The International Monetary Fund and Latin America

The Argentine Puzzle in Context

Claudia Kedar

• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781439909102
  9781439909096
• eBook ISBN:
  9781439909119
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has played a critical role in the global economy since the postwar era. But, claims Claudia Kedar, behind the strictly economic aspects of the IMF's intervention, there are influential interactions between IMF technocrats and local economists—even when countries are not borrowing money.

In The International Monetary Fund and Latin America, Kedar seeks to expose the motivations and constraints of the operations of both the IMF and borrowers. With access to never-before-seen archive materials, Kedar reveals both the routine and behind-the-scenes practices that have depicted International Monetary Fund–Latin American relations in general and the asymmetrical IMF-Argentina relations in particular.

Kedar also analyzes the "routine of dependency" that characterizes  IMF-borrower relations with several Latin American countries such as Chile, Peru, and Brazil. The International Monetary Fund and Latin America shows how debtor countries have adopted IMF's policies during past decades and why Latin American leaders today largely refrain from knocking at the IMF's doors again.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Multilateralism from the Margins: Latin America and the Founding of the IMF, 1942–1945
• 2. It Takes Three to Tango: Argentina, the Bretton Woods Institutions, and the United States, 1946–1956
• 3. Dependency in the Making: The First Loan Agreement and the Consolidation of the Formal Relationship with the IMF, 1957–1961
• 4. Fluctuations in the Routine of Dependency: Argentine–IMF Relations in a Decade of Political Instability, 1962–1972
• 5. All Regimes Are Legitimate: The IMF’s Relations with Democracies and Dictatorships, 1973–1982
• 6. Routine of Dependency or Routine of Detachment? Looking for a New Model of Relations with the IMF
• Conclusions
• Notes
• References
• Index