Showing papers on "Conditionality published in 2019"

International demands for austerity: Examining the impact of the IMF on the public sector

Abstract: What effects do International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans have on borrowing countries? Even after decades of research, no consensus exists. We offer a straightforward explanation for the seemingly mixed effects of IMF loans. We argue that different loans have different effects because of the varied conditions attached to IMF financing. To demonstrate this point, we investigate IMF loans with and without conditions that require public sector reforms in exchange for financing. We find that the addition of a public sector reform condition to a country’s IMF program significantly reduces government spending on the public sector wage bill. This evidence suggest that conditions are a key mechanism linking IMF lending to policy outcomes. Although IMF loans with public sector conditions prompt cuts to the wage bill in the short-term, these cuts do not persist in the longer-term. Borrowers backslide on internationally mandated spending cuts in response to domestic political pressures.

Welfare Conditionality in Lived Experience: Aggregating Qualitative Longitudinal Research

Abstract: Punitive welfare conditionality, combining tough sanctions with minimal self-directed support, is a defining feature of contemporary UK working age social security provision. This approach has been justified by policy makers on the basis that it will increase the numbers in paid employment, and thereby offer savings for the public purse that are also beneficial for individuals who are expected to be healthier and better off financially as a result. In this article, we aggregate two qualitative longitudinal studies (Welfare Conditionality, 2014–17; and Lived Experience, 2011–16) that document lived experiences of claiming benefits and using back-to-work support services. In both studies and over time, we find, contrary to policy expectations, that coercion, including sanctions, was usually experienced as unnecessary and harmful and that poverty was prevalent, both in and out of work, tended to worsen and pushed many close to destitution. Conditionality governed encounters with employment services and, perversely, appeared to impede, rather than support, transitions into employment for participants in both studies. These constitute ‘shared typical’ aspects of lived experiences of welfare conditionality. We propose Combined Study Qualitative Longitudinal Research as a new methodological approach to extend inference beyond the usual study-specific confines of qualitative generalisation.

Freedom of movement, social rights and residence-based conditionality in the European Union

Abstract: This article stresses the need to study how European Union (EU) member states define and implement the concept of habitual residence to assess boundaries of welfare in the EU. It focuses specifically on EU migrant citizens’ social rights and draws on comparative qualitative research on two EU member states – Germany and Sweden. The article first clarifies the differences between legal and habitual residence, and distinguishes between legal definitions of habitual residence and administrative formalities tied to such definitions. After examining legal definitions at the EU level, it goes on to consider additional definitions found in each member state case and administrative formalities attached to these definitions. Following this, implications for EU migrant citizens’ social rights in each country are assessed. The analysis reveals how administrative processes of residence registration shape conditionality. In this way, administrative aspects of habitual residence can have far-reaching exclusive effects ...

Environment and Climate in the Common Agricultural Policy

Abstract: In the 2014–20 CAP, environment is targeted through a combination of measures in both Pillar 1, through cross‐compliance and green payments, and Pillar 2, mainly through voluntary measures with compensation for cost incurred and income forgone. The European Commission's legislative proposals for the CAP after 2020 would suppress green payments but their objectives would be retained as part of new conditionality requirements. A new environmental instrument would be introduced in Pillar 1, the ‘eco‐scheme’, and the CAP would be implemented through national strategic plans offering Member States large room for manoeuvre in application of the principle of subsidiarity. This article explains the weak environmental effectiveness of the CAP until now. It then analyses the extent to which the European Commission's proposals could improve the regulation of the environment and climate impacts of European agriculture. Pillar 2 measures are largely unchanged with their strengths and weaknesses. There is a risk that short‐run political pressures will lead numerous countries to opt for limited ambition in their eco‐schemes. However, there is an urgent need to tackle climate and biodiversity issues seriously. This could be done following the principles of public economics and environmental federalism. In that perspective, defining simple and robust agri‐environmental indicators is crucial.

Chutes-and-ladders: the migration industry, conditionality, and the production of precarity among migrant domestic workers in Singapore

Abstract: In order to understand how precarity is created for and experienced by labour migrants, we apply the concept of conditionality – which proposes that a migrant worker’s experience of precari...

The impact of conditionality on the welfare rights of EU migrants in the UK

Abstract: This paper highlights and explores how conditionality operating at three levels (the EU supranational level, the UK national level and in migrants' mundane 'street level' encounters with social security administrators), come together to restrict and have a negative impact on the social rights of EU migrants living in the UK. Presenting analysis of new data generated in repeat qualitative interviews with 49 EU migrants resident in the UK, the paper makes an original contribution to understanding how the conditionality inherent in macro level EU and UK policy has seriously detrimental effects on the everyday lives of individual EU migrants.

European Union Conditionality in the Western Balkans: External Incentives and Europeanisation

Abstract: Originally, studies of Europeanisation have almost exclusively focused on the Central and Eastern European (CEE) candidates, which became member states in 2004 and 2007. It remains to be seen, however, to what extent the conditions that have proven relevant for the CEE countries are also applicable to the candidate states from the Western Balkans. Do existing theoretical approaches on the impact of EU conditionality on candidate states explain the compliance record of the countries from the Western Balkans? Alternatively, is it necessary to adapt these theoretical approaches to the specific circumstances of enlargement in the Western Balkans? In this chapter, we address these questions theoretically by analysing the applicability of existing theoretical models of Europeanisation to rule adoption in the Western Balkans. Our theoretical analysis shows the external incentives model is likely to provide a useful starting point for studying the success of the new candidates in meeting the EU membership requirements. However, the relatively low credibility of membership in all Western Balkan countries (with the exception of Croatia) points towards the relevance of additional factors, such as capacity-building and coalition-building, that could explain and promote continuous processes of rule adoption in new candidate states.

The paradox of human rights conditionality in EU trade policy: when strategic interests drive policy outcomes

Abstract: Increasingly, trade agendas are expanding to include non-commercial objectives such as the promotion of fundamental political and human rights Although the European Parliament (EP) positio

Protecting Workers Abroad and Industries at Home: Rights-based Conditionality in Trade Preference Programs:

Abstract: A growing number of developed country governments link good governance, including human rights, to developing countries’ access to aid, trade, and investment. We consider whether governments enforc...

Recipes for Programmable Money

Abstract: This paper presents a qualitative study of the recent integration of a UK-based, digital-first mobile banking app - Monzo - with the web automation service IFTTT (If This Then That). Through analysis of 113 unique IFTTT 'recipes' shared by Monzo users on public community forums, we illustrate the potentially diverse functions of these recipes, and how they are achieved through different kinds of automation. Beyond achieving more convenient and efficient financial management, we note many playful and expressive applications of conditionality and automation that far extend traditional functions of banking applications and infrastructure. We use these findings to map opportunities, challenges and areas of future research in the development of 'programmable money' and related financial technologies. Specifically, we present design implications for the extension of native digital banking applications; novel uses of banking data; the applicability of blockchains and smart contracts; and future forms of financial autonomy.

Why Countries ‘Get Tough on the Work-Shy’: The Role of Adverse Economic Conditions

Abstract: t There has been a clear trend toward greater conditionality and coercion in labour market and social policy in recent decades, a key part of which is tougher sanctions for unemployment benefit claimants who refuse offers of employment or otherwise fail to comply with their obligations. Our understanding of this trend and its determinants is so far built only on a corpus of small-N evidence, while systematic comparative large-N analyses are lacking. As a result, the broad patterns of policy change and their general political drivers remain underexplored. This paper fills this gap by examining unemployment benefit sanction reforms in 20 democracies between 1980 and 2012 using an original dataset. It is shown that governments introduce tougher sanctions in order to reconcile two competing pressures that arise during economic downturns: an increased need for social protection and reduced fiscal revenues. The findings, which are also applicable to other historical periods and policy areas, provide an impulse for future comparative large-N research on ‘demanding activation’ policies.

Agri-environmental Policies and Public Goods: An Assessment of Coalition Incentives and Minimum Participation Rules

Abstract: An increasing number of papers analyse the inclusion of collective/spatial conditionality constraints in agricultural policies dealing with natural resource management. In this article we theoretically assess the conditions in which employing collective conditionality constraints linked to incentives better reach the social preferences on PG provision by agriculture. We deal with this issue by using a coalition formation model to endogenize the size of the group of farmers cooperating, and investigate how it is affected by different policy schemes. We analyse and compare the following policy schemes: (1) a homogenous payment that target the whole population of farmers, (2) a coalition bonus, that incentivizes only the contributions by the coalition members, and (3) a coalition bonus associated to a MPR on the size of the coalition. The results show that formulating payments that discriminate between co-operators and free-riders, and associating to such a payment a MPR, is relatively more effective than the traditional homogenous payments. However this is true only under some (local) conditions that we theoretically derived.

Programmable Donations: Exploring Escrow-Based Conditional Giving

Abstract: This paper reports on a co-speculative interview study with charitable donors to explore the future of programmable, conditional and data-driven donations. Responding to the rapid emergence of blockchain-based and AI-supported financial technologies, we specifically examine the potential of automated, third-party 'escrows', where donations are held before they are released or returned based on specified rules and conditions. To explore this we conducted pilot workshops with 9 participants and an interview study in which 14 further participants were asked about their experiences of donating money, and invited to co-speculate on a service for programmable giving. The study elicited how data-driven conditionality and automation could be leveraged to create novel donor experiences, however also illustrated the inherent tensions and challenges involved in giving programmatically. Reflecting on these findings, our paper contributes implications both for the design of programmable aid platforms, and the design of escrow-based financial services in general.

Once bitten: new evidence on the link between IMF conditionality and IMF stigma

Abstract: While the consequences and effectiveness of IMF conditionality have long been the focus of research, the possible negative impact of IMF conditionality on countries’ willingness to ask for an IMF programme – often termed ‘IMF stigma’ – has recently received attention particularly from policy circles. In this paper we investigate how countries' past experience with the IMF and their peers’ experience with the IMF affect their likelihood of entering a subsequent IMF arrangement. Our results indicate that, even when controlling for the success of past programmes, a country is less likely to approach the IMF for help if in the past it experienced an above-average number of disbursement-relevant conditions. We find hardly any impact of peers’ experience, except for Asian countries. JEL Classification: F33, F53, F55, H87

How healthy is a 'healthy economy'? Incompatibility between current pathways towards SDG3 and SDG8.

Abstract: The interconnections between health and the economy are well known and well documented. The funding gap for realizing SDG3 for good health and well-being, however, remains vast. Simultaneously, economic growth, as expressed and measured in SDG8, continues to leave many people behind. In addition, international financial institutions, notably the International Monetary Fund (IMF), continue to influence the economic and social policies that countries adopt in ways that could undermine achievement of the SDGs. We examine the incoherence between the economic growth and health goals of the SDGs with reference to three East African countries, Malawi, Uganda, and Tanzania, where our organization has been working with partner organizations on SDG related policy analysis and advocacy work. In all three study countries, some health indicators, notably infant and child mortality, show improvement, but other indicators are lagging behind. Underfunding of the health sector is a major cause for poor health of the population and inequities in access to health care. GDP increases (as a measure of economic growth) do not automatically translate to increases in the countries’ health spending. Health expenditure from domestic public resources remains much lower than the internationally recommended minimum of USD 86 per capita. To achieve this level of health spending from domestic resources only, GDP in these countries would require an unrealistic manifold increase. External aid is proving insufficient to close the funding gap. IMF policy advice and loan conditionality that focus on GDP growth and tight monetary and fiscal targets impair growth in health and social sector spending, while recommended taxation measures are generally regressive. The existence of the GDP-focused SDG8 can delay efforts towards the achievement of the SDG3 for health and well-being if governments choose to focus on GDP growth without taking sufficient measures to equally distribute wealth and invest in the social sectors, often under the influence of policies advised or conditions put in place by the IMF. Although the IMF has started to acknowledge the importance of social development, its policy advice still adheres to austerity and pro-cyclical economic development harming a country’s population health. To realize the SDGs everywhere, governments should abandon GDP growth as a policy objective and place more emphasis on SDG17 on global co-operation.

What is the Relationship between Benefit Conditionality and Mental Health? Evidence from the United States on TANF Policies

Abstract: This article provides new evidence on the relationship between benefit conditionality and mental health. Using data on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families policies (TANF) – the main form of poverty relief in the United States – it explores whether the mental health of low-educated single mothers varies according to the stringency of conditionality requirements attached to receipt of benefit. Specifically, the article combines state-level data on sanctioning practices, work requirements and welfare-to-work spending with health data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and evaluates the impact of conditionality on mental health over a fifteen-year period (2000 to 2015). It finds that states that have harsher sanctions, stricter job search requirements and higher expenditure on welfare-to-work policies, have worse mental health among low-educated single mothers. There is also evidence that between-wave increases in the stringency of conditionality requirements are associated with deteriorations in mental health among the recipient population. It is suggested that these findings may reflect an overall effect of ‘intensive conditionality’, rather than of the individual variables per se. The article ends by considering the wider implications for policy and research.

The possibility and desirability of rule of law conditionality

Abstract: The paper claims that during the fight over the compliance with the core values of the EU pronounced in Article 2 TEU with backsliding Member States the EU institutions using both the traditional mechanism (infringement procedures and Article 7), and the newly established Rule of Law Framework have proven incapable of enforcing compliance, which considerably undermined not only the legitimacy of the Commission, but also that of the entire rule of law oversight. Hence, new means of value conditionality should also be activated, such as cutting funds for member states that do not comply with certain basic institutional requirements of the rule of law. As the paper argues, this is possible through implementing the Common Provision Regulation, and can be carried out on a case-by-case basis. Putting conditionality into the Multiannual Financial Framework after the 2020 budget period is another potential avenue to enforce compliance with joint values.

Backsliding in judicial reforms: domestic political costs as limits to EU’s political conditionality in Turkey

Abstract: Judicial reform has been part and parcel of democratization process among countries preparing for European Union accession. The literature on EU enlargement, political conditionality conceptualizes...

Structural adjustment, state capacity and child health: evidence from IMF programmes.

Abstract: Background: Consensus is growing that policy reform programmes by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)—an international organization mandated with upholding global financial stability and assisting countries in economic turmoil—produce adverse effects on public health. However, this consensus is unclear about which policies of these programmes underlie these effects. This article fills parts of this gap by examining the impact of four kinds of IMF policies (fiscal policy, public-sector employment, privatization of state-owned enterprises and price liberalization) on public-health expenditure, child vaccination and child mortality. Methods: We conducted time-series cross-section analyses for up to 128 developing countries over the 1980–2014 period using observational data on health outcomes and IMF conditionality for different policy areas. IMF effectiveness research faces two types of potential biases: self-selection into IMF programmes and IMF policy conditions. We deployed instrumental variables in a seemingly unrelated regression framework to address both types of endogeneity, besides traditional remedies such as the use of fixed effects on countries and years. Results: IMF policy conditions on public-sector employment are negatively related to child health. A change from the minimum to the maximum number of such policy conditions decreases vaccination (which ranges from 0 to 100) by 10.97% [95% confidence interval (CI): 1.16 to 20.79]. This effect is robust against different sets of control variables. In addition, IMF programmes increase the share of government expenditure devoted to public health in developing countries by 0.91 percentage points (95% CI: 0.15 to 1.68). Conclusions: These findings suggest that IMF policies—particularly those that require public-sector reforms—undermine health by weakening the capacity of states to deliver vaccination. Therefore, international financial institutions need to increase their awareness of the public-health impact of their policy prescriptions. Strengthening state capacity in times of economic crisis would ensure that increased health spending also delivers quality healthcare.

The Illiberalism of Behavioural Conditionality: A Critique of Australia’s ‘No Jab, No Pay’ Policy

Abstract: Internationally the payment of welfare benefits is increasingly being made conditional on recipients’ behaviour. Behavioural conditions and the payments to which they apply are diversifying. This article aims to contribute to the debate among scholars and policymakers over the ethics of welfare conditionality. While other assessments of the ethics of welfare conditionality have focused on the potential harm caused to vulnerable welfare recipients, this paper develops the argument that welfare conditionality is illiberal. Drawing on findings from behavioural science, it argues that relying on extrinsic motivation in the form of financial incentives is a less desirable approach to behavioural change than bolstering intrinsic motivation. The argument is illustrated with the case of the Australian ‘No Jab, No Pay’ policy, under which family payments and childcare subsidies are denied to parents whose children are not fully immunised. As behavioural conditions and the payments to which they are applied diversify, the cumulative effects of these conditions pose an underappreciated threat to citizens’ autonomy.

Beyond Conditionality: Policy Reversals in Southern Europe in the Aftermath of the Eurozone Crisis

Abstract: This article proposes a framework to understand and explain the occurrence of policy reversals. We argue that the occurrence and absence of policy reversals is shaped by the constraints of responsiveness (to voters) and responsibility (vis-a-vis creditors, international institutions and financial markets). We review the literature on reversals and their implications for Southern Europe. We finally summarise the main findings of the contributions in the volume, that address when and why governments prioritise responsiveness or responsibility, as well as the economic consequences of these choices.

Aid sanctions and political conditionality: continuity and change

Abstract: Political conditionality was first introduced by Western governments into their development aid policy a quarter of a century ago, threatening to invoke aid sanctions in the event of human rights abuses or democratic regression in aid recipient countries. This paper examines how political conditionality has evolved in the subsequent years and analyses what has changed and why. It does so through a review of sanctions cases in the EU and the US aid from 2000 to date, with discussion located within the post-2000 international environment in which foreign policy and aid policy are situated. The paper focuses on three regions: sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, and Central Asia. Patterns of change and continuity are identified in relation to how political conditionality has been implemented. Our findings are that political conditionality remains a significant policy tool, contrary to the perception that its use has declined. However, while selectivity and inconsistency in policy application continue, security interests have become a more prominent explanatory factor in the post-2000 period. Indeed, the initial normative agenda of political conditionality as a tool for the promotion of democracy and human rights, as stated in policy rhetoric, has been replaced by its use as an instrument to promote Western security interests in line with the securitisation of development.

Data protection in the age of welfare conditionality: Respect for basic rights or a race to the bottom?

Abstract: This article addresses the informational control powers of the state to detect social security fraud as one of the pillars supporting welfare conditionality in Western European states. It sheds lig...

Regional Financial Arrangements in the Global Financial Safety Net: The Arab Monetary Fund and the Eurasian Fund for Stabilization and Development

Abstract: The so‐called global financial safety net provides backstop insurance during financial crises. The three elements of the global safety net — the IMF, regional financial arrangements (RFAs) and bilateral swap agreements — underwent substantial changes after the global financial crisis. How have these changes influenced their use? What role do RFAs have in the safety net? This contribution addresses these questions by examining the timeliness, volume and policy conditionality of liquidity provision of each of the three elements, using a data set of 50 RFA member countries from the period 1976–2015. The article presents case studies of the Arab Monetary Fund (AMF) and the Eurasian Fund for Stabilization and Development (EFSD) to create a deeper institutional understanding of the governance mechanisms of regional funds. The authors find that today's global financial safety net produces inequalities in emergency liquidity provision. In terms of volume, RFAs improve the safety net only for small member countries — about one‐third of the countries in the sample can access sufficient liquidity regionally. The experiences of AMF and EFSD demonstrate that intra‐regional asymmetries of RFAs play a contradictory role: while the participation of large economies leverages liquidity provision, it simultaneously creates difficulties for the governance of the regional body.

When the Lenders Leave Town: Veto Players, Electoral Calculations and Vested Interests as Determinants of Policy Reversals in Spain and Portugal

Abstract: This article aims to identify the resilience of measures adopted during bailout programmes, and the conditions under which decisions-makers reverse them Focusing on Spain and Portugal (201

EU issue voting and the 2014 European Parliament elections: a dynamic perspective

Abstract: EU issue voting in European Parliament elections has been shown to be highly conditional upon levels of EU politicization. The present study analyzes this conditionality over time, hypothesizing th...