10 - When “doing good” does not: the IMF and the Millennium Development Goals

Summary

Global governors commonly interact in hopes of cooperating and coordinating in order to tackle global problems, but these attempts can also result in unintended or poor outcomes that risk undermining the entire process. This is especially true in cases in which global governors diffuse common goals, rules, or norms horizontally and/or vertically across a variety of international actors without ensuring that there are clear, workable mechanisms by which they may be translated into specific policies. International organizations (IOs) are increasingly struggling with the effects of these efforts at cooperation, as they find themselves juggling a growing number of issues and programs. In fact, all major IOs are being asked to address, in one form or another, the same common (and big) issues, such as poverty reduction, the environment, corruption, terrorism, human rights, and gender. The problem IOs face is the growing gap that exists between global governors' attempts to affect policy and IOs' ability to translate new issue areas into tangible outcomes, particularly where accountability mechanisms are weak and the “fit” between idea and institution is poor. As economist William Easterly (2005) has pointed out, “Collective responsibility for big goals doesn't hold any one agency accountable if the effort fails; they can always point to others as the ones who are to blame.” As the editors note in the opening chapter of this volume, this problem is especially acute when a governor is drawn to new competencies outside its delegated areas of comparative advantage.