Global Financial Governance Under Pressure: Politics, Design, and Effectiveness

Abstract

This panel examines how international financial institutions (IFIs) govern under growing political, geopolitical, and fiscal pressure, and how institutional design shapes their performance and resilience. Bringing together new empirical research on the IMF and World Bank as well as multilateral development financing arrangements, the papers analyze power asymmetries in deliberation, variation in surveillance design, funding modalities, cofinancing partnerships, and the strategic reframing of contested policy agendas such as gender equality. Across methods — including large-scale text analysis, project-level evaluation data, systematic review, and comparative institutional analysis — the contributions show how formal rules, partner configurations, and financing structures condition voice, effectiveness, and accountability. Together, they demonstrate that contemporary multilateral financial governance is neither uniformly weakening nor stable, but adapting unevenly across domains. The panel advances a comparative political economy perspective on how institutional form and political contestation jointly shape outcomes in global financial governance.

Title	Details
Whose Voice Counts? Formal Dissent at the IMF Executive Board, 1997–2019	View Paper Details
Does Partner Type Matter? Multilateral Cofinancing Arrangements and Project Performance in Development Cooperation	View Paper Details
Hidden Versus Explicit Engagement with Gender Equality: Political Backlash, World Bank, and Gender Equality Policies	View Paper Details
The Effectiveness of Core and Earmarked Funding in Multilateral Development Cooperation: A Systematic Review	View Paper Details
Influence and Design: The (Geo)Political Economy of International Financial Surveillance	View Paper Details