Olen kirjoittanut kolme artikkelia IMF:n vallasta ja roolista eurokriisissä. Tässä niistä lyhyesti:
1) IMF expertise in the eurozone crisis : from stimulus talk to austerity policy
The eurozone crisis opened a possibility to reform European economic policies. In spring 2010, a new technocratic knowledge regime developed in the form of the Troika that consisted of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and IMF. This article provides new, previously understudied, knowledge on internal dynamics of the Troika. As the prevailing austerity paradigm had been questioned during the preceding years also within the IMF, this study analyses the role of IMF’s expertise during the negotiations that led to the first Greece loan package and created a path-dependent crisis management scheme. It traces how the IMF acted as a source of expertise and its role in the persistence of the austerity paradigm. The analysis is based on a unique set of interviews with decisionmakers. The IMF’s role in the negotiations was very important, but unexpectedly the Commission ruled on most of the content. In contrast to some earlier research, this analysis argues that even if the IMF had become more open to new economic-policy ideas, it did not truly challenge the European austerity policy. Reasons for this include the perceived lack of fiscal space, constraints from the EU, pessimism towards Greek growth, and the gap between research and policy departments of the IMF. This partly explains why the crisis did not lead into a change of the eurozone policies. The analysis contributes also to identifying intra-institutional autonomy and fragmentation as reasons for the stability of economic paradigms despite apparent challenges even within hegemonic institutions such as the IMF.
A new technocratic knowledge regime emerged in Europe in 2010. Known as the Troika, it included the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the IMF. The Greek Stand-By Arrangement was the IMF’s first Eurozone financial assistance involvement, controversial for both the EU and the IMF. We trace how the IMF entered the process, focusing on why EU institutions involved it. We used official documents, statements, and a unique set of 129 interviews with IMF and EU decision-makers and Member State officials. We argue that the EU sought the IMF’s expertise in loan and conditionality negotiation, public image credibility, perceived guarantee for austerity, and depoliticisation. They were internally motivated by lack of confidence in the European Commission among EU Member States. Legitimacy was sought externally through the IMF’s expertise. The IMF continued its previous depoliticising role, a crucial strategy in crisis management, now in a novel multilevel context.
The IMF’s 2010 Troika lending programme with Greece was unprecedented due to the IMF’s controversial internal rule changes, the programme’s pivotal effects on eurozone crisis policies and the effect of austerity concepts on Greece. We aim to explain conclusively why the IMF lent to Greece without restructuring, as previous explanations have crucial gaps. We operationalise Ben Clift’s theory of IMF behaviour in process-tracing, analysing programme-related text sources. Our exercise is novel as Clift does not aim to explain individual programmes, while the theory warrants further testing. According to our causal mechanism, the IMF used two key analytical lenses formed via bricolage, fiscal space and nonlinear multiple equilibria processes (NLMEP), to analyse the programme context and formulate the programme design. While we find our mechanism too narrow to explain the programme design, our results regarding the role of NLMEP and fiscal space within IMF programme-time economic analysis support the importance of financial contagion as a motivator for monetarily significant IMF participation and why the IMF adhered to austerity despite risking debt stabilisation. However, it seems limitedly useful to assume coherent ideational drivers behind the precise programme design: instead, accepting the key role of ad hoc judgement depicts IMF behaviour accurately.