Timon Forster

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Forster
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Timon
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timon.forster@unisg.ch
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    Climate policy at the International Monetary Fund: No voice for the vulnerable?
    (2024-06)
    Lara Merling
    ;
    Timon Forster  
    The climate crisis prompted the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an international lender of last resort, to implement wholesale reforms to incorporate climate policy into its operations. At the IMF, selected countries from the Global North—historically the largest emitters of greenhouse gases—dominate decision-making. This raises several questions. Can the Fund implement an ambitious and effective climate policy? How are climate-vulnerable developing countries and their interests represented in everyday decision-making at the institution? Drawing on scholarship on the political economy and legitimacy of international organizations, we focus on the formal distribution of decision-making power within the IMF to evaluate the IMF's shift toward climate change. Our empirical analysis of the representation of 57 self-identifying climate-vulnerable developing countries (the V20) at the IMF and within its Executive Board shows that these countries, speaking for almost a third of the Fund's membership, command a vote share of merely 5.6%. Our assessment of the Climate Strategy adopted by the IMF amplifies equity concerns over its climate policies and further attests to the disregard of requests by developing countries. Barring meaningful governance reform to increase the voice and representation of climate-vulnerable developing countries, the IMF's approach to addressing climate change is unlikely to translate into legitimate and effective climate policy.
    Type:journal article
    Journal:Global Policy
    Volume:15
    Issue:3
    DOI:10.1111/1758-5899.13367
    URI:https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/120666
    Scopus© Citations 4
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    Respected individuals: when state representatives wield outsize influence in international organizations
    (2024-01-08)
    Timon Forster  
    States are keen to send representatives to international organizations, instructing them to pursue national interests and monitor staff. Yet academics tend to ignore these individuals and approximate state influence by vote shares and other state-level attributes. Against this background, I examine when state representatives in international organizations wield outsize influence on decision-making. Based on scholarship of bureaucrats in international organizations, European studies and an interdisciplinary literature on negotiation, I argue that state delegates matter beyond their national affiliation. Empirically, I study one especially powerful institution in global governance: the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Elite interviews with IMF state representatives demonstrate that delegates carefully plan their interventions, behaving independently while also extending their constituents' interests. Based on the analysis of these interviews, I theorize ‘respected individuals’ to describe state representatives who can wield outsize influence on decision-making. Their prestige and impact depend on: first, perceived autonomy from their home governments; and second, relevant expertise, social skills and deliberative craft. In the IMF, respected individuals are most likely to represent relatively weak states; more generally, my work speaks to debates on the power of small states in international financial institutions and multilateral negotiations. Together, the findings explicate how individuals impact organizational decision-making, with important implications for practitioners in such institutions.
    Type:journal article
    Journal:International Affairs
    Volume:100
    Issue:1
    DOI:10.1093/ia/iiad226
    URI:https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/120665
    Scopus© Citations 18
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    Reacting, fast and slow: how world leaders shaped government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic
    (2021-08-03)
    Timon Forster  
    ;
    Mirko Heinzel
    The COVID-19 pandemic created extraordinary challenges for governments to safeguard the well-being of their people. To what extent has leaders’ reliance on scientific advice shaped government responses to the COVID-19 outbreak? We argue that leaders who tend to orient themselves on expert advice realized the extent of the crisis earlier. Consequently, these governments would adopt containment measures relatively quickly, despite the high uncertainty they faced. Over time, differences in government responses based on the use of science would dissipate due to herding effects. We test our argument on data combining 163 government responses to the pandemic with national- and individual-level characteristics. Consistent with our argument, we find that countries governed by politicians with a stronger technocratic mentality, approximated by holding a PhD, adopted restrictive containment measures faster in the early, but not in the later, stages of the crisis. This importance of expert-based leadership plausibly extends to other large-scale societal crises.
    Type:journal article
    Journal:Journal of European Public Policy
    Volume:28
    Issue:8
    DOI:10.1080/13501763.2021.1942157
    URI:https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/120663
    Scopus© Citations 50
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    Globalization and health equity: The impact of structural adjustment programs on developing countries
    (2020-12)
    Timon Forster  
    ;
    Alexander E. Kentikelenis
    ;
    Thomas H. Stubbs
    ;
    Lawrence P. King
    Among the many drivers of health inequities, this article focuses on important, yet insufficiently understood, international-level determinants: economic globalization and the organizations that spread market-oriented policies to the developing world. One such organization is the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which provides financial assistance to countries in economic trouble in exchange for policy reforms. Through its ‘structural adjustment programs,’ countries around the world have liberalized and deregulated their economies. We examine how policy reforms prescribed in structural adjustment programs explain variation in health equity between nations—approximated by health system access and neonatal mortality. Our empirical analysis uses an original dataset of IMF-mandated policy reforms for a panel of up to 137 developing countries between 1980 and 2014. We employ regression analysis to evaluate the relationship between these reforms and health equity, taking into account the non-random selection and design of IMF programs. We find that structural adjustment reforms lower health system access and increase neonatal mortality. Additional analyses show that labor market reforms drive these deleterious effects. Overall, our evidence suggests that structural adjustment programs endanger the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals in developing countries.
    Type:journal article
    Journal:Social Science & Medicine
    Volume:267
    DOI:10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112496
    URI:https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/120662
    Scopus© Citations 117
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    How structural adjustment programs affect inequality: A disaggregated analysis of IMF conditionality, 1980–2014
    (2019-05)
    Timon Forster  
    ;
    Alexandros Kentikelenis
    ;
    Bernhard Reinsberg
    ;
    Thomas Stubbs
    ;
    Lawrence King
    This article highlights an important yet insufficiently understood international-level determinant of inequality in the developing world: structural adjustment programs by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Studying a panel of 135 countries for the period 1980 to 2014, we examine income inequality using multivariate regression analysis corrected for non-random selection into both IMF programs and associated policy reforms (known as ‘conditionality’). We find that, overall, policy reforms mandated by the IMF increase income inequality in borrowing countries. We also test specific pathways linking IMF programs to inequality by disaggregating conditionality by issue area. Our analyses indicate adverse distributional consequences for four policy areas: fiscal policy reforms that restrain government expenditure, external sector reforms stipulating trade and capital account liberalization, financial sector reforms entailing inflationcontrol measures, and reforms that restrict external debt. These effects occur one year after the incidence of an IMF program, and persist in the medium term. Taken together, our findings suggest that the IMF's recent attention to inequality neglects the multiple ways through which the organization's own policy advice has contributed to inequality in the developing world.
    Type:journal article
    Journal:Social Science Research
    Volume:80
    DOI:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2019.01.001
    URI:https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/120661
    Scopus© Citations 126
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