Lagarde for the IMF?
Felix Salmon of Reuters makes a convincing argument here that Christine Lagarde of France may emerge as the new European candidate for IMF head: Add it all up, and my guess is that the French are going to do it again: Christine Lagarde will become the first female managing director of the IMF. She has ...
Felix Salmon of Reuters makes a convincing argument here that Christine Lagarde of France may emerge as the new European candidate for IMF head:
Felix Salmon of Reuters makes a convincing argument here that Christine Lagarde of France may emerge as the new European candidate for IMF head:
Add it all up, and my guess is that the French are going to do it again: Christine Lagarde will become the first female managing director of the IMF. She has the political skills and the economic credentials to get the job, and Europe will feel much more comfortable with a European in the role over the next few turbulent years. The US won’t object, and the Asians will go along with the choice since they don’t really have a candidate of their own. As ever, there will be some pro-forma gnashing of teeth about how a non-European should really get the job next time. But I’m not holding my breath.
The fact that Europe is now the fund’s biggest borrower may work in its favor in fending off pressure for emerging market candidates. European politicians can argue that any IMF head must have a close relationship with the continent in order to be effective at this moment (though the leadership logic never seemed to work that way when Latin Americans or Russians were doing most of the borrowing).
More: A key question will be whether the major emerging economies can unite behind some candidate. In the past, the BRICS have coordinated their policies on the IMF board on certain questions, but this will be a significant test of that capacity. I’m skeptical they’ll be able to pull it off. What’s more, as Salmon points out in his piece, this wouldn’t be a bad moment to have the Fund’s first ever female managing director.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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