Introducing the International Monetary Fund
This chapter interrogates some key themes and issues of the IMF as an actor network: its characteristics, emergence, discourse and practice. The IMF emerges as a macro social actor, considering factors such as the role of ideas that informed the network c
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Introducing the International Monetary Fund
Introduction The objective is not to capture or undertake a forensic analysis of the historicity of the IMF as an institution but to focus on key attributes and salient literature that brings to the fore the emerging and dynamic discourse of the Institution that has influenced and determined to degrees the different flavours within development discourse influencing institutions, modalities of practice, relations and conduct. Elements such as ‘context’ are woven into the analysis of texts, to show the relationship between concrete occasional events and more durable social practices. Context can reveal transformation, innovation and change in texts and time as well as having a mediating role in allowing one to connect detailed linguistic and semiotic features of texts with processes of social change on a broader scale.
The International Monetary Fund The International Monetary Fund (IMF) emerged as a macro social actor, in the words of John Maynard Keynes, to seek ‘a common measure, a common standard, and a common rule applicable to each and not irksome to any’ (Igwe 2018) within the context of global governance institutions and within the international financial system when it was created at the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, held in Bretton Woods in 1945. Its discourse and practice were influenced by the lingering © The Author(s) 2020 C. Clarke, C. Nelson, Contextualizing Jamaica’s Relationship with the IMF, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44663-5_5
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concerns to reconstruct, redesign, rebuild and reengineer the global economy arising from the chaos of war, the Great Depression and stymied international trade. The Bretton Woods System, from within which the IMF emerged as one of the key institutional pillars, represented a compromise between the ideas of the British economist John Maynard Keynes, who wrote a proposal for an International Clearing Union (ICU) as against the US Treasury official Harry Dexter White, who proposed an International Stabilization Fund (ISF). The ‘White Plan’ gained prominence, resulting in the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) division of responsibilities between the Institutions. The IMF and other Bretton Woods Institutions reflected a compromise between the efforts and approaches of the British and Americans after World War II, whereby the former’s key concern was for an international monetary regime with stability and the latter for the reinvigoration of commerce and industry. The three Bretton Woods Institutions created shaped international economic relations, The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development facilitated the transfer of resources for the reconstruction and rebuilding of Europe. The IMF was created to engender exchange rate stability and being pivotal in establishing the rules for commercial and financial relations
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