Foreign Policy
Summer 1998

A Friend in Need

Examples abound of political pressures undermining the IMF’s institutional effectiveness. Despite clear evidence of gross misalignment of Francophone Africa’s currency, it was open knowledge that France pressured the fund to keep it from pushing for devaluation. The pivotal role of Egypt in the Middle East led the IMF, under pressure from the United States, to interpret its loan conditions more flexibly. A long history of failed programs to the Mobutu regime in Zaire was a particularly egregious instance of institutional flexibility to accommodate major power interests (in this case, Belgium, France, Germany, and the United States). Likewise, there are strong political reasons why the IMF was willing to finesse corruption-related loan conditions for Russia in a way that it was not willing to do for Kenya.

—D.K.