The Impact of IMF Adjustment Lending on Government Respect for Human Rights.

The IMF has used Structural Adjustment Loans (SALs) to encourage economic development in Less Developed Countries by alleviating short term financial difficulties and imposing loan conditions mandating economic restructuring in recipient countries. In general, SALs require governments to balance their books, reduce expenditures for social programs, promote export-orientated growth, and de-regulate and privatize state-held entities. There is much speculation in the popular press and in the academic literature on human rights that the imposition of SALs induces recipient governments to reduce their level of respect for internationally recognized human rights (Bello 1994; Commonwealth Secretariat 1989; Danaher 1994; and Sadasivam 1997). While there has been much previous research on this topic, most of it has been based on the observation of only one or a few cases, usually over a short time period (Bello 1994; Commonwealth Secretariat 1989; Chipeta 1993; Danaher 1994; Dennis 1992; Handa and King 1997; Kane 1993; Sadasivam 1997; Sowa 1993 and Vuorela 1991). Only a few scientific studies attempt to assess the effects of SALs from a cross-national time series perspective (Poe and Camp Keith, 2001; Buchmann 1996; Çagatay and Özler 1995; Dorosh 1996; Due and Gladwin 1991; and Sahn 1996) and only one of the previous scientific studies addresses the cross-national effects of SALs on government respect for specific civil and political rights (Poe and Camp Keith, 2001). Recent work (Przeworski and Vreeland 2000; Vreeland 2002) has examined the impacts of IMF adjustment controlling for issues of selection. Their findings indicate a selection process, which connects the factors that determine both the receipt and impact of adjustment lending. The negative impact on economic growth and income distribution, generate questions about the impact of adjustment on other issues including the respect for human rights. This paper investigates the impacts of IMF structural adjustment lending on respect for human rights and will employ a data set that includes annual observations of specific human rights practices for all countries from 1981 to 2001. Thus, we will be able to draw conclusions about how SALs affect particular human rights practices. We also will estimate the direct and indirect effects of SALs on the human rights practices of recipients and determine whether the relationship we discover between receipt of a SAL and subsequent human rights practices might be due to selection effects rather than the effects of the loans themselves (Abouharb and Cingranelli 2002; 2003; Przeworski and Vreeland 2000; Vreeland 2002). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]