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International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Is East Asia under-represented in
the International Monetary Fund?
by David P. Rapkin and Jonathan R. Strand
Abstract
East Asian countries perceive that their individual and collective positions in the world political economy are not fairly represented in existing international institutions, which have yet to fully adjust to the region's rapid economic ascent over the last several decades. This problem seems especially acute in the International Monetary Fund (IMF), wherein each country's participation in the organization's weighted voting scheme is supposed to reflect the following logic: relative weight in world economy -> size of quotas -> number of votes. Are Asian countries' IMF quotas incommensurate with their relative economic weight and, if so, by what margin? And if Asian countries are indeed under-represented in the IMF, which other country, group of countries or region is correspondingly over-represented? This paper examines these questions from several perspectives. It first discusses the purpose of quotas and how they are determined. It then turns to the question of whether Asian perceptions concerning under-representation are empirically corroborated. The first data analysis section compares current quotas to relative measures of economic weight in the world economy. The following section compares four quota values: past quotas, current quotas, calculated quotas and quotas calculated using the method of the IMF's external quota review board. In short, the data demonstrate that Asia does have a strong claim for a greater share of IMF quotas. We conclude with a brief consideration of possible alternatives to the IMF's current use of quota to determine voting weights, and argue that the problem of Asian under-representation will probably not be corrected unless the IMF's quota-determination process is overhauled.