Abstract
Abstract Recent scholarship has highlighted the role of domestic pressures in determining state preferences toward the reform of international organizations (IO s). This article adds a new dimension by examining how partisanship and ministerial control affect state preferences toward IO empowerment. The article derives two expectations from the existing literature. First, partisan position will determine preferences toward IO empowerment. Second, when a government is constituted by multiple parties, the position of the party with the IO’s ministerial portfolio will determine the government’s position toward IO empowerment. The article illustrates this argument by examining the positions of four net donors (Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and two net recipients (Brazil and India) during the World Bank’s reforms. By bringing domestic politics back in, this article complements existing studies on the politics of IO reform and weighs in on central debates in comparative politics and international political economy.
Highlights
World Bank – international organizations – empowerment – partisanship – state preferences – domestic politics via free access heldt and mahrenbach
When a government is constituted by multiple parties, the position of the party with the international organization (IO)’s ministerial portfolio will determine the government’s position toward international organizations (IO s)empowerment
We have argued that partisan positions and ministry control of an IO portfolio matter for understanding state preferences toward IO empowerment (IOE)
Summary
We illustrate our argument by examining how party affiliation affects state preferences toward IOE in six case studies This part of the analysis draws on seventy-one statements by national representatives before the World Bank’s Development Committee between 2007 and 2012. With regard to development assistance, India has been the largest net recipient of loans from the Bank for seventy years, followed by Brazil and China.[31] We obtained a corpus (twenty-four texts, with twelve per country) comparable to that of net donor countries In their statements, 28 Our sample includes variation on the type of government in office (one-party, twoparty, and multiparty coalition governments) during the reform negotiations. We used the findings from the content analysis to determine whether government positions changed as parties with different preferences assumed office This took the form of exploratory case studies comparing stated partisan positions of single governments over time. We considered seat distribution among parties in national parliaments in all twelve governments, looking at the impact that coalition partners and opposition parties may have on state preferences toward IOE
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