Le modèle de réforme préconisé par le FMI en Russie : entre inertie et changement

Abstract

In the second half of the 1990s, the IMF became heavily involved in financing the Russian transition, but was unable to foster fast reforms or to prevent the August 1998 financial crash. These disappointments have been interpreted in opposite ways. For some pundits, the IMF was much too imprudent ; for others, much too conformist. As the author's review of this debate shows, the IMF's model of interventions in Russia changed in contradictory ways between 1996 and 1998 : on the one hand, targets were redefined so as to favor institutional reforms ; but on the other, the conditions for IMF interventions were loosened out of support for Yeltsin and his allies and out of fear lest foreign capital suddenly start leaving the country. The IMF did not fail in Russia because it overlooked the importance of reforming institutions but because it had two other assignments incompatible with the principle of placing strict conditions on financing, namely : its backing of "reformers" and its promotion of "financial globalization".