Between the Lines: Pakistan’s Debt of Gratitude
The International Monetary Fund's (IMF's) generous loan to Pakistan last December has revived criticisms that the fund is first and foremost a tool of U.S. foreign policy. True, as a Cold War American ally, Pakistan was the world's third largest recipient of foreign aid over the last four decades. But even after those Cold War ties were broken, Pakistan continued to participate in imf programs throughout the 1990s, suggesting that the real problem is not geopolitical nepotism but the inability of the imf and the developing world to learn from past mistakes -- most notably, redistributing income toward elites while failing to promote economic growth.
James Raymond Vreeland, assistant professor of political science at Yale University, is author of The IMF and Economic Development, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.
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