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The Political Paradox of IO Performance: The Curious Case of the International Monetary Fund

Demands for enhanced transparency and independent evaluation are at the forefront of heated discussions over the reform of international organizations, in especially at the beleaguered International Monetary Fund (IMF). These measures are widely perceived as panaceas for these institutions' democratic deficits and dismal performance records. Yet conspicuously missing is an informed discussion of how such transparency policies and evaluation practices are introduced into such complex and highly politicized multilateral organizations By and large, the IO literature is silent on the sensitive issue of how to get past the rhetoric of "we need more transparency and evaluation to enhance organizational learning and performance" to actually acting upon such impulses and determining when, where and how particular transparency and evaluation measures actually impact the organizations' daily routines and outputs. More critically, examinations of IOs’ struggles to pursue meaningful transparency and evaluation reveal an apparent paradox of accountability: the manner in which the pursuit of greater transparency and evaluation often entails tremendous tensions between IOs' objectives of effectiveness and external legitimacy. On the one hand, independent evaluation is to steepen the "organizational learning curve" through the provision of candid assessments on what has or has not worked in the past and by reducing information asymmetries to facilitate greater oversight and accountability by some principal body of the IOs (usually, the Board of Executive Directors). On the other hand, the role of transparency policies and evaluation measures is to enhance external credibility or legitimacy at a time when, because of their track record of ineffectiveness, these IOs are under constant attack. This naturally raises the question of whether or not the ability of increased transparency and independent evaluation to directly inform policies and practices undergirding IO performance through greater accountability and blunt analysis is hindered by pressures to justify and defend IO performance in order to enable the IOs to survive in an increasingly hostile authorizing and task environment. This resonates even more strongly when we recognize that the audiences for such measures are as much external as internal. Whereas in the past, for example, the results of evaluations were largely confined to internal discussions by the IO's staff, management and Board of Directors, the current imperative of using evaluation to build external legitimacy means that results are widely distributed and eagerly digested by the IO's many critics (including not only NGOs, but also donor and borrower states upon whom these IOs rely extensively for resources).Using extensive archival research and interviews, this paper examines the contentious creation of the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office to reveal the politics behind IO evaluation as well as the seeming paradox of accountability.