The fund and the bank: Towards better international economic institutions
Woods N.
In an era of democratisation, transparency and accountability, the IMF and World Bank are under continuous pressure further to apply democratic principles to their own governance. Democratising the institutions does not mean introducing global peoples' elections for seats on their Boards, nor does it mean opening up all their processes and decisions to all-comers. The IMF and World Bank are representative organisations with constitutional limits on their activities and decision-making. The governments that run them need to update the rules so as to bring the institutions closer into line with public expectations that they be effective, accountable, appropriately representative, and fair.