PAR INTER PARIBUS: THE NATURE OF POWER IN COOPERATION: LESSONS (FOR THE UNITED STATES) FROM THE AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK

Abstract

ON ONE MAJOR ISSUE in the world economy there is little controversy that the international balance of power is in flux. Following the Second World War, when new multilateral organizations were created to promote peaceful interaction among nations of the world, the United States was the writer, producer, and main actor ofthe script. Its position in the world was reflected in the power it wielded formally and informally in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the two major international financing institutions of the postwar era. Since then, US dominance has waned. With decolonization, the rise of the Pacific rim and the end of the Cold War, just how nations of the world will interact remains unclear; resources, ideologies and market forces have shifted the balance of power away from a bipolar split toward pluralism. How state power might be exercised in this emerging world is also unclear. Few models exist which shed light on the issue. The African Development Bank provides one model of how power is, and is not, exercised within a pluralistic international regime.l Founded in 1963 without the leadership, or even assistance, of the United States, the African Development Bank (ADB), like the World Bank and the IMF, was designed to formalize 'a set of principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors' expectations converge in a given issue area'2an international regime as defined by Stephen Krasner within the lexicon of international political economy. In the ADB's case, the issue area was (and remains) the securing and control by Africans of development resources intended for the African states. The ADB was designed to modify the behaviour of states in two ways: first, to create a formal institution in which African states could distribute scarce resources as equitably as possible among themselves; second, to provide a channel through which developed