Len Seabrooke on International Legitimacy Crises

International Politics (44.2, 2007) has just published a symposium on ‘Resolving International Crises of Legitimacy’. It follows two intensive workshops in Canberra in 2005 and Bellagio in 2006. The symposium includes
Len Seabrooke’s essay ‘Legitimacy Gaps in the World Economy: Explaining the Sources of the IMF’s Legitimacy Crisis’

The abstract is as follows:

Following the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998 the consensus in academic and policy communities has been that the International Monetary Fund (the Fund) is embroiled in an international crisis of legitimacy. Assertions of a crisis are premised on the notions that the Fund’s voting system is unfair, and that the Fund enforces homogenous policies onto borrowing member states and that loan programs tend to fail. Seen this way, poor institutional and policy design has led to a loss of legitimacy. But institutionalised inequalities or policy failure is not in itself sufficient to constitute an international crisis of legitimacy. This article provides a conceptually-driven discussion of the sources of the Fund’s international crisis of legitimacy by investigating how its ‘foreground’ institutional relations with its member states have become strained, and how ‘background’ informal political and economic relationships are expanding in a way that the Fund will find difficult to re-legitimate. The difference between the Fund’s claims to legitimacy and how its member states, especially borrowers, act has led to the creation of a ‘legitimacy gap’ that is difficult to close. However, identifying the sources of the Fund’s international crisis of legitimacy allows us to explore what avenues are available to resolve the crisis.

The full article can be accessed here: