Skip to content Skip to navigation
University of Warwick
  • Study
  • |
  • Research
  • |
  • Business
  • |
  • Alumni
  • |
  • News
  • |
  • About

University of Warwick
Publications service & WRAP

Highlight your research

  • WRAP
    • Home
    • Search WRAP
    • Browse by Warwick Author
    • Browse WRAP by Year
    • Browse WRAP by Subject
    • Browse WRAP by Department
    • Browse WRAP by Funder
    • Browse Theses by Department
  • Publications Service
    • Home
    • Search Publications Service
    • Browse by Warwick Author
    • Browse Publications service by Year
    • Browse Publications service by Subject
    • Browse Publications service by Department
    • Browse Publications service by Funder
  • Help & Advice
University of Warwick

The Library

  • Login
  • Admin

Voting power in the Bretton Woods Institutions

Tools
- Tools
+ Tools

Leech, Dennis and Leech, Robert, Dr. (2004) Voting power in the Bretton Woods Institutions. Working Paper. Coventry: University of Warwick, Department of Economics. Warwick economic research papers (No.718).

[img]
Preview
PDF
WRAP_Leech_twerp718.pdf - Requires a PDF viewer.

Download (384Kb)
Official URL: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/resear...

Request Changes to record.

Abstract

The constitutions of the Bretton Woods Institutions require decisions to be taken by weighted voting: each member country possesses a number of votes, depending on its quota allocation, all of which must always be cast as a bloc. This leads to a problem of democratic legitimacy since a member's influence or voting power within such decision-making systems does not necessarily correspond to its voting weight. In previous work is has been shown that the present system of weighted voting in the IMF gives disproportionate influence to the USA at the expense of all other members. This effect occurs in both the board of governors and the executive board. This paper looks at the power implications of the structure of the IMF and World Bank executive boards (in which members are grouped into constituencies that cast their combined weighted votes as a bloc) from the point of view of formal voting power (using the Penrose power index). A criticism that is frequently made is that the present constituency structure and voting weights work to enhance the power of the developed and creditor countries at the expense of the poor, and that many countries are effectively impotent; we show that the weighted voting system adds to this anti-democratic bias and produces some unintended effects (for example the disfranchisement of Estonia in the Nordic/Baltic constituency and of five Central American republics in the Spanish/Mexican/Venezuelan constituency, even though in neither case is there a dictator). We argue generally that the voting power approach is more than just the calculation of power indices and can in fact produce solid facts by identifying cases where members of weighted voting bodies are actually disfranchised.

Item Type: Working or Discussion Paper (Working Paper)
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions
Divisions: Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference (1944 : Bretton Woods, N.H.), International Monetary Fund, World Bank, International economic relations, International finance
Series Name: Warwick economic research papers
Publisher: University of Warwick, Department of Economics
Place of Publication: Coventry
Official Date: 2004
Dates:
DateEvent
2004Published
Number: No.718
Number of Pages: 34
Status: Not Peer Reviewed
Access rights to Published version: Open Access

Request changes or add full text files to a record

Repository staff actions (login required)

View Item View Item

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics

twitter

Email us: wrap@warwick.ac.uk
Contact Details
About Us