The IMF and civil society

This paper gauges the influence of transnational advocacy networks on the activities of the International Monetary Fund throughout the 1990s. In assessing civil society’s advocacy work, this paper makes two main contributions. From a theoretical perspective, our case-study lends credit to the emergent literature discussing the gray zone between rational choice theory and constructivism. Indeed, as we show, IMF’s changes were not due to civil society’s pressures but rather to the working of the mechanism of reputation – which combined aspects of socialization and coercion. From an empirical perspective, our findings suggest that civil society’s influence on the policies of an international economic organization might be easily overstated.