indonesia in 1997±8; in Russia
in 1998 and Brazil in 1998±9. In the hope of better anticipating and
perhaps preventing such emergencies, the IMF has since 1996 pro-
moted global norms for government publication of economic and
®nancial data (the so-called Special Data Dissemination Standard,
SDDS and the General Data Dissemination System, GDDS). To the
extent that the Fund has acted as a lender of last resort and addressed
questions concerning the supervision of global capital markets, it has
moved towards becoming something of a suprastate central bank.
To handle the enlarged agenda just described, the IMF has under-
gone substantial institutional growth. Its membership has risen from
62 states in 1960 to 182 states in 1998. The IMF Executive Board now
meets in at least three (long) sessions each week. Staff numbers have
more than tripled, from 750 in 1966 to 2,661 in 1997 (IMF 1966: 133;
1998j: 101). Over recent decades the Fund has developed its own
`diplomatic service' of sorts, with resident representatives (`res reps')
stationed in twenty-two countries by the early 1980s, thirty-eight
countries in 1991, and sixty-four countries by 1997 (IMF 1990: 3; 1997a:
226). Other external IMF of®ces have opened in Geneva, Paris, New
York and Tokyo.
Since 1970 IMF ®nancial resources have been denominated in the
Fund's own money form, the Special Drawing Right (SDR).3 Over
recent decades IMF quota subscriptions have grown from the equiva-
lent of 21 billion SDRs in 1965 to 212 billion SDRs in 1999 (IMF
1995b: 28; 1998d). The Fund also has gold holdings of 103.4 million
®ne ounces, worth about $32 billion at market prices as of April
1998 (USGAO 1998). Sums available to the IMF from the General
Arrangements to Borrow (GAB) have almost tripled from the original

3 As of mid-1998, the SDR was valued at about US $1.34.

163
Contesting Global Governance

6 billion SDRs (in lenders' currencies) in 1962 to 17 billion SDRs since

1983 (IMF 1995b: 45±6). From 1999 up to 34 billion SDRs became
available to the Fund through the so-called New Arrangements to
Borrow (NAB) (IMF 1997c). Four additional borrowing agreements
concluded between 1979 and 1986 have at one time or another given
the Fund access to a total of 27.6 billion further SDRs in credit lines
(IMF 1995b: 41±9). The Articles of Agreement also permit the IMF to
borrow from private sources, although it has never done so to date.
In sum, given this growth in competencies and resources, the IMF
has in the last quarter of the twentieth century become a major site of
global economic governance. To be sure, the organisation remains
under the strong in¯uence of states, especially its larger members. At
the same time, however, the Fund has clearly experienced a major
growth in responsibilities and authority. It is not only in¯uenced by its
members, but also exerts considerable in¯uence over them, weaker
states in particular.

Social movement aims

As noted earlier, not everyone has welcomed the expansion of the IMF
just described. For example, various circles have rejected the kinds of
conditionality that the Fund has attached to governments' use of its
facilities. In particular, these challengers have argued that IMF pre-
scriptions have detrimental effects on workers, the poor, the environ-
ment, women, and human rights. Other opposition has criticised the
IMF's approach to the debt problems of the South, maintaining that
the Fund has protected imprudent banks and concentrated the costs
of the crisis unfairly on vulnerable social circles. Further critiques
have targeted the alleged undemocratic character of IMF operations,
highlighting shortfalls with regard to participation, transparency and
accountability in Fund policy making. The rest of this section reviews
the social movement activities that have pursued corrections to these
purported failings of the IMF.

Protection of workers
The labour movement has led efforts to reverse the claimed negative
consequences of IMF conditionality on workers. Trade unions and
others have argued that the burdens of conventional Fund stabilisa-
tion and structural adjustment measures fall disproportionately on

164
 The IMF and social movements

working people. For these critics, IMF-supported programmes have

increased unemployment and have also tended to downgrade the
working conditions of those who remain on the job. Likewise, the
social costs of Fund-sponsored restructuring (in terms of cuts in
government support to education, health, housing, etc.) have alleg-
edly hit workers especially hard.
The leading voice in the labour movement for reform of the IMF has
been the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).
In comparison, the World Confederation of Labour (WCL) and the
International Trade Secretariats have done relatively little cam-
paigning on the IMF. Around 1982±3, the ICFTU started to invite
representatives of the Fund to its regional meetings. In IMF pro-
gramme countries, the Confederation has over the years organised
twenty-eight national conferences on structural adjustment. Every
year since 1988, the ICFTU has submitted a lengthy policy statement
to the IMF/World Bank annual meetings. In 1994 the organisation
opened a bureau in Washington, largely in order to establish closer
liaison with the Bretton Woods institutions. Trade unions in several
countries (e.g. Congo and Fiji) have used this of®ce as a channel of
communication with the Fund.
At national level, trade unions have tended to mobilise on the IMF
only in response to Fund-sponsored programmes in their country.
Thus, for example, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions has
campaigned actively on structural adjustment issues since a collapse
of the won brought an IMF programme to the Republic of Korea in
1997. Likewise, organised labour in Romania has repeatedly tried to
block or slow privatisations mandated in that country under Fund-
supported policies. In the USA, however, the AFL±CIO and the
United Auto Workers have in 1998 gone beyond immediate national
concerns to call for more general reforms of the IMF (AFL±CIO 1998;
UAW 1998).

Poverty eradication
Much other mobilisation to change the Fund has focused on questions
of development, and in particular on the alleged harmful effects of
IMF-supported adjustment on the poor in the South and the East.
Certain religious orders, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and
institutes of development studies had already expressed concerns
about these issues in the 1970s. In the early 1980s, bodies like the

165
Contesting Global Governance

Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London, the Overseas

Development Council (ODC) in Washington, and the Swiss Coalition
of Development Organisations in Berne critically examined the impli-
cations of IMF conditionality for poverty in the South (Gerster 1982;
Feinberg and Kallab 1985; Killick 1982). In 1983 several witnesses,
including a Maryknoll priest working in Peru, testi®ed before the US
Congress on the sufferings of poor people under Fund programmes.
These criticisms from social movements were reinforced with the
publication in the late 1980s of several of®cially commissioned studies
which linked IMF/World Bank-sponsored policies to deteriorating
conditions for the poor (Corina, Jolly and Stewart 1987±8; UNCTAD
1989: 153±209). In the ®rst of many such global seminars, representa-
tives of forty-six NGOs from two dozen countries met at Oxford in
September 1987 to discuss alternative approaches to macroeconomic
adjustment (Nelson 1996: 613).
Calls to protect the poor from the costs of IMF-supported stabilisa-
tion and restructuring have continued unabated throughout the 1990s.
Prominent actors in this line of advocacy work have included: the
Development GAP, the United States branch of Friends of the Earth
(FOE-US) and Bread for the World in Washington; the global network
of Oxfams; and the Swiss Coalition of Development Organisations
(DGAP 1995, 1996a; Watkins et al. 1995: ch. 3; Oxfam 1995). Certain
development NGOs in the South have also sought to engage the IMF
on the issue of poverty eradication: e.g. the Freedom from Debt
Coalition in the Philippines; the Forum of African Voluntary Develop-
ment Organisations (FAVDO) in Senegal; Equipo PUEBLO in Mexico;
the PlatfoÁm Ayisyen Pledwaye pou yon Devlopman AlteÁnatif
(PAPDA) in Haiti; and Focus on the Global South in Thailand.
Various academic researchers (including in particular those af-
®liated to institutes of development studies) have in the 1990s also
continued to criticise a purported maldevelopment connected to IMF-
sponsored policies. These think tanks have included ODI and the
Institute of Development Studies in Britain, the Brazilian Institute for
Social and Economic Analysis (IBASE), ODC and the Harvard Insti-
tute for International Development (HIID) in the USA, the Economic
Policy Research Centre in Uganda, the North±South Institute in
Canada, the Austrian Foundation for Development Assistance
Research (O È FSE), and so on.
Whereas the development NGOs and academic institutes just
named have taken what could be loosely described as socialist and

166
 The IMF and social movements

Keynesian approaches to changing the IMF, other critiques of the

Fund's involvement in development issues have come from liber-
tarian quarters. These challengers have argued that `free markets'
provide the optimal formula for poverty eradication and that IMF
programmes, like all public-sector interventions in the economy, in
the end perpetuate rather than alleviate the problem. On these lines,
the Washington-based Cato Institute has continually questioned the
raison d'eÃtre of the IMF, inter alia through its annual monetary
conferences since 1983 and its Project on Global Economic Liberty
since 1990 (Bandow and VaÂsquez 1994; Cato Institute 1998). Similar
free-market critiques of the Fund have emanated in the late 1990s
from other Washington think tanks such as the American Enterprise
Institute for Public Policy Research, the Heritage Foundation and the
Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Ecological sustainability
Next to campaigning on issues of labour and poverty, a few in¯uential
NGOs have focused their lobbying of the Fund on countering the
allegedly harmful ecological consequences of IMF conditionalities.
Environmentalists gave their ®rst Congressional testimony on these
matters in 1983, but their advocacy work on the Fund has mainly
intensi®ed since 1989. In that year FOE-US launched its IMF Reform
Campaign, which has continued to this day. Its activists have argued
that Fund-sponsored policies can produce `wanton destruction of
fragile ecosystems [and] depletion of resources at a rate faster than the
environment can restore them' (FOE 1996a). Other NGOs pursuing
eco-friendly change in Fund conditionality have been the World
Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Wide Fund for Nature
(WWF) (Cruz and Repetto 1992; Reed 1992, 1996). However, most
environmentalist associations have to date ignored the IMF, directing
their lobbying of global economic institutions instead at the World
Bank and the World Trade Organisation.4

Gender equity
Other social-movement initiatives vis-aÁ-vis IMF conditionalities
have highlighted gender issues. For example, several women's

4 See chapter 4 above.

167
Contesting Global Governance

organisations have produced studies of the gendered impact of

neoliberal structural adjustment programmes, arguing that the pains
of Fund-sponsored policies have fallen disproportionately on women
(Antrobus 1988; DGAP 1996b; Sparr 1994; Ssemogerere, Sengendo and
Kiggundu 1995; Woestman 1994). On the eve of the United Nations
Conference on Women at Beijing in 1995, FOE-US sent the managing
director of the Fund a detailed document on gender implications of
IMF-supported programmes, to which he gave a generously phrased
but otherwise non-committal response. However, on the whole fem-
inist lobbying on structural adjustment has concentrated on the World
Bank and the European Union rather than on the IMF.5

Improved governance
Finally in respect of conditionalities, several NGOs have pushed the
IMF to give greater attention to questions of human rights, corruption
and military spending. For example, a few US-based activists have
urged the Fund to consider human rights circumstances when pro-
viding credits in Latin America. Meanwhile the Berlin-based organisa-
tion Transparency International has encouraged the IMF to examine
corruption in programme countries (IMF 1998c). Certain NGOs (for
example, in Geneva) have argued that IMF-sponsored structural
adjustment should incorporate cuts in excessive military expenditure.
As with women's groups, however, the scale of these social-movement
contacts with the Fund has remained small.

Debt relief
Ever since the debt crisis of the South erupted in the early 1980s,
many critics of the IMF have advocated major reductions in the debt
burdens of these countries. For instance, a US Debt Crisis Network
was active between 1985 and 1990, as were various religious organisa-
tions around the world. However, the campaigns of the 1980s concen-
trated mainly on commercial and bilateral borrowings rather than on
loans from multilateral institutions. The IMF was implicated in the
debt problem as an important catalyst for rescheduling commercial
and bilateral loans, but not as a major creditor itself.

5 See chapter 2 above.

168
 The IMF and social movements

This situation began to change in 1993±4 when the European

Network on Debt and Development (EURODAD) launched a cam-
paign with its af®liates in sixteen countries to reduce the burdens in
the South of multilateral debt, including sums owing to the IMF
(EURODAD 1996a). Prominent partners in the EURODAD effort
have included Oxfam, the (British) Debt Crisis Network, the Debt
and Development Coalition Ireland, the Nordic Network on Debt
and Development, the Swiss Coalition, and the Bonn-based NGO
World Economy, Ecology and Development (WEED). EURODAD has
also collaborated with campaigns on debt in other regions. Among
these ASIADAD, started in 1993, has become rather moribund.
However, AFRODAD has shown steady if slow growth since its
launch in 1994, and LATINDAD was revived in 1997. In the countries
of the South earmarked for action under the IMF/World Bank debt-
reduction scheme launched in 1996 (detailed later), NGOs have
rallied around coalitions such as the Iniciativa Nicaragua and the
Uganda Debt Network in efforts to extend and accelerate this relief.
Consultancy ®rms such as Oxford International Associates and the
London-based External Finance for Africa Project have also added to
the critiques of the Fund's role in the debt crisis (Martin 1993; Mistry
1994, 1996).
In tandem with the work of the secular development NGOs just
mentioned, religious organisations have also provided much impetus
behind social-movement lobbying of the IMF to extend debt relief.
Behind closed doors, church leaders met with the IMF managing
director, Michel Camdessus, in London and Washington in early 1996
to argue for large-scale debt reduction (Vallely 1996). Already the
Pope had in 1995 publicly rebuked the Fund on the debt issue (John
Paul II 1995). Two years later the Ponti®cal Council for Justice and
Peace convened a meeting at the Vatican with Camdessus and the
Presidents of the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank
to discuss debt issues in Latin America (IMF 1997e: 208). At a grass-
roots level, the Religious Working Group on the World Bank and the
IMF, formed in the USA in 1994, has directed much of its attention to
the question of debt relief. Finally, the transborder Jubilee 2000
Campaign, launched in 1996 and covering af®liates in over forty
countries by mid-1999, has focused its calls for debt forgiveness
substantially on the Fund (Jubilee 2000 Campaign 1999a, 1999b).

169
Contesting Global Governance

Democratisation
In addition to altered conditionalities and debt relief, the third main
general goal of social-movement activities in regard to the IMF has
concerned democratisation of the institution. In this vein some refor-
mers have argued for changes in the voting system at the Fund in
order to reduce the dominant voice of a handful of governments
(Gerster 1993). Under the slogan of `ownership', advocates of
increased democracy in IMF operations have also urged greater
participation by client governments and civil societies in the formu-
lation and implementation of Fund-supported programmes. With
reference to `transparency', many advocates of change have de-
manded greater openness about policy-making processes at the IMF:
e.g. what decisions have been taken; by whom; from among which
options; and on the basis of what information. On the theme of
`accountability', various activists have pressed the Fund to establish
comprehensive, systematic and transparent mechanisms of policy
evaluation.
A few lobbyists like FOE-US raised issues of democratisation of the
IMF already in the late 1980s, but the matter has principally come to
the fore since the mid-1990s. Considerable substantive work in this
area has come through the Washington-based Center of Concern. Its
Rethinking Bretton Woods Project, begun in 1994, has aimed to effect
`genuine institutional reform over the next 10 to 15 years' (Center of
Concern 1998; Griesgraber and Gunter 1995, 1996). In 1997±8 the
Center coordinated a study group on Transparency and Account-
ability in the International Monetary Fund. This exercise, which
included full participation by current and former IMF staff, focused in
particular on increasing the release of Fund documentation and on
establishing a mechanism for independent outside evaluation of Fund
policies (IMF 1998f). In Britain, meanwhile, two dozen development
and environment NGOs set up a Bretton Woods Project in 1995 to
further work on reform of the IMF and the World Bank. With broadly
similar aims, the Amsterdam-based NGO service organisation
BothENDS started a Multilateral Financial Institutions Project in 1994.
In North America, the Halifax Initiative has since 1995 grouped
eleven advocacy groups in `A Canadian Coalition for Global
Economic Democracy' that has concerned itself inter alia with the IMF.
In sum, the greatest social-movement activity for change at the
International Monetary Fund has occurred in respect of employment,

170
 The IMF and social movements

poverty and debt issues. Since the mid-1990s substantial attention has
also focused on purported democratic de®cits in IMF operations.
More incidental lobbying on the Fund has raised questions of environ-
mental degradation, gender inequity, corruption, human rights abuses
and militarisation. Meanwhile other social movements such as con-
sumer unions, indigenous peoples and non-Christian religious groups
have ignored the IMF.

Strategies and tactics

Although some noteworthy social-movement initiatives in respect of
the IMF unfolded in the 1980s, the main growth in the number, range
and sophistication of campaigns for change in the organisation and its
policies has transpired in the 1990s. In assessing these activities, the
present section ®rst draws a distinction between reformist and radical
strategies of pursuing a transformation of global monetary and
®nancial governance. Attention turns thereafter to the various tactics
that social movements have employed vis-aÁ-vis the Fund, including
direct lobbying of the organisation as well as indirect pressure via
governments, other global governance agencies, the mass media, and
the general public.

Overall strategies
Regarding strategy, an important broad distinction can be drawn
between reformers and radicals in social movements (Jordan 1996).
Reformers are those elements who seek change through a recon-
structed International Monetary Fund. These circles accept the need
for an IMF-type agency in the contemporary world and aim to alter
the existing organisation so that it promotes a more secure and
equitable global political economy. In contrast, radicals have sought
not reorientations in the IMF so much as its contraction or even
abolition. In practice, the distinction between reformers and radicals
has sometimes blurred. For example, some individuals and groups in
social movements have shown a mix of the two tendencies, and some
activists have shifted their approach over time or between audiences.
The choice between a reformist and a radical approach of course
presents social movements with a key strategic decision. Reformism
implies acceptance of the IMF's existence and a relatively long process
of patient negotiation for change. Radicalism implies a rejection of the

171
Contesting Global Governance

IMF's existence and in many cases also a refusal to engage in detailed

discussions with the organisation. Reformers may regard radicals as
`unrealistic' and `destructive'. Radicals may regard reformers as
`naive' and `coopted'. For example, disagreements regarding aims,
strategy and tactics sharply divided reformists and radicals in their
response to the heavily indebted poor country (HIPC) initiative in
1996±7 (EURODAD 1996b). The balance between reformist and
radical approaches within social movements in part re¯ects the
Fund's success or failure in convincing activists of its readiness to
hear and respond to their criticisms.
Most of the organisations discussed in the preceding section have
pursued a reformist strategy in respect of the IMF. The ICFTU, ODI,
ODC, the Swiss Coalition, the WWF, Transparency International,
EURODAD, the Vatican, the Center of Concern and others have adopted
a policy of `constructive engagement' with the Fund. Some religious
groups like the Maryknoll order and NGOs like Oxfam and FOE-US
have shown a mix of reformist and radical tendencies. As a result, their
contacts with the IMF have tended to be more confrontational.
Other parts of social movements have taken an unambiguously
rejectionist stance in respect of the Fund. For example, many grass-
roots associations in programme countries have urged that IMF
interventions be removed from their lives. In the USA, several groups
af®liated to the Fifty Years Is Enough coalition have likewise called for
a major reduction in the Fund's activities. The Fifty Years network
was launched in 1994 with thirty-three af®liates. By 1999 it had a US
membership of over 205 associations, plus 180 partner organisations
in sixty-®ve countries, and a coordinating of®ce in Washington (Fifty
Years Is Enough 1999). Meanwhile, free-marketers associated with
organisations like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation
have advocated the abolition of the IMF on libertarian grounds
(Bandow 1998). During 1997±8, lobbying in Washington saw a tactical
coalition of `rightist' and `leftist' radicals with the aim of blocking
Congressional approval of increased IMF funding.

Campaign tactics
This alliance of convenience is indicative of the growing sophistication
of much social-movement activism vis-aÁ-vis the Fund in the 1990s.
Quite a few groups have learned how the IMF is organised, how they
can acquire direct contacts with its staff, how to obtain and interpret

172
 The IMF and social movements

Fund documentation, and so on. Various associations have produced

their own studies of IMF operations. Several campaigns have hired
professional lobbyists, consultants and/or information of®cers. A few
organisations based outside the USA have set up representative
of®ces in Washington inter alia to monitor the Fund.
Of the various forms of social-movement pressure on the IMF, street
protests have been the most visible. For example, banner-waving
demonstrators have appeared with some regularity outside Fund
headquarters in Washington, particularly in conjunction with the
IMF/World Bank annual meetings. Large-scale marches also accom-
panied the 1988 annual meetings in Berlin and the 1994 annual
meetings in Madrid. Trade unions and other grass-roots associations
have taken to the streets against the Fund in many programme
countries as well, sometimes with violent consequences. Walton and
Seddon (1994) have documented 146 austerity protests against multi-
laterally supported economic restructuring between 1976 and 1992. In
the worst case of `IMF riots', demonstrations in Venezuela in February
1989 left over 300 dead.
Many social-movement activists have also demanded change in the
Fund through correspondence with its senior of®cials. The managing
director alone receives hundreds of letters each year. On a number of
occasions a lead NGO has circulated a sign-on letter concerning
reform of the IMF. Activists have also submitted petitions in an
attempt to draw the Fund's attention to their demands. For example,
in early 1989 Save the Rainforest presented Camdessus with a petition
critical of Fund policies holding nearly 28,000 signatures from ®ve
major member states. Other associations have sent the IMF their
position papers and studies of Fund-supported policies.
The 1990s have seen major increases in face-to-face lobbying of IMF
of®cials by social-movement activists. Starting with the Berlin meet-
ings in 1988, delegations of NGO representatives have requested, and
increasingly gained, interviews with the Fund's Executive Directors
(EDs) at the time of the annual conference. Over half of the twenty-
four EDs agreed to such encounters at the 1996 meetings. Various
other deputations of trade unionists, religious leaders and NGO
activists have called on EDs at other times of the year. Meanwhile
representatives of social movements have had occasional discussions
with the managing director both in Washington and in several
programme countries.
Since around 1992, social-movement activists have also had a

173
Contesting Global Governance

number of interviews and brie®ngs with of®cials in the functional and

area departments of the Fund. For example, several delegations of
trade unionists have visited Washington and met with some of the
IMF staff responsible for their countries: from Zambia in May 1993;
from Niger and Mali in January 1994; from Francophone Africa in
December 1995; from Central Europe in December 1996; and from
Asia in February 1998. In 1993 and 1995, several eco-advocates
attended seminars on macroeconomics and the environment organ-
ised by the Fund (IMF 1993, 1995d). Since 1995, senior staff in the
Policy Development and Review (PDR) department have had several
exchanges with development NGOs in relation to the aforementioned
IMF/World Bank initiative for debt relief. Finally, representatives of
social movements have in the 1990s made various approaches in the
®eld to visiting IMF mission teams and to res reps of the Fund.
On other occasions social movements have invited management
and staff of the IMF to their events. For example, the ICFTU has
usually included participation from the local res rep of the Fund in its
national seminars on structural adjustment. The IMF also despatched
a representative to an International Round Table on `Structural
Adjustment and Environment' in Berlin in 1992. The Executive
Director for Switzerland accepted invitations from the Swiss Coalition
of Development Organisations to undertake joint fact-®nding mis-
sions to Ghana in 1993 and Bangladesh in 1996.
Considerable political sophistication in social-movement campaigns
has also appeared with their employment of indirect pressure on the
Fund, for example, via national governments. The most advanced
tactics of this kind have developed in the USA, where activists have in
1980, 1983, 1989, 1991±2, 1994 and 1997±8 attempted to block or
qualify Congressional approval of increased monies for the IMF. Each
of the allocations since 1989 has eventually had conditions attached,
e.g., relating to the social and environmental effects of structural
adjustment or to increased transparency and evaluation of Fund
operations. That said, follow-up mechanisms to ensure the IMF's
compliance with these terms have been weak.
In other countries, the Debt and Development Coalition Ireland has
successfully lobbied the DaÂil and the Ministry of Finance in Dublin to
defer contributions from the Irish government to ESAF since 1995
(Hanlon 1997; Somers 1997). Social movements have also engaged
representative institutions in those programme countries like Haiti
where a structural adjustment programme negotiated with the IMF

174
 The IMF and social movements

requires the approval of the legislature. Several UK-based develop-

ment NGOs have in recent years made submissions concerning the
Fund to parliamentary select committees in London. In Switzerland,
NGOs have since 1992 used a special extra-parliamentary committee
on the Bretton Woods institutions to press the federal government
inter alia on matters concerning the IMF (Raffer and Singer 1996:
146±9).
Other social-movement lobbying has targeted ministries of ®nance
and central banks, that is, the parts of national governments with
which the IMF has maintained its closest contacts. For example,
several NGOs in Germany met in early 1996 with the International
department of the Bundesbank to discuss reform of the Fund. In 1998
BothENDS coordinated several discussions about the IMF between
activists and the Netherlands Ministry of Finance and the Netherlands
Bank. Lobbyists in Washington have likewise directed some of their
efforts at the US Treasury department. In some countries social-
movement campaigners have turned to ministries in the hope of
obtaining con®dential Fund documents that IMF staff refuse to leak.
In addition, certain campaigns for change have sought indirect
in¯uence on the IMF through contacts with other global governance
agencies. For example, the ICFTU has joined forces with the Inter-
national Labour Organisation (ILO) to advocate a larger social dimen-
sion in Fund programmes. EURODAD has engaged with the European
Commission (especially the Structural Adjustment Unit of DG VIII) in
the hope that `progressive elements in EU policy . . . could have some
leverage on BWI policies designed in Washington' (EURODAD 1995:
9; see also EURODAD 1996c). Development NGOs have also found
substantial sympathy for IMF reform in UNCTAD, UNDP, UNICEF,
the Non-Aligned Movement, the Intergovernmental Group of Twenty-
Four and the Commonwealth Secretariat. NGO fora running parallel
to UN-sponsored global issue conferences in the 1990s have often
given prominent attention to questions of debt relief and reform of the
prevailing framework of structural adjustment.
At the same time, many activists have hoped that campaigns for
change targeted at the World Bank will reverberate on the Fund. For
example, since 1996 a network of over 1000 associations from South
and North has engaged the World Bank in a Structural Adjustment
Policy Review Initiative (SAPRI) to evaluate local experiences of
adjustment in programme countries (SAPRIN 1999a, 1999b). The IMF
has declined to become an of®cial full participant in SAPRI, but the

175
Contesting Global Governance

NGOs clearly hope that the results of the exercise might nevertheless
in¯uence the Fund.
In respect of the general public, a number of advocacy groups have
in the 1990s given increased attention to civic education about the
IMF: i.e. to make questions of debt, surveillance, structural adjustment
and the overall political economy of globalisation more accessible to
citizens at large. For example, WEED, Fifty Years Is Enough, and other
NGOs have organised symposia and workshops in order to advance
public understanding of the Fund. FOE-US has used its longer
experience of campaigning on the IMF to produce fact sheets and
handbooks about the organisation for use by other groups (Torfs
1996). The Debt and Development Coalition Ireland and the Berne
Declaration in Switzerland have each prepared popular information
packs concerning the Bretton Woods institutions. Christian Aid and
the Maryknoll order have both produced short ®lms on the need for
debt relief in the South. Some groups like Oxfam have cultivated links
with the mainstream press in the hope of reaching the wider public
via the mass media.
Finally, social movements have in the 1990s advanced their cam-
paign tactics with improved communications among the activists
themselves. For example, advocacy groups have held meetings con-
currently with all IMF/World Bank annual meetings since 1986.
Lower telephone charges, faxes, electronic mail and the World Wide
Web have enabled those activists with access to these technologies to
develop much closer contacts with one another. NGOs have since the
mid-1990s maintained half a dozen listservs on the Internet with
continually updated information about the IMF.6
In sum, then, in the 1990s the International Monetary Fund has
encountered many more proponents of change, many of whom have
had more speci®c objectives, a tighter organisation, and greater
political skill than their predecessors of the 1980s. Any analysis of
Fund policy content and consequences must now take these relation-
ships into account.

6 For example, [email protected] (Center of Concern); [email protected]

(Fifty Years Is Enough Network); [email protected] (circulation of information
for Washington-based activists); lrp-arg@¯acso.wamani.apc.org (FLACSO-Argentina);
[email protected] (Central and Eastern Europe Bankwatch Network); stop-im-
[email protected] (Essential Information).

176
 The IMF and social movements

Impacts
In what ways and to what extent have social movements actually
affected policies at the Fund? Needless to say, it is impossible to
determine, precisely and de®nitively, the degree to which reformist
and radical campaigns for change have affected IMF behaviour. It is
not possible to measure a distinct social-movement in¯uence sepa-
rately from other forces such as pressure from governments and shifts
in the general world political and economic situation.
The present discussion mainly assesses changes in the Fund's
orientations in the 1990s. However, it is important also to stress the
signi®cant positive reinforcement of existing policy lines which the
IMF has received from some sectors of civil society. Bankers' associ-
ations, chambers of commerce, mainstream think tanks and the like
have rarely pushed the Fund to depart from its prevailing funda-
mental assumptions, modes of analysis and broad prescriptions.
Arguably social movements have to date made only a modest overall
impact on the IMF, in part because the Fund has received constant
countervailing endorsements from other civic circles.
That said, the IMF has also adjusted a number of its policy
directions during the 1990s. For one thing, with respect to substantive
policy, the Fund has reformulated conditionalities so that they include
some explicit attention to social, environmental and governance
issues. In addition, as already mentioned, the IMF has, together with
the World Bank, developed a modest programme of debt relief for
poor countries. On questions of democratisation, the Fund has, with
attention to `consensus' and `ownership', become more attuned to the
political dimensions of its activities. In related veins, the 1990s have
seen notable moves at the IMF towards greater transparency (with
substantially increased access to information) and accountability (with
the expansion of evaluation activities).
These general policy changes have not gone as far as most activists
would have liked. However, even vigorous critics concede that the IMF
has in the 1990s altered its approach to a number of issues. In each case,
social movements have helped to produce the (limited) policy shifts.

The `social dimension'

Inputs from trade unions, NGOs, development studies institutes and
other critics have encouraged the Fund to reconsider its general

177
Contesting Global Governance

approach to conditionality in certain respects. Most prominently, IMF-

®nanced programmes have since the mid-1990s given greater attention
to the so-called `social dimension' of structural adjustment. Already in
the late 1970s, some commentators were voicing concern about pos-
sible harmful effects of Fund-sponsored restructuring on vulnerable
groups; however, these issues did not gain real prominence at the IMF
until ®fteen years later. Camdessus launched the new tone in July 1992
when he declared before the UN Economic and Social Council that `the
essential missing element [in programmes] . . . is a suf®cient regard for
the short-term human costs involved during adjustment or transition
to a market economy' (IMF 1992). Since around 1994, IMF-backed
policy packages have regularly included so-called `social safety nets'
to reduce the adverse impacts of adjustment on the poor and weak.
These measures have addressed matters including preventive and
primary health care, primary and secondary education, and (less
often) unemployment bene®ts and the protection of pensions for the
elderly (IMF 1994b, 1995a, 1996l). Also to promote the newly empha-
sised themes of `high-quality growth', the Fund's Fiscal Affairs Depart-
ment (FAD) in 1995 and 1998 hosted high-pro®le seminars on income
distribution and equity, including participation from inter alia religious
groups, labour organisations and academics (IMF 1995e, 1998h). In
1998 the IMF began a pilot programme of closer collaboration with the
World Bank on social aspects of adjustment, and in 1999 two poverty
experts from Britain were seconded to the Fund for a two-year period.
That said, the growth of the social dimension in IMF policy should
not be overestimated. Although references to safety nets and the like
have ®gured prominently in the Fund's public pronouncements since
1992, practical measures to combat poverty have not moved to the
heart of IMF-supported programmes. The relevant policy documents
usually discuss `social issues', `social needs' and `social costs' rela-
tively brie¯y and often in only general terms. (Social consequences
have been considerably highlighted in the Asia crisis programmes
since 1997.) The director of FAD himself has said that the Fund's work
on poverty alleviation remains `very limited' and `not a main or
explicit objective of the IMF'. Indeed, the purpose of safety nets has
`much to do with strengthening the political sustainability of reform'
(IMF 1996c: 102). In sum, `SAP' in the 1990s has continued in the ®rst
place to designate `structural adjustment programme' rather than
`social action programme'; however, the two have overlapped more in
recent IMF packages than they did in the 1970s and 1980s.

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 The IMF and social movements

Ecological sustainability
Next to questions of poverty alleviation, Fund-supported policy
programmes have since the mid-1990s begun to include occasional
passing attention to issues of environmental degradation. In early
1991 the Executive Board enjoined IMF staff to develop greater
understanding of the interplay between economic policy and environ-
mental change (Osunsade and Gleason 1992: 21). Fund of®cials have
in this spirit produced several studies of macroeconomics and the
environment (Gandhi 1996; Gupta, Miranda and Parry 1993;
Muzondo et al. 1990). However, to date only one or two of®cials in
FAD have worked at length on these questions, and then amongst
their other duties (IMF 1996c: 103). As far as one can gather from
published materials, only a small minority of structural adjustment
programmes have made any reference to ecological degradation (IMF
1996d, 1996h). Environmental issues have never formed a stumbling
block in the Fund's negotiations with governments. Executive Direc-
tors have shown no inclination ± and indeed have often expressed
positive reluctance ± to expand the IMF's mandate to encompass
ecological sustainability. In short, the Fund has responded to pressure
from environmental NGOs (and in particular the large environmen-
talist lobby in Washington) by acknowledging the existence of links
between economic policy and ecological change. However, this recog-
nition has not, to date, translated into a major reformulation of IMF
prescriptions.

Gender sensitivity
Another area where the Fund has marginally adjusted its approach to
conditionality concerns gender. The chief IMF representative at the
Beijing Conference on Women made comments unknown to the Fund
of earlier days, noting that `policies that seem to be gender blind may
be far from gender neutral in their impact' (IMF 1995f: 287). However,
her further statement that `gender analysis is . . . already being used to
improve economic adjustment programs' seems rather strong (IMF
1995f: 288). Although the Fund has published one working paper on
gender aspects of macroeconomic policy (Stotsky 1996), its of®cials
appear to have made little use of the previously cited research on the
gendered consequences of structural reform (page 168 above). Avail-
able documents concerning IMF-sponsored stabilisation and struc-

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Contesting Global Governance

tural adjustment programmes have only rarely made explicit reference

to women's circumstances, and then have mainly done so as a
footnote (Government of Kenya 1996: 38±9; IMF 1996f). The Fund has
hired no economists with a specialisation in gender analysis; nor have
any staff in FAD explored gender issues in the way that certain
of®cials have studied poverty alleviation and environmental prob-
lems. On a more positive note the IMF has in the late 1990s begun to
look critically at the gender pro®le of its staff (IMF 1998j: 101). Part of
the reason for this neglect of gender may be that social movements
have not given related questions much emphasis in their contacts with
the Fund. In particular, as noted earlier, women's organisations have
done little campaigning on the IMF.

`Good governance'
Most recently, to the pleasure of groups like Transparency Inter-
national, the IMF has expanded the scope of conditionality with explicit
attention to governance issues. At the 1996 annual meetings, the
Interim Committee adopted a Declaration on Partnership for Sustain-
able Global Growth which called inter alia for `promoting good govern-
ance in all its aspects, including by ensuring the rule of law, improving
the ef®ciency and accountability of the public sector, and tackling
corruption' (IMF 1997a: 209). Subsequently several Fund publications
have addressed these topics (Dhonte and Kapur 1997; Kopits and Craig
1998; Mauro 1997; Tanzi 1998). In 1997 the Executive Board adopted a
guidance note regarding governance issues which referred among
other things to corruption, enhanced transparency in national decision-
making and budgetary processes, improved accounting and control
mechanisms, better dissemination of statistics, and civil service reform
(IMF 1997f). At the 1998 spring meetings, the Interim Committee
encouraged IMF member governments to implement a Code of Good
Practices on Fiscal Transparency (IMF 1998g: 122±4).
In concrete terms, however, good governance conditionality has not
as yet affected IMF programmes much beyond the already existent
pursuit of civil service reform. The Fund has halted disbursement of
certain credits (e.g. to Kenya and to Cambodia in 1996) until corrup-
tion issues were addressed. IMF management and staff have also
urged several governments (e.g. those of India and Pakistan) to
reduce `unproductive' military expenditure. Governance issues have
furthermore ®gured prominently in discussions surrounding the

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 The IMF and social movements

Fund's interventions in the Asian crisis of 1997±8. On the whole,

however, the IMF has not yet developed clear and consistent opera-
tional practices in regard to governance matters.
Indeed, some critics in social movements have viewed the Fund's
interest in `good governance' with suspicion as a neoimperialist
intervention. Moreover, to the disappointment of some campaigners
for change, the IMF has not interpreted the concept of `good govern-
ance' to encompass guarantees of human rights. In handling govern-
ance issues, the Fund has insisted on separating the `economic' from
the `political' and on restricting its concerns to the former.

Debt relief
Debt relief is a ®fth area where, partly owing to pressure from social
movements, IMF policy has shifted in the 1990s. As mentioned earlier,
the Fund became actively involved in the external debt problems of
the South and the East in the early 1980s, when the organisation
played an important catalytic role in the rescheduling of transborder
loans. In the late 1990s, the IMF continues periodically to provide
advisory support to commercial banks in their renegotiation of repay-
ment terms for a given country. In addition, the rescheduling of
of®cial bilateral debts through the so-called Paris Club has since the
1980s often been linked to the implementation of IMF-sponsored
structural adjustment policies.
However, until the mid-1990s the IMF did not regard external debt
burdens as a major impediment to the development prospects of the
countries concerned. Broadly speaking, Fund of®cials assumed that
standard rescheduling linked to neoliberal structural adjustment
would in time resolve the debt problem. Nor did the IMF consider
providing relief on the repayment of debts that governments of the
South owed to the Fund itself.
The IMF's stance on these issues changed in 1996. Early that year a
joint IMF/World Bank staff paper concluded that, even with existing
debt-relief mechanisms, eight HIPCs could not achieve sustainable
debt burdens in less than ten years (Financial Times, 4 March 1996: 10).
At the 1996 annual meetings in September, the Interim and Develop-
ment Committees of the IMF and the World Bank endorsed the so-
called HIPC initiative of exceptional debt relief for eligible countries
(Boote and Thugge 1997). This plan for the ®rst time included an
element of relief on debt payments owed to the Fund. By early 1999,

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Contesting Global Governance

the Executive Boards of the IMF and the World Bank had con®rmed
the eligibility of six countries for the HIPC scheme, and one country
(Uganda, in April 1998) had begun to receive this relief.
The various social-movement campaigns for debt relief described
earlier have ®gured importantly in effecting these policy shifts at the
IMF. Persistent pressure on this issue from many religious organisa-
tions and development NGOs helped to establish the principle of
concessionary debt relief at the Paris Club in the late 1980s and then in
the mid-1990s to extend that principle to loans owed to multilateral
agencies, including the IMF. In addition, lobbying by a number of
groups has had some effect in relaxing the eligibility criteria for HIPC
relief and in increasing the degree of concessionality included in HIPC
agreements for individual countries. Reform campaigners have also
helped to shape the HIPC initiative so that it makes an explicit link
between debt relief and safeguards to government expenditure on
basic social services.
That said, many social-movement activists remain dissatis®ed with
the HIPC initiative and prevailing general approaches to debt relief
for the South. In their eyes, HIPC arrangements should reach more
countries more quickly and should cover a larger proportion of
external debts with more generous provisions (EURODAD 1998a;
Gordon and Gwin 1998; Oxfam 1998). Critics have also complained
that the IMF's contribution to the scheme is modest and involves
re®nancing loans through ESAF rather than outright debt cancellation.
Some campaigners have argued that the Fund has been motivated as
much by the opportunity to replenish ESAF and place that credit
facility on a permanent footing as by the objective to alleviate the debt
burdens of poor countries. For proponents of comprehensive debt
write-offs like the Jubilee 2000 Campaign, Paris Club concessionality
and the HIPC initiative are wholly inadequate.
Yet the IMF's position on debt relief has clearly shifted between the
1980s and the 1990s. In the words of one Executive Director, `The
Fund has internalised the idea that debt is a problem for long-term
development in the South'.7 Moreover, the IMF has accepted the
principle of relief for poor countries on multilateral debts. It remains
to be seen how much further social movements might push the Fund
on debt relief; however, there is, it would seem, no turning back to
standard rescheduling for poor countries.

7 NGO meeting with an ED, observed by the author, October 1996.

182
 The IMF and social movements

Transparency
The ®ve impacts discussed thus far have related to policy content;
however, pressure from social movements has also helped to effect
several shifts in the institutional operations of the IMF. In particular,
the Fund has begun to answer demands for greater transparency in its
procedures, more systematic and public evaluation of its policies, and
increased participation by client governments and civil societies in the
formulation of IMF-supported macroeconomic programmes. In these
three ways the Fund has responded (at least partly) to social-
movement campaigns for a democratisation of global monetary and
®nancial governance.
The most notable moves towards a more open, participatory,
accountable IMF have come in the area of transparency. Calls from
FOE-US, the Center of Concern, the Bretton Woods Project and others
to make the Fund's operations more visible and comprehensible have
obtained a response in the 1990s that was previously unimaginable.
The IMF has not only massively increased its production of `public
relations' material, but the institution has also made available sub-
stantial numbers of policy documents. The Executive Board has taken
a number of steps since 1994 to increase disclosure, particularly after
(thanks in part to social-movement lobbying) the US Congress with-
held three-quarters of a requested $100 million appropriation for
replenishment of ESAF, subject to greater information disclosure by
the Fund (Congressional Quarterly Almanac 1994).
For one thing, more information has become publicly available
regarding the conditions attached to IMF loans. Since 1994, the Fund's
press releases concerning the approval of stand-by credits, Extended
Fund Facility programmes and ESAF loans have speci®ed some head-
line economic indicators and target ®gures. IMF management have
also since the mid-1990s urged governments to publish their letter of
intent (i.e., the detailed economic programme behind a stand-by
credit) or their policy framework paper (PFP, the detailed programme
behind a three-year ESAF loan). In response, starting with Kenya in
early 1996, eleven governments had published their PFPs by mid-
1998.8 The government of Argentina has disclosed all of its letters of

8 Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Kyrgyz Republic, Former

Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Rwanda, Senegal and Uganda.

183
Contesting Global Governance

intent since 1990, and details of each IMF-supported programme in

the Asian crisis of 1997±8 have appeared on the Fund's website.
Considerable information has also become publicly available on
IMF surveillance of national policies. In July 1994 the Executive Board
decided to publish Fund documents that serve as background to
Article IV consultations, provided that the government concerned did
not object. Over a hundred such papers have been released each year
since 1995. In April 1997 the Executive Board took the further decision
to publish (subject to the consent of the government concerned) a
summary of its deliberations of a country's economic policies in the
context of Article IV consultations (IMF 1997d: 148). The IMF issued
over thirty such of these press information notes (PINs) during the
®rst year of this disclosure policy.
When the Fund took the initiative in 1996 to establish the Special
Data Dissemination Standard, it immediately made the statistics
supplied publicly available. With language quite alien to the IMF of
earlier times, the Fund argued that of®cial data was `a public good' to
which there should be `ready and equal access' (IMF 1996f, 1996k).
SDDS materials became publicly accessible on the World Wide Web in
September 1996 (see http://dsbb.imf.org/). By early 1999, forty-seven
governments had subscribed to the scheme.
The shift to greater transparency has also prompted the IMF to
`open up' in several other ways. For example, the Executive Board
decided in January 1996 to declassify most ®les in the IMF archives,
albeit under a strictly applied thirty-year rule, with the result that the
released documents are unlikely to have immediate policy signi®-
cance (IMF 1996a: 201, 1996b). In recent years the Executive Board has
also issued public summaries of many of its decisions, through both
press releases and the columns of IMF Survey. A basic organigram of
the Fund was published for the ®rst time in the 1996 Annual Report
and was subsequently also incorporated into the IMF website (IMF
1996a: 220). Since 1997 visitors to IMF headquarters have been
allowed to consult a staff list. The Fund has also published the results
of several retrospective policy evaluations (see below).
To be sure, transparency at the IMF remains limited in important
respects. Most letters of intent, PFPs, and Article IV documents are
not published. Nor are minutes of Executive Board meetings available
until thirty years have lapsed. Most governments have not (yet)
subscribed to the SDDS or the more modest GDDS. The IMF has thus
far not followed the World Bank example of establishing public

184
 The IMF and social movements

information centres in Washington and a number of programme

countries.
Nevertheless, steps towards greater openness at the IMF (and,
through it, at national economic and ®nance ministries) have gained
considerable momentum in the 1990s. For example, the full Executive
Board turned out in July 1998 for a two-hour discussion of the
aforementioned study group report on transparency and evaluation at
the Fund. The pace of change remains slower than many social-
movement activists would like, but transparency is de®nitely on the
IMF agenda.

Evaluation
Along with its attention to issues of transparency, the IMF has also
answered calls for greater accountability in its operations with moves
to develop an evaluation programme (Wood and Welch 1998). The
Fund has in the 1990s increased internal policy reviews, started
external policy assessments, and upgraded its institutional mechan-
isms for evaluation activities. Critics have complained that the steps
taken to date are far from adequate; however, persistent pressure from
social movements has been instrumental in effecting a gradual inte-
gration of evaluation into IMF operations.
Most of the expansion of evaluation activities at the Fund has taken
the form of in-house policy reviews. For example, PDR has performed
biennial assessments of IMF surveillance, investigating both the
process of formulating advice to governments and the quality of that
advice. Since 1992 PDR has also undertaken two reviews of ESAF
programmes, an evaluation of IMF conditionality under stand-by and
extended arrangements, and an assessment of the Fund's technical
assistance. The results of the ESAF and conditionality reviews have
been published (Schadler 1995; Schadler et al. 1993; Schadler et al.
1995; Schadler, Bredenkamp et al. 1997). Meanwhile the IMF's Of®ce
of Internal Audit and Inspection has undertaken in-house evaluations
of technical assistance programmes and the functioning of resident
representative of®ces. The results of these reviews have not been
published.
In the late 1990s, following pressure from NGOs and the Group of
Seven governments, the IMF has begun to supplement these internal
evaluations with policy reviews by external assessors. The Executive
Board endorsed the principle of external evaluation in June 1996. The

185
Contesting Global Governance

®rst outside review, undertaken in 1997±8, examined ESAF pro-

grammes, with particular reference to issues that campaigners for
change have long emphasised such as social provisions and owner-
ship (IMF 1998b). In line with urgings from a number of groups
including FOE-US and EURODAD (EURODAD 1998b; FOE-US 1998),
the Executive Board decided to release the IMF staff paper which
responded to the external evaluation and to invite reactions from the
public before taking decisions on the future of ESAF (IMF 1998a). In
July 1998 the Executive Board furthermore announced a second
external evaluation, this time of IMF surveillance activities under
Article IV (IMF 1998i).
To oversee this increased evaluation activity, the Executive Board in
1996 created an Evaluation Committee comprising ®ve EDs. In the
same year the IMF's Of®ce of Internal Audit and Inspection was
upgraded to permit it to conduct more reviews of all aspects of the
Fund's organisational structure and work practices (IMF 1996j).
However, the IMF has as yet not answered repeated urgings for the
establishment of a permanent evaluation unit, independent of man-
agement and the Executive Board. Hence the Fund has created no
organ comparable to the Operations Evaluation department and the
Inspection Panel at the World Bank.
On the whole, then, evaluation remains a relative novelty at the
IMF. Not many policy reviews have thus far been undertaken. Some
areas of activity have not yet been assessed at all: for example, the
Fund's involvement in so-called transition economies and its efforts at
®nancial sector reform. Critics have queried the `independence' of
external evaluations in so far as the Executive Board has set the terms
of reference and selected the evaluators for these exercises. Meanwhile
the IMF staff who conduct internal assessments have not had training
in evaluation techniques. Reluctance persists in some quarters of the
staff to submit Fund activities to systematic review.
That said, evaluation has gained a place in IMF operations in the
1990s. It seems likely that, with continued pressure from social move-
ments and other quarters, the programme of policy reviews will
expand and be further re®ned in the years to come.

Ownership
Finally, opposition from social movements has helped to put the
question of ownership on the IMF agenda in the 1990s. Critics have

186
 The IMF and social movements

long charged that the Fund imposes its prescriptions on borrowing

governments. That is, it determines the methodology, it analyses the
data, and it speci®es the policy measures, according to a fairly
standard formula. In so far as any `consultation' takes place, Fund
staff tend to talk only with a small circle of of®cials of the ministry of
®nance and the central bank. Yet most of these civil servants hold the
same general outlooks as their colleagues from Washington; indeed,
many have been trained by the IMF. Meanwhile other ministries, the
national legislature, local authorities and civil society usually have
minimal if any say in policy making. As a result, it is concluded, the
country concerned does not `own' the Fund-sponsored programme. In
effect, so the critics charge, the policy process is undemocratic.
As the 1990s have progressed, management and staff at the IMF
have gone some way to accepting the importance of ownership, at
least in so far as it may be an indispensable ingredient for successful
policy implementation. The Executive Board has come ®rmly to the
view that, in the words of one ED, `if governments don't have a solid
base of support for an IMF-sponsored programme, it won't work'.9
Many Fund of®cials today likewise declare that `a broad-based social
consensus is needed to sustain an IMF programme' or even that `by
making sure that all voices are heard we increase the success of a
programme'.10 The ethos in the Fund has clearly shifted towards a
greater appreciation of questions concerning the political viability of
policies.
That said, the change in rhetoric has not to date always translated
into substantially different behaviour at the Fund. To be sure, IMF
management have taken many more outreach initiatives in the 1990s
than before. An expanded External Relations department has given
Fund activities much more publicity. In the ®eld, many IMF missions
and res reps have become considerably more visible. However, the
principle of ownership has not yet thoroughly infused the process of
formulating and implementing Fund-supported policies. For the IMF,
`ownership' has tended to mean acceptance by the borrowing govern-
ment and its citizens of Fund prescriptions. As one of®cial has
typically put it, `we have to persuade the population that an adjust-
ment package is legitimate'.11 In general, the IMF has continued to

9 Interview with the author, November 1996.

10 Interviews with the author, October±November 1996.
11 Interview with the author, April 1997.

187
Contesting Global Governance

accord client states and local civil societies only limited initiative in
the construction of stabilisation and structural adjustment policies.
The 1997±8 external evaluation of ESAF concluded that, with respect
to ownership, `it has been dif®cult . . . to reconcile the declared
intentions with practice' (IMF 1998b: 18, also 38±42). It does seem
that, on the whole, achieving `consensus' has, for the Fund, not meant
building new understandings out of different points of view, but
bringing the notional `owners' round to an unaltered IMF position.

Change and continuity

Considering all of the developments discussed in this section together,
how much change have social movements effected in IMF policy in
the 1990s? As noted at the outset, it is not possible to measure these
impacts with precision or in isolation from other forces. However,
trade unions, religious groups, NGOs and certain think tanks have
contributed to some shifts both in the IMF's substantive policies and
in its operating procedures. Radicals have clearly not achieved their
goal of rolling back or eliminating the Fund. Nevertheless, social
movements have encouraged the IMF to amend its conditionalities, to
accept the principle of concessionary debt relief for poor countries,
to take steps towards greater transparency and accountability, and to
recognise the importance of policy ownership.
Yet, in relation to the aims of social movements speci®ed earlier, the
changes just described constitute fairly modest alterations. Labour
protection, poverty eradication, ecological sustainability, gender
equity and human rights have not become central planks of IMF
activity. The Fund has not come close to endorsing debt write-offs.
Some IMF operations continue to be cloaked in secrecy. Evaluation
mechanisms for Fund policies remain underdeveloped. `Ownership'
of IMF-sponsored programmes has thus far included fairly few
elements of consultation and participation.
From the inside of the organisation, most management and staff at
the Fund feel that the institution and its policies have greatly changed
in the 1990s. However, from the outside, advocates of fundamental
change tend to be more impressed by the persistent predominance of
neoliberal convictions at the IMF. The Fund continues in the ®rst place
to promote low in¯ation rates, low balance-of-payments de®cits, low
government budget de®cits, liberalisation of cross-border resource
¯ows, deregulation of markets, privatisation, and a relative shift in the

188
 The IMF and social movements

provision of social security from the state to the market and the
voluntary sector. Concerns about employment, poverty, ecology,
gender, debt and democracy have at most been added on as secondary
issues; they have not displaced stabilisation, liberalisation, dereg-
ulation and privatisation as the primary IMF objectives.

Counter-forces
What has kept social movements from going further to realise their
aims in relation to the International Monetary Fund? Why have they,
on the whole, tended to achieve change within continuity rather than
a full-scale transformation of Fund practices? The present section
discusses several important forces that have worked against social-
movement strivings for a thoroughgoing reconstruction of the IMF in
the late twentieth century: namely, the power of neoliberalism; the
institutional culture of the Fund; social hierarchies; limited resources
for social-movement campaigns; the relatively low priority that social
movements have accorded to the IMF; and inadequate democratic
legitimation of many social-movement activities.

Predominance of neoliberalism
One important reason why social movements have had dif®culty
effecting change away from the neoliberal paradigm in the IMF relates
to the powerful hold which that knowledge structure has had on the
contemporary world political economy as a whole. Neoliberalism
refers here broadly to the worldview according to which globalised
market relations will in time create maximal liberty, democracy,
prosperity and peace for humankind as a whole. Contrary to alter-
native perspectives such as mercantilism, Keynesianism, socialism,
environmentalism and more, neoliberalism prescribes policies of
thoroughgoing liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation within a
context of accelerated globalisation. In a word, neoliberalism has
taken the classical liberal formula for the good society and given it a
global twist.
Following the stagnation of post-colonial socialism in the South, the
collapse of central planning in the East, and the retreat of corporatist
welfarism in the North, neoliberal visions have come to reign
supreme across the world. In the 1980s and 1990s, most states ± and in
particular the strongest governments ± have to some substantial

189
Contesting Global Governance

degree embraced market-centred solutions coupled with multiparty

representative democracy as a universal formula for optimal human
development. This neoliberal consensus has also encompassed the
most in¯uential global governance agencies, including the Bretton
Woods institutions, the WTO, and the Organisation for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD). Even UNCTAD has largely
abandoned its earlier structuralist analysis of the world economy for a
more market-oriented approach. Neoliberal views have also held
sway in corporate business, the ®nancial markets, the mainstream
mass media, various in¯uential think tanks, and many key institutions
of higher learning.
Indeed, the majority of the Fund's contacts with civil society at large
(as opposed to social movements more particularly) have broadly
reinforced the institution's commitment to neoliberalism. On the
whole, business associations and economic research institutes have
championed the vision of global free markets. In the words of several
IMF of®cials, these circles `know what we are doing' and `have a
similar view to us'.12 The managing director of the Fund has delivered
most of his speeches to non-of®cial audiences at business conferences
and academic gatherings. At the IMF/World Bank annual meetings,
representatives of commercial concerns have carried badges as
`visitors' and `special guests' and have been included in the published
list of participants. In contrast, representatives of social movements
have worn `NGO' labels and have been excluded from the published
list of participants. Corporate managers and academic economists
have had regular exchanges of views with the operational staff of the
Fund. However, the IMF has channelled most of its contacts with
trade unions, religious groups, NGOs and the like through the
External Relations department, thus away from the heart of policy
making.
Being on the side of the prevailing neoliberal `commonsense', the
Fund has found it fairly easy to reject unorthodox talk of the kind that
social movements have propounded. Thus, for example, the Fund
declined invitations in 1992±3 to participate in a WWF project to
explore environmentally sensitive alternatives to the prevailing para-
digm of structural adjustment. Likewise, the IMF has taken a luke-
warm approach to the previously mentioned SAPRI exercise,
probably largely on account of the unorthodox character of some of its

12 Interviews with the author, November 1996 and March 1997.

190
 The IMF and social movements

methodologies. In contrast, the Fund has entrusted its previously

mentioned external reviews of ESAF and surveillance entirely to
professional macroeconomists. As critical as these evaluators might
be, their views have developed from broadly the same methodology
as has informed Fund policy making.
Thus, in challenging neoliberalism at the IMF, social movements
have confronted a knowledge structure that extends well beyond the
institution itself. The Fund's alignment with the prevailing ideology
has given the institution far greater power in the contemporary world
political economy than its modest staff and operational budget would
suggest. Indeed, some campaigners for IMF reform have ± deliberately
or unconsciously ± shifted their language in the direction of neoliberal
discourse in order to get a greater hearing from the Fund.

Institutional culture
The structural power of neoliberal discourse has of course militated
against major transformation in the World Bank and the WTO as well
as in the IMF. Hence the dominance of neoliberalism in the late
twentieth century does not explain the generally greater resistance to
change in the Fund as compared with the other two global economic
institutions examined in the present study. This difference has resulted
at least partly from certain distinctive institutional features of the IMF.
As an organisation, the Fund has been highly monolithic: more so
than most global governance agencies, or indeed most formal institu-
tions in general. It has also had an interventionist and hierarchical
management style. When combined with the power of neoliberal
orthodoxy, such institutional characteristics have arguably made IMF
staff even more reluctant to engage with the sorts of alternative
perspectives expounded by social movements.
Several contrasts between the Fund and the World Bank are striking
in this respect. For one thing, the IMF's Bretton Woods twin has
housed a greater diversity of approaches to `development' amongst its
personnel, including some pockets of major internal dissent. Certain
Bank of®cials have even tried to use connections with social move-
ments to promote alternative viewpoints within the organisation. The
World Bank has also had considerable staff turnover ± inter alia
through frequent use of contract personnel who move in and out of
the organisation. In this way, too, the Bank has gained greater
exposure to a diversity of perspectives. Indeed, there has been some

191
Contesting Global Governance

two-way ¯ow of personnel between the World Bank and reformist

organisations such as development studies institutes and develop-
ment NGOs.
In contrast to the Bank, the Fund has had little division on the
inside and porosity toward the outside. The institution has sooner
resembled a `family business'. Traditionally, most of®cials have joined
the IMF relatively early in their careers and have then often stayed
with the organisation until retirement. The agency has tended as a
result to be rather insular. No staff mobility has transpired between
the Fund and social movements.
In management style, the Fund has maintained tight central direc-
tion and rigorous internal discipline. Before leaving the door, any IMF
programme proposal must have the approval of the Policy Develop-
ment and Review department, jokingly ± but also evocatively ±
described within the organisation as `the thought police' and `the
keepers of the theology'.13 Fund of®cials have pursued many frank
discussions with one another, but always within the walls of the
building and invariably within narrow boundaries of `acceptable'
debate. Only once or twice has an of®cial resigned from the IMF out of
a fundamental disagreement on policy. In these various ways, then,
the monolithic character of the institution has discouraged Fund
of®cials from developing an open dialogue with their outside critics in
social movements.

Social hierarchies
Along with the ideological and institutional forces already discussed,
hierarchical social structures have also made it dif®cult for social
movements to effect a fundamental reconstruction of the IMF in the
late twentieth century. Campaigners for change in the Fund have
generally pursued the interests of weaker and marginalised circles in
society: e.g. countries of the South and the East, workers, the poor,
and women. However, these constituencies have suffered structural
disadvantages in politics relative to countries of the North, investors
and managers, and men.
Needless to say, it is dif®cult to promote the interests of the South
and the East in respect of an institution that is dominated by the
North. (Although distinctions between North, South and East are to

13 Interviews with the author, October±November 1996.

192
 The IMF and social movements

some extent arti®cial and simplistic, a general structural bias against

the South and East is plain.) IMF recommendations have made their
deepest impacts in the South and the East, but a large majority of the
votes, money, staff and ideas in the Fund have come from the North.
Likewise, most social-movement organisations that maintain direct
contacts with the IMF have had their base in the North.
Advocacy groups in the South and the East have faced considerably
greater hurdles in lobbying the IMF than campaigners in the North.
For instance, given the expenses involved, many activists in the South
and the East (particularly at the grass roots) have had limited if any
access to fax and Internet connections. Fund information pamphlets
have appeared in at most ®ve languages ± all European ± and have
had minimal circulation in the East and the South. A huge majority of
social-movement representatives at the annual meetings have come
from the North. Indeed, campaigners who have travelled from the
South and the East have often lacked accreditation and have as a
result been locked out of the conference hall. Even on the ground in
programme countries, the IMF resident representative has often met
more with staff from North-based organisations (e.g., development
cooperation agencies or associations of foreign investors) than with
indigenous groups (especially NGOs and community based groups).
Indeed, in certain countries, local activists have complained that they
can only access the res rep through the mediation of North-based
organisations.
Even within social movements, activists in the North have often
given limited attention to securing a voice in debates about the IMF
for colleagues in the South and the East. True, in the 1990s several
North-based NGOs have taken persons from the South on to their
staff, either permanently or as interns. In a similar spirit, certain
North-based associations have in recent years hosted delegations from
the South for discussions of debt problems and structural adjustment.
For instance, the Debt Crisis Network in February 1996 brought ®ve
prominent Africans to Britain for a seminar, also attended by several
IMF of®cials, entitled `Africa Needs a Fresh Start'.
Nevertheless, these consultations between North and South/East
could be taken much further. Indeed, one leading campaigner in
Washington for IMF reform has declared dismissively that `there is so
much lipservice about consulting the South ± it's a ®gleaf'.14 Moreover,

14 Interview with the author, November 1996.

193
Contesting Global Governance

most South-based groups who communicate with North-based associ-

ations have done so in circumstances of substantial dependency,
®nancial and otherwise. The representatives of the South have thereby
easily been inhibited from speaking fully and frankly to their own
agenda. Although colonial times have passed, Northern solidarity
with Southern and Eastern partners in social movements can some-
times still be delivered with patronising tone and paternalistic
gesture. Indeed, North-based NGOs have tended to make contacts in
the South and the East with people who `speak their language', for
example, owing to university studies in the North.
Along with an inbuilt disadvantage for the South and the East,
underclasses have also had far less opportunity directly to engage the
IMF. The great majority of contacts between activists and the Fund
have involved middle-class professionals, whether they be from
North, South or East. Likewise, South±North collaboration within
social movements has almost invariably involved urban-based,
university-educated, computer-literate (relatively) high-earning
English speakers on both sides. No joint mobilisation against the IMF
has developed between grass-root groups in the South and under-
classes in the North.
Nor have elite-based associations (whether from North, South or
East) fully exploited their connections with the Fund to put carefully
gathered views of marginalised groups on the table. A few church
groups and development NGOs have stood out as exceptions with
their efforts to incorporate `voices from the base' into their advocacy
work. However, for the rest underclasses have been locked out of
indirect as well as direct dialogue with the IMF.
The Fund itself has rarely sought direct contacts with rural groups,
the urban poor, and so on. In the words of one leading of®cial, `We do
not meet the people themselves, but we ask [aid organisations] what
they want the IMF to do.'15 The most surprising omission in the
Fund's contacts with the grass roots has been peasant associations.
Large-scale commercial farmers have periodically lobbied the IMF
(e.g., in Zimbabwe), but organisations of smallholders ± who represent
a substantial proportion of the population in many programme
countries ± have had little opportunity to engage the institution.
That said, the IMF has taken numerous initiatives in the 1990s to, in

15 Minutes of a meeting in Washington between civic activists and Fund of®cials, June
1996.

194
 The IMF and social movements

the words of one of®cial, `groom' labour.16 From various previous

experiences, the Fund has learned that opposition from organised
labour can substantially frustrate the implementation of stabilisation
measures and structural adjustment policies. In addition, Camdessus
has brought from France a corporatist recognition of labour as a
leading social partner with government and business. IMF of®cials
have also tended to perceive trade unions as `representative' bodies in
a way that they have presumed NGOs not to be.
`Opening up' to labour, IMF management in 1995 issued special
instructions that res reps should, in collaboration with the ILO,
nurture contacts with local trade unions in programme countries. In
early 1998, Camdessus took several initiatives to meet labour leaders
from Indonesia, Korea and Thailand against the backdrop of recently
initiated IMF programmes in those countries. The Fund has also co-
sponsored four major seminars for labour leaders between 1992 and
1998. The managing director addressed the congresses of the ICFTU
in 1996 and the WCL in 1997. However, these overtures ®t the pattern
noted earlier whereby the Fund has mainly attempted to convert its
critics rather than to address their grievances with major policy
changes.
Meanwhile a structural bias against women has hampered progress
on the social-movement objective of gender equity. True, the IMF has
of late adopted an explicit policy to recruit more women to its
professional staff, and the managing director has declared that `never
again will we be a ``men's club'' ' (IMF 1996g: 192). However, at the
time of writing, very few women have been appointed as Fund
of®cials. The top management of the organisation has never included
a woman, no more than three women have served concurrently
among the twenty-four EDs, and women have headed only two of the
twenty IMF departments. The overwhelming predominance of men
among Fund of®cials has of course re¯ected a prevailing pattern of
patriarchy in global ®nance more generally (McDowell and Court
1994).
On the whole, women have had notably greater participation and
leadership in NGOs and grass-roots associations. However, as noted
earlier, the women's movement more particularly has taken few
initiatives to engage the IMF. Even the business-oriented organisation,
Women's World Banking, has not knocked at 19th Street. Meanwhile,

16 Interview with the author, April 1997.

195
Contesting Global Governance

the marginalisation of feminist economics within the academic pro-

fession makes it unlikely that Fund staff will acquire signi®cant
sensitivity to gender aspects of macroeconomic policy.

Resource constraints
The structural disadvantages noted above for social-movement striv-
ings to transform the IMF have been re¯ected in, and at the same time
also reinforced by, the low level of resources from which these
campaigns have generally suffered. Trade unions, NGOs, religious
organisations and grass-roots associations have in most cases lacked
suf®cient staff, funds, information and coordination capacity to
mount fully effective pressure on the Fund.
In terms of staff, most social-movement organisations with desires
to change the IMF have lacked personnel with expertise regarding the
institution. The several dozen exceptions world-wide have usually
had only one or two specialists each. Only a handful of persons in
social movements have maintained long-term regular contacts with
the IMF: e.g. Stephen Pursey of the ICFTU; Marijke Torfs of FOE-US;
Nancy Alexander at a succession of development NGOs; and Richard
Gerster and Bruno Gurtner of the Swiss Coalition of Development
Organisations. To this day, a number of programme countries lack any
local campaigner with extensive experience of dealing directly with
the IMF.
Most activists in NGOs and at the grass roots have been over-
extended with other responsibilities that have kept them from
becoming adequately educated about the Fund. Few campaigners
have acquired a detailed understanding of the institutional workings
of the IMF. In addition, few have developed a level of literacy in
economics that has enabled them closely to follow Fund reasoning.
Monetary and ®nancial regulators would be more willing to give
social movements a hearing if they felt that the critics comprehended
how IMF policy operated.
Turnover problems have also inhibited the development of a larger,
more experienced cadre in social movements. Too many of the would-
be professional activists have been young university graduates on
short-term contracts with relatively poor remuneration. Most such
campaigners have not focused on the IMF long enough to develop
effective strategies and tactics towards the organisation.
Intertwined with and exacerbating personnel problems, ®nancial

196
 The IMF and social movements

constraints have also contributed signi®cantly to the underdevelop-

ment of social-movement campaigns on the IMF. Most labour organ-
isations and churches with an interest in the Fund have struggled on
small budgets. As for development and environmental NGOs, their
work on the IMF has largely depended on grants from a few bilateral
aid agencies and a handful of private foundations. Indeed, many
NGOs have collapsed for want of funds, especially in the South and
the East.
Moreover, it has been dif®cult for NGOs to develop campaigns on
the Fund when their grants have usually been small (almost never
above $100,000) and short term (lasting at most two or three years).
Many activists have complained about the amount of time `lost' on
fund-raising and about the need sometimes to adjust their grant
proposals in order to ®t a donor's agenda. Worst of all, competition
for scarce monies has sometimes discouraged NGOs from collabor-
ating in their IMF work as freely as they ideally would.
On top of shortfalls in staff and funds, shortages of information
have constituted a third resource constraint in the development of
social-movement activity on the IMF. For example, many groups with
concerns to put to the Fund have not known where to call. The
published organigram mentioned earlier gives only a bare outline of
the IMF's departmental structure, and the staff list is not publicly
available outside the headquarters building. As one experienced
campaigner from Africa has objected, `How can we ever in¯uence the
IMF if we barely know it?'17 The Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs has
exclaimed before US Congressional hearings that the Fund is even
more secretive than the CIA.
Sachs exaggerates in so far as the IMF has, as noted earlier, since the
mid-1990s published increasing numbers of policy documents. Social-
movement activists can now access far more information than many
of them realise. However, as also mentioned before, the Fund has not
to date released many key programme documents. Again and again,
the IMF has cited the prerogative of states to keep these materials
con®dential. Thus, in spite of recent improvements, lack of access to
information has remained a substantial constraint on social-movement
campaigns.
A fourth resource problem for groups advocating change in the IMF

17 Remark of an NGO activist at an interview with an Executive Director during the

1996 annual meetings.

197
Contesting Global Governance

has concerned poor capacities for coordination. Although new tech-

nologies have helped to improve communications among associations
in the 1990s, signi®cant shortfalls in coordination remain. Indeed,
especially in the South and the East, many social movement actors
have been unaware even of each other's existence. Many grass-roots
associations, again particularly in the East and the South, have thus
far been in early stages of organisational development. In this regard
BothENDS has noted, for example, that `consistent and elaborate
communication with and between African NGOs can be dif®cult to
maintain' (BothENDS 1995: 13). For their part, social-movement
activists in the South have complained that North-based partners
¯ood them with far more requests for information and comment than
their usually poorly staffed and funded operations can handle.
More interorganisational coordination is possible and would pre-
sumably increase the effectiveness of social-movement pressure on
the IMF. For example, it is curious that labour organisations and
development NGOs have ± with a few (mostly recent) exceptions ±
cooperated so little in the pursuit of debt relief and reforms of
structural adjustment. All groups would bene®t from a central data-
base concerning social-movement activism vis-aÁ-vis the IMF: i.e., a
comprehensive and regularly updated catalogue of resource people,
documents, publications, popular education materials, existing colla-
borative relationships between organisations and so on.
In sum, then, with better resourcing social movements might have
achieved much more change in the IMF than they have done to date.
Of course, more staff, more funds, more information and more
coordination would not by themselves allow these campaigns fully to
realise their aims. The structural counter-forces described earlier
remain formidable even in the face of enormous commitments of
resources. However, substantially increased resources are necessary if
social movements are to achieve major changes in the IMF.

Low priority
Resource constraints have hampered all social-movement activity;
however, these handicaps have been all the more severe in the case of
campaigns to transform the IMF, given that advocates of change have
directed most of their efforts at other targets. To be sure, critics of the
contemporary world political economy have readily pointed to the
Fund as a source of major problems. Yet, in terms of deeds, social

198
 The IMF and social movements

movements have devoted comparatively few of their already severely

limited resources speci®cally to the IMF. Most mobilisation for change
in global economic governance has focused either on development
projects (as sponsored by the World Bank Group, regional develop-
ment banks and bilateral agencies) or on multilateral trade and
investment regimes (as pursued through the WTO, NAFTA, the
OECD and so on).
Much social-movement pressure on the IMF has been ad hoc. Only a
few associations have ± like the ICFTU, FOE-US and the Cato Institute
± pursued sustained, focused, carefully researched campaigns to
in¯uence Fund policies. Even fewer agencies have ± like the Bretton
Woods Project ± been created speci®cally to engage the IMF. Mean-
while the majority of advocacy groups have treated the Fund with
only passing curiosity, if they have given the institution any attention
at all.
Most activists with an interest in changing global economic govern-
ance have preferred to concentrate on more `tangible' issues related to
trade, investment, infrastructure projects, famine, etc. Thanks in good
part to the obscurantism of economistic jargon ± much of it arguably
unnecessary ± questions of IMF conditionality and surveillance have
caused many a social-movement campaigner's eyes to glaze over.18
Few associations have shown interest in following the example of
Swiss NGOs in obtaining direct participation in their country's Article
IV consultations. Not until October 1997 did development NGOs from
Europe and North America undertake a focused discussion of the
regulation of global ®nancial markets, with a two-day seminar in
Paris (EURODAD 1997).
Campaigners who have tried to generate interest in the Fund
among a larger public have confronted a dif®cult task. As one
experienced lobbyist has succinctly put it, `It takes a lot of pushing to
get people mobilised on the IMF.'19 In spite of increased NGO efforts
at civic education on the Fund, questions of structural adjustment,
debt relief, foreign exchange crises and so on have for the most part
not grabbed the popular imagination.
In the same vein, social-movement advocates have also had limited
success in drawing press attention to campaigns for IMF reform. The
18 One ED has agreed, in correspondence to the author (dated February 1998), that this
obscurantism is unnecessary, adding `I felt that its purpose was to keep discussion
within a small group of those who understand the mysteries.'
19 Interview with the author, November 1996.

199
Contesting Global Governance

South-centric Inter Press Service and local journalists in many pro-

gramme countries have been fairly receptive to covering the issues.
However, the principal world press agencies, major newspapers and
global broadcasters have usually ± except during a crisis ± given little
space to a debate of Fund policies. At other times campaigners have
considered it cause for celebration when their lobbying has prompted
an article in the Financial Times or an editorial in the Washington Post.

Insuf®cient legitimation
A ®nal reason inhibiting greater impact by social movements on the
IMF in the late twentieth century has related to the often shaky
democratic credentials of the campaign organisations. Very often
these associations have attended insuf®ciently to questions concerning
their representativeness, consultation processes, transparency and
accountability (Bichsel 1996). Ironically, some of the organisations
which have pressed hardest for a democratisation of the Fund have
done little to secure democracy in their own operations. These short-
comings have dented the credibility of many advocacy groups ±
especially NGOs ± and have allowed the IMF and states to take the
associations less seriously than they might otherwise have done.
On questions of representativeness, for example, the dispropor-
tionate weight in social-movement activism of Northerners and
middle-class professionals has been stressed earlier. Many cam-
paigners have had experience neither in the South and the East nor at
the grass roots. Southerners, Easterners and underclasses usually have
had no direct representation in the more powerful North-based
associations; nor have they had formal channels through which to
participate in these organisations. Even an NGO's members in the
North have frequently had no input in policy making beyond the
payment of their annual subscription. In these circumstances NGO
campaigners have often appeared in the eyes of the IMF to represent
only themselves.
In contrast, the Fund has tended more readily to recognise labour
organisations as legitimate partners in dialogue. In general, trade
unions have a substantial dues-paying membership and hold regular
elections of of®cers. Indeed, labour leaders have often insisted that
their more representative character, compared to NGOs, commands
greater attention from global governance agencies. The emphasis of
this difference has arguably contributed to the previously noted

200
 The IMF and social movements

underdevelopment of collaboration between the labour movement

and NGOs.
Many social-movement groups have also attended insuf®ciently to
issues of transparency in their operations. Various organisations have
not published annual reports of their activities regarding the IMF.
Some have not even prepared a general statement of their objectives
for public distribution. Often these associations ± again, especially
NGOs ± have not made clear who they are, where their funds
originate, how they reach their policy positions, and so on.
The picture has generally been little better with regard to issues of
accountability in social-movement campaigns. Many countries have
lacked adequate mechanisms to ensure the public-interest credentials
of civic organisations. Too often these associations have been accoun-
table only to a largely self-selected board of trustees, to private funders
(some of them anonymous) and/or to foreign of®cial donors. In some
cases activists have abused NGO status for tax evasion and other
personal gain, thereby feeding worries about all such organisations.
These frequent shortfalls in the legitimacy of advocacy groups have
hampered their access to the IMF. Many Fund of®cials ± especially
those who have been reluctant in any case to engage in dialogue with
reformers and radicals ± have seized on poor democratic credentials
as a reason to limit contacts with these critics. NGOs in particular are
likely to ®nd their in¯uence on the IMF limited so long as they cannot
better demonstrate features of consultation, representativeness, trans-
parency and accountability in their relations with their supposed
constituents.
In sum, then, a powerful combination of forces has limited the
in¯uence of social movements on the International Monetary Fund in
the late twentieth century. Several of those forces (resource con-
straints, social hierarchies, and the strength of neoliberalism) have
confronted all contemporary mobilisation for social change, including
the activities discussed in chapters 2±4 above. That said, these
challenges would seem to have been especially intense for campaigns
to change the IMF. In addition, efforts to transform the Fund have
faced certain more particular dif®culties related to the institutional
culture of the IMF and the priorities of social movements. Finally,
social-movement organisations have weakened their effectiveness
against the IMF by attending insuf®ciently to their democratic
credentials.

201
Contesting Global Governance

Conclusion
This chapter has surveyed a wide range of social-movement activity
aimed at transforming the International Monetary Fund. The discus-
sion ®rst covered the various aims, strategies and tactics of these
campaigns. It then assessed the impacts of these efforts, ®nding that
social movements have to date tended to affect the margins rather
than the heart of IMF policies and operating procedures. This limited
in¯uence was explained in terms of both general features of the
contemporary world political economy and speci®c characteristics of
the IMF and the social movements that challenge it. How do these
®ndings relate to the primary questions that underpin this book?

How has this MEI modi®ed?

As detailed earlier, developments in IMF conditionality during the
1990s have partly accommodated reformist urgings for change. Fund-
sponsored programmes now regularly incorporate `social safety nets'
to guard against excessive pains of adjustment in areas such as
education and health care. In the late 1990s the IMF has given high
prominence to issues of `good governance', although this concept has
not been formulated in the sort of explicitly political sense that most
social-movement activists would wish to see. In addition, the Fund
has begun to explore the possible relationships between macro-
economic policy and questions such as ecological degradation and
gender inequality.
That said, on the whole social, environmental and governance
issues have remained secondary concerns at the IMF. The World Bank
and UN agencies have generally gone further in incorporating these
questions into their programmes. The primary focus of Fund-sup-
ported policies has remained stabilisation and the promotion of
neoliberal restructuring.
IMF policy has also shifted between the 1980s and the 1990s in
respect of debt relief for poor countries. Fund staff have, since the
mid-1990s, accepted that external debt burdens can harm the pro-
spects for economic development. On this principle the IMF has
agreed, through the HIPC initiative, to extend some relief on repay-
ments of loans owed to itself. On the other hand, the sums of IMF debt
relief through the HIPC scheme are projected to be fairly small:
around $800 million, of which $271 million had been agreed by April

202
 The IMF and social movements

1998 (IMF 1988k: 4, 7). Moreover, the relief involves re®nancing rather
than a cancellation of repayments.
In respect of operating procedures, the IMF of the 1990s has become
considerably more transparent. Impenetrable drapes have given way
to net curtains. An informed analyst can now usually discern the
general outlines of IMF prescriptions and practices, although many
details remain unclear. The Fund has also accepted the principle of
formal policy evaluation, although progress in implementing actual
reviews has been slow. Finally, with attention to `ownership', the IMF
of the 1990s has aspired ± at least in its rhetoric ± to make its policy-
making processes more inclusive and consultative. It remains to be
seen how far down the road of participation the Fund will in practice
prove willing to go.

What are the motivations driving MEI±GSM engagement?

In the case of the IMF, a global economic institution has sought
contact with social movements mainly in the hope of building a
broad-based consensus behind the policies that it sponsors. Fund
management and staff have become convinced that overtures to trade
unions, religious groups and NGOs can help construct a ± possibly
indispensable ± popular base for economic restructuring on neoliberal
lines. In addition, the IMF has been concerned to counter the threat
that social movements can pose to its ®nancial position. In particular,
critics have repeatedly complicated the approval of quota increases
and other monies for the IMF on Capitol Hill. Given these objectives,
the Fund has not engaged with critics in order to give them a
proactive role in policy making, that is, out of a belief that inputs from
social movements could improve IMF performance.
Yet change is what social movements have pursued in engaging
with the Fund. Many activists have advocated fundamental reformu-
lations of IMF conditionalities so that they give primary attention to
issues such as employment, poverty eradication, ecological integrity,
gender equity and the protection of human rights. Large campaigns
have demanded that the Fund provide debt relief for countries of the
South. Insistent pressure groups have urged that the IMF bring
greater participation, representation, transparency and accountability
to its operations.
These two sets of objectives show a stark opposition. The IMF has
aimed to secure neoliberal restructuring, whereas trade unions,

203
Contesting Global Governance

religious groups, NGOs and grass-roots associations have promoted

alternative paradigms. Not surprisingly in this light, contacts between
the Fund and social movements have often been troubled. Cam-
paigners for change have complained that `the IMF won't have a frank
discussion about the problems of its policies', that `you cannot critique
in a dialogue with the Fund', and that `if you're too insistent in
expressing a different point of view, IMF people tell you to keep
quiet'.20 For their part, Fund of®cials have frequently objected that
`[NGOs] spend the whole time telling us we're wrong', that `it's hard
to get a dialogue going with such people', and that `some NGOs are
just rabid'.21
To be sure, the intensity of these confrontations has varied between
individuals and between situations. Some of the polarisation has been
unnecessary, in so far as many IMF of®cials have conceded in private
that the organisation has made mistakes. Likewise, most reformers
and even some radicals have conceded in private that certain Fund
interventions may be necessary and can have positive effects. Hence
potential exists for a more open, two-way, critical and creative
dialogue between the IMF and social movements.

What is the signi®cance of the MEI±GSM relationship?

Although social movements have not in¯uenced the International
Monetary Fund as much as the campaigners for change would have
liked, their activities have made an impact. As indicated in detail
earlier, pressure from social movements has contributed to each of the
various shifts in substantive policy and operating procedures. The
role of social movements in these developments cannot be precisely
measured. Certainly non-of®cial advocates of change have not
effected these shifts at the IMF alone, without additional pressures
from governments, from other global governance agencies, and from
within the Fund itself. However, it seems highly unlikely that the
modi®cations described in this chapter would have occurred in the
absence of mobilisation by trade unions, NGOs, churches and grass-
roots associations.
Even if social movements have achieved only limited success in
changing the IMF, the experience of the past two decades has shown

20 Interviews with the author, October 1996.

21 Interviews with the author, November 1996 and April 1997.

204
 The IMF and social movements

that these campaigns can also provide other bene®ts to global mone-
tary and ®nancial regulation. For example, they have supplied not
only their members, but also the Fund, governments and the general
public with much useful information concerning the nature and
consequences of IMF-supported policies. In addition, social move-
ments have offered channels through which stakeholders have been
able to voice their views on the Fund and have those opinions relayed
to IMF staff.
Most importantly, however, social-movement campaigns for change
in the International Monetary Fund have stimulated debate about
policies and methodologies at a time when one paradigm, neoliber-
alism, has made a serious bid for monopoly power in the world
political economy. Regardless of the particular merits or otherwise of
the neoliberal knowledge structure, any domination by a single
perspective sooner or later spells trouble for both policy effectiveness
and democracy. Resistance by social movements to IMF sponsorship
of neoliberalism has therefore played a vital role in sustaining some
elements of diversity and critical debate in global economic govern-
ance. Challenges from social movements have pushed the IMF better
to clarify, explain and justify its positions. The critics have not so far
undermined the general con®dence of Fund management and staff in
neoliberal policies, but of®cials have come in the 1990s to apply these
prescriptions with some greater discrimination and quali®cation.

205
6 Complex multilateralism: MEIs and
GSMs

The preceding four cases studies have shown that numerous changes
have taken place in the MEI±GSM relationship over the past twenty
years. This chapter provides a comparative analysis of these develop-
ments and assesses their signi®cance for global governance. We argue
that there is a transformation in the nature of governance conducted
by MEIs as a result of their encounter with GSMs. This transformation
is labelled `complex multilateralism' in recognition of its movement
away from an exclusively state based structure. At present the
transformation primarily takes the form of institutional modi®cation,
although some policy innovation is occurring. Such changes explicitly
acknowledge that actors other than states speak on behalf of the
public interest. While signalling an alteration to the method of govern-
ance, it is less clear that there is a change either in the content of
governing policies or in the broad interests they represent. In the short
run the MEI±GSM nexus is unlikely to greatly transform institutional
functions. In the longer run, there is the possibility of incremental
change in the functioning and ambit of these key institutions depend-
ing upon the outcome of continued political con¯ict.
This chapter begins by outlining the basic characteristics of complex
multilateralism and its relationship to other understandings of multi-
lateralism. It then moves on to consider how the ®ve characteristics of
complex multilateralism (varied institutional modi®cations, rival
motivations, ambiguous results, differential state implications and
socialised agenda) have manifested themselves in our case studies.
The chapter concludes by considering the future for MEI±GSM
relations and the signi®cance of complex multilateralism.

206
 Complex multilateralism: MEIs and GSMs

Complex multilateralism
The nature of governance and authority in the ®eld of public multi-
lateral economic institutions is going through a transitional stage.
While it is clear what the transition is from, it is not as obvious where
it is going. The changing patterns of MEI operation and the MEI±GSM
relationship documented in this study is best captured by the term
`complex multilateralism'. It is a movement away from a multi-
lateralism based primarily on the activity of states. Other groups of
actors, whether they be private ®rms or social movements (as in our
study), have an increasingly signi®cant role in multilateralism.
However, states remain key actors and it is not yet established to what
degree or in what areas they will cede decision-making authority. The
practice of multilateralism has become more complicated because of
the need to accommodate the demands of GSMs.
The term complex multilateralism might remind readers of
Keohane and Nye's (1977) concept of `complex interdependence'.
Indeed, our study may ®nd some resonance with liberal international
relations approaches that stress interdependence and transnational
relations (Risse-Kappen 1995) However, there are a number of
signi®cant differences between our approach and liberal international
relations theory. First, the term complex interdependence was used to
describe an ideal type rather than the real world (Keohane and Nye
1987: 731). Our concept is meant to capture real world changes.
Second, our goal is not to account for state behaviour, but to better
understand processes of global governance. State behaviour is only
one element of global governance. Our argument is that some atten-
tion must be focused upon the interaction of multilateral institutions
and civil society groups to understand the form and content of global
governance. Finally, our inspiration for this study derives not from the
liberal goal of facilitating cooperation between states or increasing
ef®ciency in managing the global economy, but in concern to under-
stand the ways in which non-elites can participate in the process of
governing.
Complex multilateralism is a move away from conventional multi-
lateralism understood as `an institutional form that co-ordinates
relations among three or more states on the basis of generalized
principles of conduct' (Ruggie 1993: 11). The mobilisation of various
elements of civil society in response to increasing globalisation has
complicated multilateral governance by bringing new actors into the

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Contesting Global Governance

®eld. Multilateralism is more complicated because international

institutions must take some account of a range of civil society actors.
Securing the agreement of government of®cials is not enough to
permit the smooth running of these institutions. Constituencies within
and across states must be appeased or, at the very least, their
opposition must be diluted and diverted. Multilateralism is changing
by providing points of access for these constituencies (including social
movements).
Although multilateralism has moved from its state dominated
nature, it is a far cry from a society centred multilateralism. The
project to build a `new' or emerging multilateralism which would
`reconstitute civil societies and political authorities on a global scale,
building a system of global governance from the bottom up' (Cox
1997: xxvii) is in its infancy. Serious differences divide the broad social
movements we examined. Organised labour is challenged by NGOs
claiming to speak on behalf of the informal sector. Women's groups in
the developing world have an ambivalent and sometimes con¯ictual
relationship with Northern feminist groups. Environmentalists
seeking thorough changes to the doctrine of economic growth are in
con¯ict with more conservative conservationist groups. Various
NGOs claim to speak on behalf of social movements or constituencies,
but the plethora of groups and lack of transparency makes it dif®cult
to determine the legitimacy of their claims.
The institutions we have examined pose a particularly dif®cult
problem for advocates of the `new multilateralism' because they raise
the question of whether popular forces should be attempting to
modify existing structures or to build alternative structures. Is it
possible to engage with MEIs in the hope that they can be reformed or
are they so beholden to exploitative global capitalist interests that they
must be dismantled? For example, while organised labour has been
trying to integrate its concerns into the WTO, representatives of some
of the most disadvantaged peoples have been advocating the WTO's
abolition.1
Our study suggests that multilateralism as an institutional form is
undergoing change. We identify ®ve central characteristics of complex
multilateralism. The ®rst characteristic is varied institutional modi®-

1 The Frente Zapatista de LiberacioÂn Nacional (FZLN) in Mexico and the Peasant
Movement of the Philippines (KMP) have taken a leading role in the People's Global
Action against Free Trade and the World Trade Organisation (PGA).

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 Complex multilateralism: MEIs and GSMs

cation in response to civil society actors. Multilateral public institu-

tions are modifying themselves in response to pressure from social
movements, NGOs and business actors. Our study concentrated on
social movements, but members of the business community have
even greater access and are also pressing for greater institutional
accountability. Multilateral institutions are going beyond their
member states in an attempt to ground their legitimacy within civil
societies. Modi®cations vary across institutions depending upon
institutional culture, structure, role of the executive head and vulner-
ability to civil society pressure.
A second characteristic of this institutional form of world politics is
that the major participants are divided by con¯icting motivations and
goals. The goal of the institutions and their supporters is to maintain
existing policy directions and facilitate their smoother operation. The
aim is to improve the implementation of policies and management of
the institutions. In contrast, the goal of many civil society actors, and
certainly of social movements, is to change the policy direction of the
institutions. There is even confrontation over the methods institutions
should follow to achieve those few goals that are mutually acceptable.
For example, there may be agreement to pursue sustainable develop-
ment, but there is intense con¯ict over the meaning of sustainable
development and whether structural adjustment programmes assist
or hinder its achievement.
The clash of rival goals leads to a third characteristic, which is the
ambiguous results of this form of organisation to date. If accomplish-
ments are de®ned in terms of the actors achieving their own goals,
both institutions and social movements have enjoyed only limited
success. Social movements have found that the institutions' general-
ised principles of conduct are subject to debate, but relatively immune
from revision. Many branches of the social movements we
encountered questioned the basic assumptions of the MEIs. However,
their in¯uence in changing those assumptions has been limited.
Letting new actors into the process does not necessarily translate into
dramatic policy changes. The institutions have enjoyed slightly more
success by being able to bring elements of social movements into a
dialogue and institutionalising some of their concerns, thereby some-
what reducing the level of antagonism directed at the institutions.
If one takes a different measure of success, such as the contribution
of complex multilateralism to system maintenance, the verdict is
more positive. Indeed, complex multilateralism is an institutional

209
Contesting Global Governance

adaptation to the process of globalisation. Its success could be

measured in terms of the continued smooth functioning of the institu-
tions themselves. Are the public institutions that form the framework
of governance for a liberal global economy capable of establishing
roots beyond state and corporate elites? Our study does not provide a
de®nitive answer to that question because this is an ongoing process.
Early indications are that they might be able to, but increased policy
modi®cation will be required to accompany existing institutional
transformation.
A fourth characteristic of complex multilateralism is its differential
impact upon the role of the state depending upon the state's pre-
existing position in the international system. In general, an increase in
MEI±GSM activity undermines the state's claim to be the sole legit-
imate representative of the public interest within its territory.
However, in the case of more powerful states such as the USA, GSM
activity has reinforced the importance of the domestic political
process for global governance. Thus, the fate of particular policy
measures or institutional changes can rest upon the battle between
national and transnational forces within the United States and in the
Congress. In the case of weaker states, complex multilateralism can
highlight their impotence and subject them to increased conditionality
from multilateral institutions. It is for this reason that many Southern
states oppose the increased participation of social groups in global
governance mechanisms. Although there is often pressure by many
Southern-based elements of social movements to convince multilateral
institutions to takes steps which would support developing countries'
state-building capacities, these are usually unsuccessful. In all cases,
strong or weak states, Northern or Southern countries, this new
organisational form complicates multilateralism and introduces the
possibilities of new alliances between governments, institutions and
civil society actors.
A ®fth aspect of complex multilateralism is a broadening of the
policy agenda to include more social issues. Multilateralism is compli-
cated not just because there are more actors, but because some of these
actors are pressing for a new agenda. They want their issues inte-
grated into the mandate of the institutions they are trying to in¯uence.
GSMs are demanding that the goals of liberalisation and economic
ef®ciency are balanced by aims such as social justice, sustainable
development and gender equity. Issues that formerly would have
been outside the scope of MEIs are now impinging upon their

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 Complex multilateralism: MEIs and GSMs

operation. New issues are often resisted, but the agenda is shifting.
The long term implications of a broadening agenda may involve a
change in the overall operation and content of the MEIs and global
governance.
The following sections illustrate these ®ve characteristics of
complex multilateralism with examples from the previous case
studies. This is followed by a conclusion where we assess the
signi®cance of this institutional form of multilateralism.

1 Varied institutional modi®cation

The IMF, World Bank and WTO have all adapted their institutions to
take account of the increasing importance of GSMs. This evolution has
been sporadic and uneven, but it is a recognisable trend. It has gone
the furthest in the case of the World Bank's relationship with environ-
mentalists, and to a lesser extent, women's groups. The WTO has also
created a separate division to deal with environmental issues.
However, the environmental area is the exception at the WTO and the
IMF has made relatively fewer changes. Yet, even in these two MEIs
dialogue has increased and new information channels have been
created.
The World Bank has the most extensive contact with social move-
ments and NGOs of the three institutions. It engages NGOs at three
levels: operational collaboration, economic and sector work (ESW),
and broader policy dialogue. Operational collaboration refers to the
inclusion of NGOs in the design and execution of Bank ®nanced
projects. ESW comprises a broad range of research and analysis
undertaken by the Bank. The broader policy dialogue covers the
exchange of information between the World Bank and NGOs re-
garding the Bank's development policies. This dialogue had formally
been conducted through the NGO±World Bank Committee estab-
lished in 1982. The bank NGO unit is now dispersed through regional
departments in an attempt to integrate them into the policy process.
There has also been recent discussion about developing a `develop-
ment grants facility' to assist in NGO capacity building (Bread for the
World 1997a: 5±6).
Our study examined the interaction between women's groups,
environmentalists and the Bank. Gender issues at the World Bank
have been addressed by the appointment of a Women in Development
of®cer in 1977, the establishment of a Gender Unit in 1987, an External

211
Contesting Global Governance

Gender Consultative Group following the 1995 Beijing Women's

Summit and a Gender Sector board in 1997. Other opportunities for
contact are provided through the general NGO contact mechanisms.
In 1987 the Bank established an Environment Department in response
to lobbying of Congress by US environmental groups. Since 1989
environmental assessments (EAs) have been required of projects
expected to have signi®cant adverse environmental impacts. By
January 1994 the Bank had a new information disclosure policy to
declassify documents and established a Public Information Center in
Washington. In September 1994 the Bank launched an Inspection
Panel to investigate complaints by community organisations that
believe the institution is violating its own procedures. In the wake of
the East Asian ®nancial crisis the Bank has begun to develop its ties
with organised labour through increased meetings with labour of®-
cials at all levels of the Bank.
In contrast to the World Bank, the IMF has been a late and more
reluctant participant in engaging with GSMs. GSMs come into contact
with the IMF through six routes: the External Relations department
(EXR), the Executive Directors' of®ce, the management team (in-
cluding the managing director), certain policy departments, country
mission teams and resident representatives. The External Relations
department was created in 1981, but maintained a low pro®le. A fully
¯edged Public Affairs division was not created until 1989. It was the
run up to the 1988 Berlin annual meetings that provided the focus for
the publication and dissemination of IMF popular information. The
IMF's contacts with GSMs are growing, but they are usually on an
informal, non-institutionalised basis. The institution tends to choose
its contacts carefully. For example, the IMF has courted organised
labour, but neglected women's groups. Behaviour deemed inappro-
priate by the Fund can lead to a reduction of ties. The purpose of most
contacts is to educate the public rather than to revise IMF policy based
upon social movement input.
The WTO's relationship with social movements has matured from
the days when NGOs had to attend the 1994 Marrakesh meeting
disguised as reporters. In its forty-seven-year history the GATT failed
to establish any formal linkages with NGOs or social movements.2 In
July 1996 the WTO began to clarify its relationships with NGOs by

2 An exception to this was participation by the International Chambers of Commerce in

several GATT working parties in the 1950s (Charnovitz 1997: 255).

212
 Complex multilateralism: MEIs and GSMs

Table 6.1. MEI±GSM Contact

Institution World Bank International World Trade

Monetary Fund Organization

Experience Early 1980s: Late 1980s: Mid 1990s: unsure

relatively broad selective and sparse
Structure Operational External Relations External Relations
collaboration department department
ESW Executive Directors Dispute settlement
Policy dialogue Management team TPRM
Gender Sector Country mission Workshops
board teams
EAs Policy departments
Environment Resident reps
department
Inspection Panel

derestricting some documents and allowing its Secretariat to interact

with NGOs in an informal manner. The WTO has an External Relations
director and publishes material on the Internet. At the December 1996
Singapore WTO ministerial meeting provisions were made for NGO
observers, but participation in policy making is restricted to the
occasional consultation under procedures of the dispute settlement
mechanism.3 Since the 1996 Singapore meeting the WTO has convened
a number of workshops or symposia to bring social movement
representatives and Secretariat of®cials together to discuss a selected
issue.4 Recent attempts have been made by the labour and women's
movements to have their concerns highlighted in the country-by-
country examinations of the Trade Policy Review Mechanism. Table
6.1 serves as a useful summary of MEI±GSM contact.

Accounting for institutional variation

Although MEIs have adapted to social movement pressure, this has
taken different forms. There is no single explanation for the particular
form that adaptation has taken, but there are a number of signi®cant
in¯uences. The culture of the subject matter in which the institutions

3 NGOs do not have a right to participate, it is at the discretion of the WTO panel.
4 An example is the September 1997 WTO±NGO symposium on participation of least
developed countries in the trading system.

213
Contesting Global Governance

Table 6.2. MEI transformation variables

World Bank International World Trade

Monetary Fund Organization

Subject-area Development/ Finance/secrecy Trade/rent

culture participation and seeking
economic growth/
ef®ciency
Structure Diverse Monolithic, SAP Monolithic,
country negotiating
negotiations forum
Role of Dynamic, Dynamic, Limited
executive head committed committed
Vulnerability to Medium Low Low
social
movement
action

deal, the structure of the institutions themselves, the role of the

executive head and the vulnerability of the institution to social move-
ment action all play a role. These are summarised in table 6.2.
The three institutions we examined deal with different subject
matter and carry distinct cultures of operation and assumptions about
interaction with civil society. These cultures have a role in precondi-
tioning levels of receptiveness to social movement participation and
collaboration. The World Bank is concerned with development and
has been buffeted by a series of internal and external critiques
suggesting that its policies should take the concerns of the target
population into account. Before its neoliberal phase, the Bank was
concerned with meeting basic human needs. In the face of programme
failures it has gradually developed a more participative approach to
development policy and planning. However, this `development/parti-
cipative' culture is sometimes overshadowed by a `growth/ef®ciency'
culture. The latter is based on neoclassical economics and favours the
business case for policy measures over concern about participation or
democracy. Nevertheless, the presence of alternative cultures has
created a degree of openness which has carried over into the Bank's
dealing with the environmental and women's movements.
The IMF and the WTO, in contrast to the Bank, operate in areas of
expertise more sceptical of the value of civil society participation. The

214
 Complex multilateralism: MEIs and GSMs

IMF deals with ®nance, an area which has a tradition of exclusivity

and secrecy. Negotiations over debt repayment take place with the
elites of countries, not with those who bear the brunt of repayment. In
the case of the WTO, civil society participation in trade policy making
is more likely to be interpreted as a form of rent seeking than as a
democratisation of the political system. Following a tradition of public
choice analysis, the practice of free trade is thought to be threatened
by protectionist interests mobilising against the general or consumer
interest.5 Interest groups threaten to accrue rents and harm the
welfare of society by blocking free trade.
The structure of the three institutions also varies. The World Bank is
a larger institution (approximately 7,000 staff members compared
with the IMF's 2,600 and WTO's 500) which contains pockets of
resistance to the governing ideology. Various social interests ®nd
sympathisers within the Bank's elaborate structure and use this space
to further their interaction. The IMF and WTO are smaller and more
monolithic institutions. There is a much clearer governing ideology
and expression of dissent or controversy within the institution is less
likely and certainly less visible. A further crucial difference is that the
IMF and WTO either engage in or are the forum for sensitive
negotiations with or between states. The IMF negotiates stabilisation
and structural adjustment policies with states while the WTO serves
as a forum for trade negotiations. Both institutions take the task of
ensuring government con®dentiality very seriously. As a result, both
the institutions and the member states are reluctant to open up their
operations to outside scrutiny.
The studies on the World Bank and the IMF have highlighted the
key role played by the executive head in pushing for increased contact
with social movements.6 The appointment in 1987 of Michel Cam-
dessus as managing director of the IMF led to an increase in the
organisation's efforts at public relations. Camdessus has been far
more active than his predecessors in making contact with civil society
organisations through meetings, speeches and correspondence. In
addition, his French background seems to have in¯uenced his famili-
arity with and openness to bringing organised labour into IMF
restructuring plans. At the World Bank, James Wolfensohn has

5 For example, Baldwin (1985).

6 The key role played by an executive head in international organisations was high-
lighted in Cox (1969).

215
Contesting Global Governance

personally taken the gender issue from the Beijing summit and
attempted to institutionalise it within the Bank's structures. He has
also been responsible for the much stronger platform given to the
whole issue of civil society participation in the Bank policy and
operation work through the promotion of the `participation' agenda.
With the WTO being such a recent organisation it is unsurprising that
its executive head has played a less in¯uential role in light of his
struggle to establish the institution itself.
A fourth factor in¯uencing the openness of institutions to social
movements is their relative vulnerability to social movement pressure.
The World Bank has been the most vulnerable as its budget has come
under threat in the US Congress and particular development projects
have been disrupted by social movement action. The Bank has been
forced to respond both to critics in the USA and to potential critics in
target countries. The IMF and WTO have been less vulnerable to
social movement pressure, but have had to take it into account. US
funding for the IMF must go through the Congress and strings have
occasionally been attached. For example, 1994 funding was linked to
urging that the IMF should publicise its recommendations with
greater frequency and detail. Successful pressure on the IMF has
focused upon increasing the institution's transparency and account-
ability rather than changing the terms of conditionality. The success of
structural adjustment policies is also vulnerable to civil unrest in some
countries, however this is more dif®cult for GSMs to target than
individual Bank projects. This limited vulnerability may explain the
attempt to lure organised labour into supporting IMF policies. The
WTO was forced to pay attention to environmental concerns following
the US backlash to the tuna±dolphin case. In addition, the WTO must
cultivate domestic opinion if it hopes to pursue an agenda of future
liberalisation such as a new trade round in the year 2000.
The differences in subject culture, institutional structure and task,
role of the executive head and vulnerability to pressure help to
explain the varying degrees of MEI engagement with GSMs. Of these
four factors the role of the executive is the least crucial as it is
constrained by the institutional structure and role. Thus, while Cam-
dessus and Wolfensohn may be equally energetic in reaching out to
civil society, this is a much easier task at the Bank. Vulnerability to
pressure helps to explain much of the motivation behind MEI trans-
formation, but the subject culture, institutional structure and role go
most of the way to explaining resistance to institutional change.

216
 Complex multilateralism: MEIs and GSMs

2 Con¯icting motivations and goals

Although there have been accomplishments in the MEI±GSM relation-
ships, the motivations of the various partners are strikingly different
and often contradictory. This section outlines the rival motivations
behind increased contact. On the face of it there is no obvious reason
why MEIs should engage with GSMs. These are interstate institutions
which were created to serve the interests of their members, which are
states. Why then do they do it? Engagement with GSMs is an explicit
recognition by these institutions that governance of the global
economy cannot rest solely upon an international ± that is, interstate ±
foundation. The institutions have realised that in order for their
programmes to succeed and expand, they must sink roots into civil
societies around the globe. Institutional practitioners may not like this
development, but they have done the political calculus and recognised
the emerging reality.
In general, the goal of MEI interaction with GSMs is to neutralise
their opposition so that the policy process can function smoothly. This
goal is pursued in different forms and to different extents in the three
institutions because of their distinct methods of operation and policy
functions.
As mentioned earlier, the World Bank has been and remains the
most sensitive of the institutions toward social movements. This is for
two reasons. First, the World Bank runs particular development
projects which are more vulnerable to disruption by social movements.
People can organise against, and possibly prevent, the building of a
dam more easily than they can affect the decision of the WTO's dispute
settlement mechanism, for example. In a more cooperative vein, social
movements can assist in reaching the poor and facilitate grass-roots
participation. This means that the Bank may want to use particular
civil society organisations to deliver its projects. Secondly, the World
Bank's budget is particularly vulnerable to US Congressional politics.
If social movements can be in¯uential in the US system, the Bank must
listen, or at least must seem to listen. As a result of these dual
sensitivities, the Bank has taken steps to involve social movements in a
wide range of its activities from general consultation to project devel-
opment. This involvement is meant to safeguard projects by building
in social movement support. In some cases, NGOs are used for policy
implementation. In addition, the World Bank has acknowledged that
social movements may have local knowledge unavailable to Bank staff.

217
Contesting Global Governance

The IMF has opened contact with civil society for two primary
reasons. The ®rst is an attempt to counter the criticism of its many
opponents. The Fund has been condemned in numerous quarters for
the effects of its structural adjustment policies on developing coun-
tries. This has included protests in developed countries (street demon-
strations during the 1988 annual meetings in Berlin) and food riots in
developing countries (Zambia in 1986, Venezuela in 1989), sometimes
with loss of life. IMF of®cials view this storm of criticism as mistaken
because the institution only responds to ®nancial crises. The medicine
they deliver might be harsh, but failure to take it risks more serious
consequences. From an IMF perspective, engagement with civil
society can be used to educate the public about its role and the true
reasons for structural adjustment. It is an attempt to diffuse opposition
through education (propaganda in the view of its critics). In some
cases IMF of®cials might be able to use pressure from civil society to
force governments to spend money in productive ways. For example,
a strong labour movement might be able to convince a government to
switch spending away from consumption to investment in social
infrastructure (IMF 1996i). By forging alliances with factions of civil
society IMF of®cials hope to pressure governments into responsible
spending policies and facilitate their return to ®nancial health.
Similar to the World Bank, a second reason for IMF concern about
civil society groups arises from the need to secure funding from
member states. Its opening to civil society can be traced to its need to
respond to the demands from funders for increased transparency and
responsiveness. Pressure from the US Congress is especially signi®-
cant for the IMF. Not only must it deal with criticisms from the left
(UAW 1998), but it is under constant attack from right-wing think
tanks that wish to see an end to state rescue packages (Cato Institute
1998). The IMF must be wary of a left±right coalition restricting its
funding in the same way that efforts to expand regional trade have
been stalled in the US Congress for the institution.
For the WTO, engagement with GSMs is related to the need to
secure the support of key states for further liberalisation. It is
particularly aimed at placating the environmental and labour move-
ments in advanced industrialised countries. These movements believe
that trade liberalisation in its present form is undermining their
interests and that the dispute settlement mechanism threatens to
overturn positive regulation. The WTO differs from the IMF and
World Bank in that its key challenge is not to discipline the weak, but

218
 Complex multilateralism: MEIs and GSMs

to tame the strong. In order to extend its authority over advanced

industrialised states the WTO must accommodate their civil societies.
The method of accommodation put forward by the WTO is
restricted by the fears of some of its members about social movement
and NGO involvement. Many developing states reject a role for
NGOs either because the states themselves have no history of plural-
ism or because GSMs are viewed as being Northern dominated and
furthering the interests of Northern states. While ready to discuss
environmental concerns, their opposition to labour issues is often
virulent and their openness to gender concerns almost non-existent.
This determined opposition leaves the WTO in a dif®cult position. It
must try to balance the demands by developed states and GSMs for
greater participation and transparency with developing states' oppo-
sition to moving away from a purely state based institution. As a
result, the Secretariat has been reduced to providing information to
GSMs.
For GSMs, the motivation for engagement is strikingly different
from the institutions'. Whereas the institutions seek to manage a
process, the movements generally want to change the direction and
content of MEI policy. In most cases they seek to change the under-
lying assumptions upon which policy decisions are made. However,
the movements themselves are diverse, representing a wide range of
positions from those who fundamentally disagree with the liberal-
isation project to those who seek to temper its edges. In general one
can say that GSMs seek some form of social protection and a
reorientation of policy so that costs are not born primarily by the
weakest members of society. In the case of the environmental move-
ment, claims are also made on behalf of the planet and future
generations.
In the case of engagement with the World Bank and the IMF, GSMs
want the institutions to take account of the effects of their policies on
women, the environment and labour. The IMF and the Bank are
leaders in establishing the current development orthodoxy. GSMs
target the Bank and the Fund because the two institutions also exercise
in¯uence on other multilateral institutions, developing states and
planning agencies. Until the mid-1980s women's groups were con-
cerned that only a minor segment of the Bank's lending policies had
an acknowledged gender dimension. More damaging has been the
perceived disproportionately negative impact of economic adjustment
measures on women and children. Environmental groups (such as

219
Contesting Global Governance

FOE and WWF) have been concerned about the negative environ-
mental impact of structural adjustment policies. Development NGOs
(such as Bread for the World, Development GAP, Oxfam) have been
concerned with the implications of these institutions' prescriptions on
levels of poverty. More than this, they want the policies themselves to
be reformulated so that they cause less violence to their constituencies.
Labour groups want the institutions to design policies which enhance
employment and bolster the basic rights of workers.
Attempts to in¯uence the WTO are more complicated in that there
are several goals. Women's movements have wanted the WTO to
consider and publicise the gendered impact of trade liberalisation.
Environmentalists have wanted to prevent the WTO's rule making and
enforcement system from frustrating national and international efforts
at environmental protection. Labour has been trying to have the
enforcement mechanisms applied to its issue of core labour standards.
There are elements of each social movement which adopt a more
rejectionist agenda for dealing with MEIs. These groups see MEIs
almost solely in terms of dominating and destructive Northern
capitalist interests attacking the fabric of their societies. For these
groups dialogue and attempt at reforming MEIs is not the object.
Abolition of the institutions or consigning them to irrelevance is the
ultimate goal.

3 Ambiguous results
Although it is too early to come to de®nitive conclusions about the
results of the emerging MEI±GSM relationship, some preliminary
observations are in order. First, there are limits to the relationship
based upon diverging interests. The core political economy projects of
the institutions and those of the movements collide. MEIs are tasked
with establishing and overseeing a set of rules and practices which
contribute to an ever increasing liberalisation of national economies
and the expansion of a global economy. To date, they have not been
tasked with balancing this overriding objective with other concerns
such as equity or justice, or social or environmental protection. GSMs
do take these latter tasks as their briefs and are concerned with the
way that MEI activity seems to threaten such goals. GSMs seek to
change the basic assumptions of MEIs as they presently operate.
Second, to the degree that one party or the other may be more
successful in achieving their objectives, it is more likely that MEIs,

220
 Complex multilateralism: MEIs and GSMs

rather than GSMs, will achieve short-term success. The MEI project is
concerned with blunting opposition and has therefore a more manage-
able goal. GSMs are concerned with challenging the powers that be
and setting new agendas. This is a longer-term task. Indeed, only a
limited amount of GSM time is aimed at bringing about institutional
reform. Similar to national social movements, a great deal of effort is
devoted to shifting public opinion and shaping public values and
norms. In addition, GSMs also target other key actors such as environ-
mental or labour campaigns against particular business corporations.
Initially, it appears that interaction with GSMs is a no-win game for
MEIs. MEI of®cials will not gain substantial support from GSMs as
long as they follow a neoliberal policy prescription which is seen to
attack the interests of these communities. World Bank, IMF and WTO
of®cials are unlikely to persuade GSMs that the wrenching adjustment
accompanying liberal globalisation is in their interests. The World
Bank has gone the furthest in building bridges and amending policy,
but doubts remain about its commitment to balancing neoliberal
prescriptions with social protection. The IMF has a hard task in
convincing women and trade unionists that the lost decade of the
1980s will not be repeated if its advice is followed. Even more dif®cult
for these groups to accept is the IMF's reluctance to address the issue
of how the costs of adjustment are distributed within communities. In
the case of the WTO, the environmentalists, labour and women's
group are unlikely to accept arguments that trade should be free and
other policy concerns should be addressed through other policy
instruments.
Closer examination reveals that MEI managers can view the rela-
tionship with GSMs as having achieved some positive results. The
World Bank has gained some moderate success from its engagement
with GSMs. It has been able to institutionalise some of the concerns of
women and environmentalists in its structure. While creating mechan-
isms for dealing with the issues of these two groups, they remain
subordinate to the primary policy of the institution and its spending
departments. In the case of gender issues, the Bank has seized upon
the use of micro-credit both to demonstrate its good intentions in this
area and to demonstrate its ability to produce new methods of
delivering programmes that show a ®nancial return.7 Perhaps its

7 The Bank does not directly organise micro-credit operations, but does lend support to
NGOs.

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Contesting Global Governance

greatest gain from taking the gender issue on board has been the
rewards for social development coming from recent support for girls'
education. The Bank is certainly viewed as the most Green of the three
institutions and has created mechanisms to make projects more
accountable to target communities.
The IMF has been relatively unconcerned about its relationship
with environmentalist or women's groups, but has actively courted
organised labour. Labour is viewed as a key social actor which might
assist the institution in implementing its adjustment policies and
boost much needed political support in target countries. Building
political support may be too strong an expression; it would be more
accurate to say that the neutralising of opposition from labour groups
is an accomplishment. For their part, established labour organisations
are tempted into a relationship by the IMF because they require the
legitimation of being classi®ed as a social partner and are eager to
show some gains to their hard-pressed members. Yet, the relationship
is at an early stage of engagement and remains vulnerable to oppo-
sition from the grass roots of unionism.
The WTO has put considerable effort into managing its relationship
with environmentalists and has recently engaged labour, but is just
starting to consider gender issues. The incorporation of environmental
issues into the WTO through the Committee on Trade and the
Environment (CTE) has been successful in paying lip-service to
environmental concerns, but avoided any meaningful action. Indeed
the CTE's failure to take action has led to a split within the environ-
mental movement about future strategy. Some groups advocate a
policy of continuing to engage with the institution while others
advocate a withdrawal from the institution and the creation of
alternative mechanisms. This can only be to the WTO's advantage.
Relations with labour have been more dif®cult and are fragile. The
failure to go some way to address labour concerns through a social
clause suggests that future support is contingent upon some new
adjustment.
From the perspective of those social movement elements willing to
engage with MEIs a slightly darker mirror image of the MEI results is
apparent. The women's movement has made some impact on the
World Bank, but none on the IMF and WTO. At the Bank, women's
concerns have been institutionalised through developments such as
the Gender Sector board and the External Gender Consultative Group.
The exercise of listening to women has helped the Bank to make its

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 Complex multilateralism: MEIs and GSMs

lending programmes more ef®cient by pointing out the higher social

pay-offs to be gained from investing in women. Yet, women must
continue to make a business case for Bank attention and have
dif®culty in¯uencing the key spending decision makers. They must
show that gender initiatives are good for business rather than being
good for women. While the Bank has taken the issues of girls'
education and micro-credit seriously, it shies away from more con-
troversial issues that might more deeply challenge gender relations in
client states. This moderate degree of success has not been matched in
the IMF or WTO. Women's groups have few links with IMF personnel.
At the WTO women's groups have just begun to meet with of®cials
and are trying to get the WTO to agree to studies of the gendered
effects of trade liberalisation. They lag far behind environmentalists
and labour in having their agenda taken seriously.
Environmentalists have had some success at the Bank, but made
hardly any impact at the IMF and very little substantive change at the
WTO. Similar to women's groups, environmentalists have had their
concerns institutionalised through the creation of a particular area
within the Bank. Moreover, environmental concerns must be
addressed though environmental assessments of risky projects.
Although there is criticism of the effectiveness of these mechanisms,
they do show an improvement from the days when environmental
issues were not even considered. Environmentalists initially believed
they were making progress at the WTO with the creation of the
Committee on Trade and Environment, but this has proved to be
disappointing. The CTE has taken so few positive steps towards
integrating environmental concerns into the organisation that some
prominent groups are now calling for its abolition. Environmentalists
have made little headway in in¯uencing the IMF.
The record for organised labour is also mixed. Labour has been
slowly brought into closer contact with the IMF. It sees some bene®ts
of engaging with the IMF in terms of increased legitimacy as a social
actor, but grass-roots views are more hostile. Labour issues have
recently been considered by the World Bank and the East Asian
®nancial crisis has sparked a review of the Bank's dealings with
organised labour which may lead to institutional changes. Organised
labour made a large effort to have its issue integrated into the WTO,
but was largely unsuccessful. The labour movement ®nds itself being
bounced between an intransigent WTO and ineffective ILO. The
conclusion labour might draw is that it is best to return to the national

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Contesting Global Governance

arena and pursue unilateral action rather than attempt to reform the
WTO.
Despite concerted effort in the recent past, GSMs would generally
rank low in an MEI hierarchy of in¯uence. The richest Northern states
remain key decision makers. In controversial areas such as gender,
environment or labour standards, weaker Southern states are able to
block policy initiatives by arguing that cultural difference or economic
disadvantage prevent action. Within civil society business organisa-
tions and think tanks have enjoyed more access and in¯uence than
social movements. For example, the IMF has extensive contacts with
business organisations, but not women's groups. Northern based
transnational corporations succeeded in having GATT act in the new
issue of protection for intellectual property rights, but labour has been
unable to advance the core standards issue. GSMs face an uphill
struggle to in¯uence MEIs and temper the power of the richest states
and private enterprises.
Despite these limited achievements, one can discern the emergence
of a distinct section of the GSM community with the inclination and
the ability to engage MEIs on an ongoing basis. This suggests that
with some ¯exibility MEIs could cultivate a social movement constitu-
ency and that the GSM community is likely to show increasing signs
of fragmentation and polarisation. The lines of division between
sections of GSMs within the MEI loop and those outside it are
becoming increasingly clear. The factors that determine who is in and
who is out can vary according to ideology, location, expertise and
in¯uence.
Ideology is signi®cant because `in' groups must at least accept the
general goal of liberalisation, even if there is disagreement about its
scope, speed and intensity. Location is crucial as those groups able to
operate in Washington and Geneva have better access and oppor-
tunity to engage with MEI of®cials. In addition, those groups capable
of exercising in¯uence within the US or European domestic political
system stand a greater chance of having their views brought into MEI
councils. Expertise is important in two senses. MEIs are more likely to
listen to groups who have expertise the institutions lack and are
unlikely to spend time with groups unfamiliar with liberal economics
or an understanding of trade law. In¯uence upon key state decision
makers, whether in the developed or developing world, also increases
the chances that sections of a particular GSM will be brought into a
dialogue with MEIs.

224
 Complex multilateralism: MEIs and GSMs

The preceding variables tend to favour mainstream Northern based

elements of GSMs. For example, the US section of the women's
movement is generally heard more clearly than women from devel-
oping countries. The Northern based International Confederation of
Free Trade Unions and the AFL±CIO are more likely to be accommo-
dated than trade unionists or unorganised workers in developing
countries. Northern semi-professional environmental groups are
taken seriously, while the voice of Southern groups tends to be
drowned out.
A further factor is required to explain the varying levels of success
enjoyed by the women's, environmental and labour movements. The
degree to which a movement can put pressure upon key states and
the degree to which its concerns can be accommodated without
challenging the most powerful interests are key in determining its
relationship with MEIs. For example, the environmental movement
has had some success in getting its agenda taken seriously at the
World Bank and WTO. In both cases pressure on the US political
system was decisive. Labour has also been able to use pressure in the
USA and Europe to drive its labour standards campaign at the WTO.
Its strategic position within national economies has also brought it to
the IMF's attention. However, the fact that an independent labour
movement threatens both the pro®ts of ®rms and the political control
of authoritarian states makes its concerns a non-starter at the WTO.
Environmentalists, on the other hand, pose less of a direct threat to
political power and their concerns are discussed at an institution like
the WTO. Women have had their concerns integrated into the World
Bank in reaction to the shortcoming of developmental policies and
vocal protest, but they are less in¯uential than environmentalists.
They wield less in¯uence in the US political system and have made
little impact on either the IMF or the WTO.

4 Differential state impact

Our study has examined the relationship between MEIs and GSMs in
some depth. Although limited, some accommodation has developed
between these actors. The question arises as to the implication of these
developments for the state and its traditional role as the sole represen-
tative of a population within a bounded territory. There is no simple
answer to such a question. A blanket generalisation which suggested
either that GSM and NGO activity undermines states or strengthens

225
Contesting Global Governance

state regulatory capacity (Raustiala 1997) would be misleading. The

implication for the state varies considerably depending upon the state
in question. Indeed, asymmetric GSM in¯uence upon different states
is a source of major contention. In most cases the MEI±GSM relation-
ship weakens state claims to a monopoly of representation, in some
cases GSM activity strengthens or highlights the role of particular
states, while in others it agitates for a reassertion of sovereignty and
greater state building capabilities. Let us take these implications in
turn.
MEI accommodation of some role for GSMs acknowledges a reality
and effectively legitimises a claim to representation. The reality is that
GSMs do have some in¯uence in the conduct of world politics. If
MEIs are to continue their role of liberalising the world economy, they
must be sensitive to divergent interests and locations of power. GSMs
remain subordinate actors in the global political economy, but there
are times when they can obstruct or delay the liberalisation project.
MEI adaptation is not an exercise in idealistic intentions, but a strategy
of realpolitik. MEIs are accommodating a new source of in¯uence in
world politics. By providing for increased contact with GSMs the
institutions legitimise the movements' claims that they act on behalf
of interests not represented by states.
This legitimation of the GSM role is neither unprecedented nor
revolutionary, but it is potentially signi®cant. In recent years the UN
system has increasingly opened up its activities to non-state actors
(Weiss and Gordenker 1996; Willetts 1996) while the ILO was founded
on the principle that a society contains divergent interests requiring
separate representation (Wilson 1934). The signi®cance lies in the
particular nature of the IMF, World Bank, and WTO. Individually, and
as a group, they are extremely in¯uential institutions guiding and
enforcing the liberalisation process. Their pronouncements, rulings
and advice have direct impact upon state policy. Opening up these
institutions to non-state in¯uence is more signi®cant than the same
steps in other institutions because of the IMF's, World Bank's and
WTO's institutional power. It injects another element into governance
giving states' decision makers another competitor, ally or adversary in
the realm of international public policy making. The implications for
particular states varies.
In the case of the United States, the activity of GSMs seems only to
underline its central role in world politics. Because of its powerful
position, the United States domestic political arena has become the

226
 Complex multilateralism: MEIs and GSMs

key battleground to in¯uence MEI policy. Environmentalists were able

to force the GATT to take environmental issues seriously following a
US outcry against a GATT ruling which struck down American
measures aimed at protecting dolphins from tuna ®shing nets (Skilton
1993). The establishment of a WTO Committee on Trade and the
Environment can be traced back to this US controversy. Similarly,
attempts to have environmental priorities put on the agenda of the
World Bank have been most successful when they attempted to
in¯uence US Congressional funding of that institution. For the labour
movement, US support on the issue of core labour standards is critical
if it is to have the issue considered at the WTO or to reform the ILO.
As a lobby, women have less concentrated power in the US political
system and have been relatively unsuccessful in channelling their
demands through the political system into the MEIs.
For Southern states the picture is more complicated. In some cases
GSM activity can demonstrate the weakness of particular Southern
states. For example, World Bank or IMF conditionality may coerce
states into adopting policies that they would not otherwise imple-
ment. In this case national agendas are being in¯uenced not only by
stronger states and multilateral institutions, but also by social move-
ments. In other cases, such as with Southern development NGOs, the
goal is not to force the Southern state to take particular policy steps,
but to strengthen the state by in¯uencing the pattern of development
policy of the MEIs. The goal is to increase the ability of poorer states
to act. This can take the form of loosening conditionality on IMF/
World Bank loans or blocking the expansion of the WTO into new
issue areas.
Government of®cials in stronger and weaker states can both use
and be used by GSMs seeking to in¯uence MEIs. For example, it is
unclear who was serving whose purposes in the US government's
relationship with the international labour movement during the
discussion of core labour standards at the WTO. The labour unions
relied upon the USA to advance their agenda at the WTO. Only the
support of powerful states would get labour issues on to the WTO
agenda. The USA used the unions to demonstrate that its advocacy of
core labour standards had support among the world's workers. Some
have suggested an even more instrumental explanation of US support
for core labour standards. Perhaps the US government only used its
advocacy of labour standards as a bargaining chip with Asian states
to achieve its primary goal in the December 1996 Singapore WTO

227
Contesting Global Governance

meeting ± an Information Technology agreement reducing barriers to

IT trade. This agreement had been discussed at an APEC meeting a
month before Singapore, but the USA was unable to secure Asian
support. One theory is that at Singapore the US government traded a
weak statement on labour standards for an IT agreement. 8
Weaker or developing states may also forge links with social move-
ments to advance their agendas. To go back to the Singapore meeting,
a number of Southern based NGOs echoed the views of particular
developing states such as Malaysia and Indonesia that the new issues
of investment, competition policy and labour standards should be
kept off the agenda of the WTO (TWN 1996). The goal was to portray
the attempt of the US and the EU to enlarge the policy competence of
the WTO as an exercise in Northern imperialism. This re¯ected the
views of some social movements and served the interests of particular
Southern states by strengthening their bargaining position.

5 A more social agenda

Although GSM activists are usually disappointed by their lack of
in¯uence upon MEIs, the shift of the MEI agenda is a signi®cant
accomplishment. The decade of the 1990s has seen MEIs begin to
acknowledge some responsibility for the social impact of their poli-
cies. To be sure, GSMs cannot claim sole responsibility for changes in
the agenda, but their work in publicising the role of MEIs and issues
of concern can take some credit. The institutions in this study have
broadened their area of concern to address many of the subjects
advanced by GSMs. Undoubtedly, the policy responses are not to the
satisfaction of the social movements, but issues need to get on the
agenda before they can be addressed. In the longer term a shifting
agenda can be a signi®cant factor of change.
All of the institutions have broadened the scope of their activity to
include some of the issues of importance to GSMs. The World Bank
has taken on notions of gender, although only to the extent that it is
®nancially rewarding. They have also developed mechanisms to
evaluate the environmental impact of their programmes. Recent
restructuring has committed more resources to social development
concerns (Bread for the World 1997c: 2). As a result of the Asian crisis

8 During the course of interviews numerous people have suggested the following
possibility, but no hard evidence exists to support such a theory.

228
 Complex multilateralism: MEIs and GSMs

they are beginning to look at labour not as an obstacle to development,

but as a key strategic actor. The IMF, stung by the recent East Asian
®nancial crisis and earlier criticisms, is taking further steps towards
acknowledging that their prescriptions may need to include a social
dimension if they are to be successful. In the WTO, provisions have
been made for studying the relationship between environment and
trade. The issue of labour adjustment and core labour standards has
been broached. There are also signs that the lobbying by women's
groups is starting to make an impact on Secretariat of®cials.
The result of this shifting agenda is that it is increasingly obvious
that development, ®nancial stability and trade have a social dimen-
sion. Despite the head in the sand approach of the 1980s, MEIs have
not been able to insulate themselves from broader social concerns
about their activity. In each case they have been forced to broaden
their agenda to address, if not satisfy, the concerns of GSMs. More
Bank money does now go to projects with a gender dimension, the
IMF is in discussion with organised labour about structural adjust-
ment programmes in parts of East Asia and the WTO is increasingly
engaging with civil society about environmental and labour issues.
The functions of the institutions are beginning to change as they
attempt to deal with `new issues'.
The degree to which a shifting agenda leads to new policies
remains to be determined by continued political con¯ict at the global,
international, national and local levels. However, it can be noted
that a subtle change is underway as institutions adapt to complex
multilateralism.

Conclusion
Despite the limits to complex multilateralism our study has revealed
that a range of measures have been taken to inform social movements
about, and sometimes include them in, MEI decision-making. It is
useful to differentiate between short-term accomplishment and long
term developments when attempting to determine the signi®cance of
this change in the form of governance. In the short term one can see a
process of engagement, exchange of information and mutual learning.
Members of the institutions and movements are becoming more
aware of the roles and concerns of the other party. This contributes to
an appreciation, if not acceptance, of each other's goals and possi-
bilities for action. For example, far more members of the GSM

229
Contesting Global Governance

community have now gained an understanding of the role and

function of the WTO (including its limits for action) than was ever
true of the GATT. In the case of the World Bank, there is now some
understanding that gender blind development strategies can weaken
women's economic position and undermine social development goals.
At a minimum, the MEI±GSM relationship signals a move to bridge
the gap between the institutions of global economic governance and
the mass of non-elite people governed by them.
In the longer term one can envision a range of possibilities for the
MEI±GSM relationship from atrophy to effective partnership. The
possibility of atrophy must be raised for two reasons. First, it is
possible that the institutions or movements conclude that it no longer
serves their purpose and give up on the relationship. This could occur
if the institutions perceive GSM activity as inevitably hostile and
incapable of movement. It could also occur if GSMs sense that open-
ings in the MEI structure are designed only to de¯ect criticism
through co-optation with little possibility of changing policy. Both
scenarios are possible, but involve considerable costs for the institu-
tions and movements in terms of heightened con¯ict.
A second reason for considering the possibility of atrophy is that
GSM activity may be reliant upon the nature of the international
system itself. It may be the case that the end of the Cold War and
recent advances in communication technology have created a unique,
rather than permanent, opening in the state system which allows for
increased GSM activity and participation. A historical overview has
pointed out that NGO participation in international institutions has
been cyclical and corresponded with times of peace following events
such as the First and Second World Wars (Charnovitz 1997). Perhaps
the post-Cold War era is a similar temporary opening for civil society.
Renewed interstate con¯ict between major powers might close off the
opportunities for NGO and GSM participation.
There are, however, reasons to be more con®dent about the ongoing
MEI±GSM relationship. The barriers of time and space which have
formerly been so effective at separating the mass of people from each
other are ever less formidable. The mobilisation of social groups and
their connection with like-minded people in other parts of the world
show no signs of lessening. This suggests that GSMs will continue to
be active, even if they do contain a wide range of prescriptive
proposals and strategies. From the institutional side there is also the
possibility of development and change. It is gradually being accepted

230
 Complex multilateralism: MEIs and GSMs

that organisations other than states have an interest in their operation.

This includes GSMs. Moreover, organisations adapt and change as
interests are rede®ned and new concerns are incorporated into the
structure. Environmental, gender and labour concerns are on the
agenda in ways that would have been deemed illegitimate in the 1970s.
The possibility remains that they will increase in importance and lead
to a transformation in the substance, as well as method, of governance.
Our study raises a number of wider questions which we cannot
answer here, but may serve as a basis for further research, investi-
gation and debate. Three questions seem most pressing.

1 What is the appropriate response to complex

multilateralism?
This is a question of concern that goes beyond academics to state and
multilateral organisation of®cials, as well as members of civil society.
For some, complex multilateralism is a threat because it complicates
governing or facilitates the input of groups with undesirable policy
programmes. Liberals are concerned about a corruption of their
project while many in the South worry about the unequal access of
Northern based civil society groups. For those who see moderate
social movements as the hope for increasing global democracy,
complex multilateralism needs to be strengthened and supported.
People with a more radical agenda seeking greater transformation
away from the liberal programme may view complex multilateralism
as a threat because of its ability to co-opt parts of the social movement
community and deradicalise their project.
Policy prescriptions about complex multilateralism will depend
upon one's view of the degree to which it is making global governance
more democratic and whether or not that is a desirable objective. Our
study indicates that the structures of MEI governance are becoming
more pluralistic in the sense that they are confronting a wider range of
actors. Constituencies previously excluded from the operation of
these institutions are increasingly coming into contact with MEI
of®cials and state decision makers involved in their operation. Issues
of concern to sectors of civil society are gradually making it on to the
MEI agenda. MEIs are becoming more responsive to some sections of
public opinion, going beyond the interests of various state elites. In
this sense, global governance is inching towards a more democratic
form. However, the degree of responsiveness on the part of MEIs is

231
Contesting Global Governance

limited. In addition, the composition of the most in¯uential elements

of GSMs re¯ects a narrow base in developed countries. Our conclu-
sion is that there has been a very slight move to democratise MEIs, but
the emphasis must be on its incremental and tentative nature.
For MEI supporters, this study should raise concerns about the
legitimacy de®cits of the IMF and WTO. The IMF and WTO lack solid
public support in developed and developing countries. GSMs are key
actors in the battle to shape issues and in¯uence social norms. The
greater openness of the Bank to GSM contact indicates that its future
as a MEI is more secure than the IMF and WTO. These latter
institutions need to give greater attention to their relationships with
civil society and social movements. This may imply some policy
compromises to the liberal agenda in return for the health of the
institution.

2 Does complex multilateralism have a wider applicability?

Does our concept of complex multilateralism have an applicability
that goes beyond our case studies of the IMF, World Bank and WTO?
Would it be possible to apply it to other multilateral institutions or to
the broader concept of regimes? We believe there are reasons that it
might. First, we have chosen hard case studies in the sense that these
are powerful interstate institutions dealing with issues of central
economic concern to many states. These are institutions and issues
that states rank high on their agenda whether they are developing
states seeking to improve their economic plight or developed states
seeking value for money or commercial advantage for their ®rms. If
we have found evidence of a change in governance in these institu-
tions the chances are high that it is happening in other places as
well.
Second, a casual glance at other areas seems to mirror developments
we have charted. The debate surrounding the Multilateral Agreement
on Investment (MAI) at the OECD exhibits similar characteristics to
those of this study (Mayne and Picciotto 1999; Strom 1998). An
example in the security ®eld is the International Landmines Conven-
tion banning landmines signed in Ottawa on 3 December 1997 (Price
1998; Tomlin, Cameron and Lawson 1998). The campaign to ban
landmines was led by numerous groups in global civil society. This is
evidence of the type of activity described as new multilateralism.
Local groups of citizens from around the word united to pressure

232
 Complex multilateralism: MEIs and GSMs

state decision makers into adopting more people-friendly policies.

However, for implementation the treaty relies on the signature and
enforcement of states. Their crucial role is highlighted by the decision
of three great powers (United States, China and Russia) not to be
in¯uenced by the public campaign for reasons of national security.
Multilateralism has become more complex, but it has not changed
beyond recognition.
In the event that further research ®nds our assumption that
complex multilateralism does not have wider applicability we would
still argue for its signi®cance on the basis of these case studies. This is
because of the relationship between the iron triangle of liberalism
(IMF±World Bank±WTO) and other elements of global governance.
The liberalisation trinity are taking on an increasingly signi®cant
governance role to the detriment of other multilateral institutions.
This is most clearly seen in the struggle to de®ne the role of the WTO.
It has expanded from the old GATT competencies of tariff reduction in
goods into services and non-tariff barriers. It has moved beyond state
policies to take up the issue of the behaviour of ®rms. An interesting
example is the WTO working group on competition policy which is
meant to ensure that companies behave in particular ways. Another is
the agreement on intellectual property rights which is designed to
defend the advantages of Northern TNCs. Similarly, the issue of
investment has been brought into the WTO. This activity marginalises
the importance of institutions such as the World Intellectual Property
Organisation and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Devel-
opment (UNCTAD). For example, although developing countries
claimed that investment policy should be discussed in the context of
UNCTAD, it is possible that an agreement ®rst negotiated at the
OECD will ®nd its way into the WTO.
Similar examples could be made with regard to the rest of the UN
system. Provisions for health or child care advocated by UNICEF or
the World Health Organisation must exist in the context of IMF/
World Bank structural adjustment prescriptions. Organised labour's
attempt to have a social clause incorporated in the WTO was an
acknowledgement of the failure of the ILO and a need to in¯uence the
institutions where power can be wielded most easily. This suggests a
weakening of other aspects of the UN system. In addition, the large
in¯uence exercised by OECD states in the trinity suggest that the
rising importance of MEIs will frustrate attempts at more equity
based institution building.

233
Contesting Global Governance

3 What are the implications for understanding international

organisation and international relations?
Our study lends some support to theoretical approaches that try to
understand world order, international relations and multilateral orga-
nisation in a manner which integrates political activity at the national,
international and global levels and pays attention to the role of groups
across and within society. The activity of MEIs in our study indicates a
growing awareness amongst of®cials that the stability of the inter-
national system which they are trying to construct rests on founda-
tions in domestic civil societies and emerging global civil society. This
goes beyond a sense that transnational relations will have an impact
on state policies (Keohane and Nye 1972, Risse-Kappen 1995). It also
goes beyond the view that domestic interest groups matter to the
conduct of international policy because they in¯uence states (Milner
1997). Our study has stressed the link between forms of international
institution and social movements in which the state is just one area of
contact and struggle (albeit an important one). The MEI±GSM rela-
tionship can be direct and need not be mediated by the state. Social
forces within and across state borders are a factor in determining the
nature of international order and organisation (Cox 1981; 1987).
Attempts to explain developments which ignore this are incomplete.
The study also ®nds some evidence to support approaches that
attempt to link changes in economic organisation with forms of
governance (Murphy 1994). Complex multilateralism is a product of
an increasingly interconnected global political economy. Structural
changes such as the liberalisation of economies, globalisation of
®nancial markets, and innovation in information technology are
driving changes in regulatory forms and governance. These changes
in governance are not yet complete. Complex multilateralism may be
a temporary stepping stone to a more elaborate form of global
governance or it may be an imperfect answer to a perplexing problem.

234
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255
 Index

AFL±CIO 78, 90, 165 Clean Clothes Campaign 99

Alexander, Nancy 196 Clinton, Bill 140, 153
Alt-WID 40 codes of conduct 99, 106
Anderson, Luis 78 see also Rugmark
Antrobus, Peggy 36 Cold War 10, 73, 86, 104, 230
Austrian Foundation for Development Colombia 104, 105
Assistance Research 166 Commonwealth 175
Authentic Labour Front 74 complex interdependence 207
authority 7 complex multilateralism 5±6, 206±34
AWEPON 38 ambiguous results 220±5
applicability 232±3
Bangladesh 174 characteristics 208±11
Bank Information Centre 59, 128 con¯icting goals 217±20
Barshefsky, Charlene 90 differential state impact 225±8
boomerang pattern of in¯uence 61±3 institutional modi®cation 211±16
BothENDS 170, 175, 198 responses to 231±2
Brazil 101, 123, 128 sign®cance 229±34
Bread for the World Institute 59, 129, 166 social agenda 228±9
Bullen, Sally 152 Conable, Barber 123, 127
Bundesbank 175 core labour standards
business groups 15, 91, 94, 102, 110, 160, campaign at ILO 102±6
190, 209, 212n campaign at WTO 82±92, 97±102
de®ned 83
Cambodia 180
Camdessus, Michel 78, 169, 173, 178, 215, dams 19, 128, 133
216 DAWN 36, 38
Canada 23n, 51, 89, 146 deep ecology 16
Catholic Centre for International Relations democracy 21±2, 132, 150±3, 170±1, 231±2
95 Denmark 98
Cato Institute 167, 172, 199 development
see also libertarian groups participation 26, 27, 118
Center for International Environmental Development GAP 129, 166
Law 129, 142 Dobson, Andrew 111
Center of Concern 59, 129, 170, 172, 183
Cernea, Michael 29 Earth Summit see UNCED
Christian Aid 176 East Asian ®nancial crisis 8±9, 10, 80, 223
Clark, John 80 Eckersley, Robyn 111
Claussen, W.A. 51, 127 ecolabelling 149

256
 Index
Economic Policy Research Centre 166 Ghana 174
ECOSOC 76, 123, 178 global civil society 12±16
Egypt 105 Global Environmental Facility 122, 134
El Salvador 60 global governance 2±3, 21±2, 159, 207, 234
Elson, Diane 36 see also complex multilateralism
Environmental Defense Fund 129 global social movements
environmental movement de®ned 12±16
features 110±13 goals at IMF 164±71
goals at World Bank 132±3 inequalities within 14, 192±6, 222±5
goals at WTO 147±9 legitimacy concerns 200±1
IMF 167, 179 motivations 20, 209, 219±20
North±South differences 113, 129, 134 resource constraints 196±7
NGOs and global environmental state impact 225±8
politics 113±15 strategies at IMF 171±6
World Bank 115±34, 223 see also environmental movement,
WTO 141±53, 223 labour movement, women's
Environmental Policy Institute 127 movements
epistemic communities 129 globalisation 6±10, 34, 76, 78, 105, 135, 153,
Equipo Pueblo 166 159, 160, 161, 162, 176, 189, 207, 210,
EURODAD 169, 172, 175, 186 221, 234
European Union Greenbelt Movement 16
gender issues 38, 96 Greenpeace 114, 130
IMF in¯uence 174±5 Group of Seven 185
labour issues 89, 90, 100, 106
trade 72 Harvard Institute for International
Expert Panel on Trade and Environment Development 166
153 HIPC initiative 172, 181±2
expertise human rights
NGOs and environment 114±15 women's groups 38±9
export processing zone 83
IBASE 166
feminism 32, 34, 35 ICFTU 73, 74, 97n, 165, 174, 175
Fifty Years Is Enough 53, 59, 172, 176 IMF 77±9, 164±5, 172, 174, 195, 196, 199
Fiji 98, 165 Singapore WTO meeting 85±92
Financial Times 200 UN Social Development Summit 81±2
Focus on Global South 166 World Bank 79±81
Folbre, Nancy 36 World Congress 76, 78, 84
Forum of African Voluntary Development WTO post-Singapore 97±102
Organisations 166 see also labour movement
France ICHRDD 86, 87
labour issues 89, 91, 107 ICTSD 142
World Bank 27, 117 ideology 9±10
Freedom from Debt 166 IISD 142
Friends of the Earth 114, 130 ILO 72, 83, 226
IMF 166, 167, 170, 172, 176, 183, 186, contrast with WTO 102
196, 199 Director General 91, 104
Fundamental Declaration 104±6
GATT 68±70, 135±7, 143±4 IMF 175
dolphin±tuna case 143, 146 origins and structure 77, 102±4
Group on Environmental Measures and response to WTO debate 104±6
International Trade 143 ILRF 86, 87
Germany 99 IMF
IMF 175 debt relief 181±2
World Bank 27, 51, 117, 128 democratisation 170±1
Gerster, Richard 136, 196 environmental issues 179

257
Index
Fiscal Affairs department 178, 180 unions 1, 81, 165
gender issues 179±80 World Bank 52, 81
good governance 180±1
institutional culture 191±2 labour movement
labour issues 164±5, 195; see also ICFTU, description 73±6
labour movement ILO 77, 102±6
modi®cations 202±3 IMF 77±9, 164±5, 195, 212, 218
motivations 203±4, 218 social movements, 74±7, 86±9, 97n
neoliberal assumptions 159, 189±91 World Bank 79±81
obstacles to GSMs 189±201 WTO 82±92, 97±102, 107±8
programme evaluation 185±6 UN summits 81±2
programme ownership 186±8 see also ICFTU, International Trade
Public Development and Review Secretariats, WCL, WFTU
department 174, 185, 192 Landmines Convention 232
role 10, 161±4, 215 Lettieri, Antonio 78
signi®cance of GSM relations 204±5 libertarian groups 167, 172
social dimension 177±8 Cato Institute 167, 199
transparency 183±5
see also multilateral economic MAI 232
institutions, structural adjustment Malaysia
policies unions 84
India 8, 19, 140, 180 Mali 174
environmental issues 128 Mandela, Nelson 101
IPRs 19, 71 McNamara, Robert 123
labour issues 91, 99, 105 media 115
unions 85 Mexico 62, 105, 146, 166
Indonesia 1, 8 ®nancial crisis 8, 163
IMF 163, 195 UN Conference on Women 34, 42
World Bank 45, 128 micro-credit 24, 50, 221
WTO 91, 93 multilateral economic institutions
Information Technology Agreement 228 GSM relations, signi®cance of 21±2,
Inter Press Service 199 206±34
International Trade Secretariats 73±4, 97n, motivations 18±20, 217±18
165 social agenda 228±9
EI 76, 86, 93, 94, 95 transformation 10±12, 17±18, 211±16
ITGLWF 73, 86 see also IMF: World Bank, WTO
PSI 79, 86, 94 multilateral environmental agreements
International Metalworkers Federation 73 149
International Federation of Chemical, multilateralism 3±6
Energy, Mine and General Workers' new 3, 4±5, 208
Unions (ICEM) 73 traditional 3±4, 207
Ireland 174 see also complex multilateralism
Debt and Development Coalition 169, MUNS 4
174, 176 Myanmar 106
ITO 68, 69
IUCN 142 NAFTA 83, 146
National Resources Defense Council
Jackson, John H. 11 127
John Paul II 169 National Wildlife Federation 127
Jubilee 2000, 169 Nepal 133
Kenya 49n Netherlands 51, 175
IMF 180, 183 neoliberalism
Korea feminist critique 35±41
®nancial crisis 8, 81, 165 see also ideology, IMF, World Bank
IMF 165, 195 network society 7

258
 Index
NGOs 16, 20 structural adjustment policies
development and IMF 165±6 feminist critique 36±8
gender issues 57±61 growth of NGOs 116±17
labour issues 86±9 labour critique 78±9
Singapore ministerial meeting 92±7 Sudan 106
World Bank 28±31, 119±21 sustainable development 123±6, 132,
see also social movements 152
Nguyen, Minh Chau 48 WTO 143, 145
Niger 174 Sweeney, John 90
Non-Aligned Movement 104, 175 Swiss Coalition of Development
North±South Institute 166 Organisations 166, 172, 174, 196
Norway 89 Switzerland 174, 175, 176

Overseas Development Council 166, 172 Taylor, Lucy 59

Overseas Development Institute 166, Third World Network 87±8
172 Torfs, Marijke 196
Owen, Robert 75 trade and the environment
Oxfam 59, 95, 129, 166, 172 contending views 146±8
Transnational Institute 95
PADA 166 transnational networks 114
Pakistan 180 transnational relations 207
labour issues 91, 98, 99, 105 Transparency International 168, 172, 180
Paris Club 182 Trotman, C. LeRoy 78
peasant groups 1, 88, 141n, 194 TUAC 92n
poblador movement 58
Polonoreste project 123, 128 UAW 79, 165
Pork Producers Council 94 UE 74
protests 58 Uganda 22, 182
against IMF 173 IMF 182, 183n
against WTO 1, 72 World Bank 37n, 60
Pursey, Stephen 196 Uganda Debt Network 169
UN Conferences 16, 22, 76
Quereshi, Moeen 29 Beijing 39, 40, 43
Social Development Summit 81±2
Romania 22, 165 Women 34
Rowlands, Ian 114 UNCED 114, 143
Ruggie, John 3 UNCTAD 72, 175, 190, 233
Ruggiero, Renato 92n, 140, 153 UNICEF 175, 233
Rugmark 99 United Kingdom 9
Russia 8, 77, 102, 163 gender issues 51
labour issues 91
Sachs, Jeffrey 197 World Bank 27, 117
SAPRI 30, 59±60, 175, 190 United States
Sen, Gita 36 complex multilateralism 226±7
Sierra Club 16, 94, 95 environmental issues 53, 127
Singapore 80, 163 GATT 68±9
see also WTO ILO 103±4
social clause, see core labour standards IMF 218
Solidar 86, 101 ITO 68
Somovia, Juan 76 labour issues 89±90, 100, 101, 107, 228
Soros, George 9 liberalism 7, 9
South Africa World Bank 27, 62, 117, 127, 157, 217
labour issues 89, 100 WTO 67, 72, 94, 100, 143, 157, 218
COSATU 101 see also US Congress, US Treasury
Squire, Lyn 58 University of Sussex, ix, 94

259
Index
US Congress gender sector board 44±5
environmental campaigns 127±8, 128±9, good governance 26
212 IBRD 25, 115±16
gender issues 52±3 IDA 25, 27, 46, 52, 116
IMF funding 19, 79, 172, 174, 183, 197 ideology 47±51, 117±18, 124±5
importance for MEIs 210 IFC 25, 46, 116, 131
labour standards 90 independent inspection panel 31, 133
WTO 19 internal diversity 118±19
US Debt Crisis Network 168 internal gender advocates 55±7
US Treasury MIGA 25, 46, 131
IMF 175 modi®cation 63±4, 154±5
World Bank 27, 127 motivations 64, 155, 215
NGO relations 28±31, 119±21
Van Dyke, Brennan 152 participation agenda 132
Vatican 169, 172 public disclosure policy 31, 132
role 24±7, 116
Wangusa, Hellen 60 signi®cance of GSM interaction 65±6,
Wapenhans, Wili 28 156±8
Washington consensus 9, 29, 32 women in development 43
WCL 73, 95, 97, 165, 195 see also multilateral economic
WEDO 38, 39, 95 institutions
WEED 176 World Development Reports
WFTU 73 environmental issues 147
WHO 233 gender issues ignored 47
WIDE 38, 39, 95 labour issues 80
Williams, Marc 27 WTO
Wolfensohn, James 26, 41, 43, 53, 119, 215, Committee on Trade and Environment
216 144, 145, 149, 150, 222
Women in Development 35, 43 core labour standards 82±92, 97±102,
Women's Eyes on the Bank 40±1, 43, 45, 102±6
61±3 dispute settlement 69±71, 72, 92, 97, 102,
Women's Global Alliance for 136, 137
Development Alternatives 39±40 environmental issues 143±53
women's movements External Relations department 94
alternative economics 35±41 Geneva ministerial meeting 1, 72, 100±1,
IMF 195±6 107, 137, 140, 151
international arena 33±5 high-level symposia 101, 139
structural features 32±3 liberal ideology 141, 147, 215
US 52±3 modi®cation 106±7, 154±5
World Bank 95±6 motivations 107, 155
WTO 40±66 opposition to NGOs 138±41
World Bank PPMs 148±9
access points 51±7 relations with GSMs 92±7, 138±41
Country Assistance Strategy 30, 41, 45, 60 role 68±73, 135±7, 215
economic and sector work 30, 42, 121 signi®cance of GSM engagement 107±8,
Environment Department 123±4, 127, 156±8
129, 132 Singapore ministerial meeting 22, 67,
environmental assessments 126, 133 72, 85±97, 100, 104, 106, 137, 145, 158
ESDVP 124, 125 TPRM 95, 97, 98, 136, 137, 150, 213
Executive Directors and gender issues transparency 150
51±2 see also multilateral economic institutions
External Gender Consultative Group WWF 142, 167, 172
43, 46, 60 WWW 95
gender analysis and policy (GAP) 43
gender issues 57±61 Zambia 174

260
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

57 Randall D. Germain
The international organization of credit
States and global ®nance in the world economy
56 N. Piers Ludlow
Dealing with Britain
The Six and the ®rst UK application to the EEC
55 Andreas Hasenclever, Peter Mayer and Volker Rittberger
Theories of international regimes
54 Miranda A. Schreurs and Elizabeth C. Economy (eds.)
The internationalization of environmental protection
53 James N. Rosenau
Along the domestic±foreign frontier
Exploring governance in a turbulent world
52 John M. Hobson
The wealth of states
A comparative sociology of international economic and political
change
51 Kalevi J. Holsti
The state, war, and the state of war
50 Christopher Clapham
Africa and the international system
The politics of state survival
49 Susan Strange
The retreat of the state
The diffusion of power in the world economy
48 William I. Robinson
Promoting polyarchy
Globalization, US intervention, and hegemony
47 Rober Spegele
Political realism in international theory
46 Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber (eds.)
State sovereignty as social construct
45 Mervyn Frost
Ethics in international relations
A constitutive theory
44 Mark W. Zacher with Brent A. Sutton
Governing global networks
International regimes for transportation and communications
43 Mark Neufeld
The restructuring of international relations theory
42 Thomas Risse-Kappen (ed.)
Bringing transnational relations back in
Non-state actors, domestic structures and international institutions
41 Hayward R. Alker
Rediscoveries and reformulations
Humanistic methodologies for international studies
40 Robert W. Cox with Timothy J. Sinclair
Approaches to world order
39 Jens Bartelson
A genealogy of sovereignty
38 Mark Rupert
Producing hegemony
The politics of mass production and American global power
37 Cynthia Weber
Simulating sovereignty
Intervention, the state and symbolic exchange
36 Gary Goertz
Contexts of international politics
35 James L. Richardson
Crisis diplomacy
The Great Powers since the mid-nineteenth century
34 Bradley S. Klein
Strategic studies and world order
The global politics of deterrence
33 T. V. Paul
Asymmetric con¯icts: war initiation by weaker powers
32 Christine Sylvester
Feminist theory and international relations in a postmodern
era
31 Peter J. Schraeder
US foreign policy toward Africa
Incrementalism, crisis and change
30 Graham Spinardi
From Polaris to Trident: the development of US Fleet Ballistic
Missile technology
29 David A. Welch
Justice and the genesis of war
28 Russell J. Leng
Interstate crisis behavior, 1816±1980: realism versus reciprocity
27 John A. Vasquez
The war puzzle
26 Stephen Gill (ed.)
Gramsci, historical materialism and international relations
25 Mike Bowker and Robin Brown (eds.)
From Cold War to collapse: theory and world politics in the
1980s
24 R. B. J. Walker
Inside/outside: international relations as political theory
23 Edward Reiss
The Strategic Defence Initiative
22 Keith Krause
Arms and the state: patterns of military production and trade
21 Roger Buckley
US±Japan alliance diplomacy 1945±1990
20 James N. Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel (eds.)
Governance without government: order and change in world
politics
19 Michael Nicholson
Rationality and the analysis of international con¯ict
18 John Stopford and Susan Strange
Rival states, rival ®rms
Competition for world market shares
17 Terry Nardin and David R. Mapel (eds.)
Traditions of international ethics
16 Charles F. Doran
Systems in crisis
New imperatives of high politics at century's end
15 Deon Geldenhuys
Isolated states: a comparative analysis
14 Kalevi J. Holsti
Peace and war: armed con¯icts and international order
1648±1989
13 Saki Dockrill
Britain's policy for West German rearmament 1950±1955
12 Robert H. Jackson
Quasi-states: sovereignty, international relations and the Third
World
11 James Barber and John Barratt
South Africa's foreign policy
The search for status and security 1945±1988
10 James Mayall
Nationalism and international society
9 William Bloom
Personal identity, national identity and international relations
8 Zeev Maoz
National choices and international processes
7 Ian Clark
The hierarchy of states
Reform and resistance in the international order
6 Hidemi Suganami
The domestic analogy and world order proposals
5 Stephen Gill
American hegemony and the Trilateral Commission
4 Michael C. Pugh
The ANZUS crisis, nuclear visiting and deterrence
3 Michael Nicholson
Formal theories in international relations
2 Friedrich V. Kratochwil
Rules, norms, and decisions
On the conditions of practical and legal reasoning in international
relations and domestic affairs
1 Myles L. C. Robertson
Soviet policy towards Japan
An analysis of trends in the 1970s and 1980s