The IMF, tackling inequality, and post-neoliberal ‘reglobalization’: the paradoxes of political legitimation within economistic parameters

Abstract

ABSTRACT In a quest for political legitimacy and traction since the global financial crisis and the Arab Spring, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has become much more engaged in tackling inequality through its surveillance and other operations. This article analyses the depth and strength of this egalitarian commitment to reorient Fund actions. Notwithstanding shifts in high-level IMF rhetoric, we find that rigidity in the IMF’s mind-set and priorities is a major roadblock to substantive transformation. In a fine-grained analysis of Fund surveillance we investigate the conceptualization and operationalization of inequality and social protection as ‘macro-critical’ issues (essential for growth and stability). We argue that the IMF’s political legitimation operates within restrictive economistic parameters that flow from its technocratic compulsions. This paradoxically exacerbates the Fund’s legitimacy problems. We explore the Fund’s efforts to address the rhetoric-practice gap, but find that the kinds of economists they hire, and the mind-set their models reflect, limit its capacity for tackling inequality.