Civil Society and IMF Accountability.

This paper assesses the role of civil society activities in making the International Monetary Fund answerable to those whom it affects. The argument put forward is that various types of civil society associations have used multiple kinds of tactics to advance IMF accountability on a number of occasions, particularly in relation to certain policy areas. However, the overall scale of these contributions has remained modest, so that citizen action groups have only partly closed accountability gaps. Moreover, the IMF-civil society relationship has often been rather hegemonic, in the sense that the accountability secured through these channels has flowed disproportionately to dominant countries and social circles, rather than to subordinate countries and social strata who generally experience the greatest accountability deficits vis-vis the Fund. The paper first explores the character of IMF accountability (for what? to whom? by what means?). It then describes the 'civil society' that engages the IMF, both directly and indirectly. The third part of the paper elaborates the accountabilities that this civil society does and does not achieve vis-a-vis the IMF. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]