Question

1. Consider the post-World War II organizations (IMF, WB, UN). In what way have these organizations shaped state sovereignty. In what ways have they been shaped by state sovereignty?

4. Why do states participate in international organizations? Be sure to consider a variety of organizational forms.

5. Some argue that the IMF, WB and WTO are institutions of neo-imperialism. Make an argument for or against this thesis.

6. How did the European Union overcome the “defect-defect (3,3)” scenario of the prisoner’s dilemma within 50 years of the end of WWII. What was the process and how was this different than a one-off USSR/USA game?

Answer 1

Q1

2 World Wars, with the sense that failure to deal with economic problems after the first war had led to the second <Treaty of Versailles demanding massive reparation amount from Germany being the cause of collapse of German economy and Hitler’s rise to power.

The Bretton Woods Conference, officially known as the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, was a gathering of delegates from 44 nations that met from July 1 to 22, 1944 in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire (USA), to agree upon a series of new rules for international financial and monetary order after the conclusion of World War II

The two major accomplishments of the conference were the creation of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and International Monetary Fund (IMF)

World Bank Group Membership

• To become a member of the Bank, under the IBRD Articles of Agreement, a country must first join the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
• Membership in IDA, IFC, and MIGA are conditional on membership in IBRD.
• Membership in ICSID is available to IBRD members, and those which are a party to the Statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), on the invitation of the ICSID Administrative Council by a vote of two-thirds of its members.
• FUNCTION
• To assist in the reconstruction and development of the territories of its members by facilitating the investment of capital for productive purposes.
• To promote private foreign investment by means of guarantee of participation in loans and other investments made by private investors and when private capital is not available on reasonable terms, to make loans for productive purposes out of its own resources or from funds borrowed by it.
• To promote the long-term balanced growth of international trade and the maintenance of equilibrium in balance of payments by encouraging international investment for the development of the productive resources of members.
• To arrange loans made or guaranteed by it in relation to international loans through other channels so that more useful and urgent projects, large and small alike, will be dealt with first. It appears that the World Bank was created to promote and not to replace private foreign investment. The Bank considers its role to be a marginal one, to supplement and assist foreign investment in the member countries.