fatvegan

Third, experience indicates that dependence on aid may weaken accountability, encourage rent seeking and corruption, and impede the development of a healthy civil society if a recipient government is more accountable to its donors than to its own citizens. F & D

Finance and Development is a really good journal. It discusses issues much more broadly than more official IMF documents, and it's much more willing to criticise itself. One of the key criticisms of loan conditionality is that it makes governments more accountable to donors (like the IMF) than it is to its own citizens. Which is what the IMF wants, because it assumes that the citizens are too powerless or stupid to demand the right things of governments. Whether or not the IMF is right is virtually irrelevant, because like this article says, civil society will be damaged. Besides, assuming people are too stupid to look after themselves is the oldest trick in the Totalitarian Handbook.