Coercion, cooperation, or negotiation? The process of development diplomacy in less developed countries

Since the early 1980s IMF and World Bank resources have become a vital source of development finance for less developed countries. Consequently, this dissertation examines the process of development diplomacy in Ghana (a moderately successful reformer), Zambia (a less successful reformer), and Mexico (a highly successful reformer), from 1983 to 1998. It does so in three parts. Part I (chapters 1--3) identifies three competing approaches to the process of development diplomacy implicit in the International Relations/International Political Economy literature. Process, or how the use of IMF and World Bank resources and domestic politics influence LDC economic reform, is conceptualized as coercion (structuralism), cooperation (institutionalism), or negotiation (strategic bargaining).; Part II (chapters 4 and 5) applies the empirical features of each approach to assess the causal influence of IMF and World Bank lending and recipient domestic politics on the timing, scope, and duration of exchange rate and trade liberalization, privatization, and fiscal reform in these three case studies. My case studies suggest that while elements of coercion and cooperation are present in certain aspects of all three cases and that structuralism provides a plausible guide to exchange rate reform, across time and issue areas a multi-level, multi-actor strategic bargaining approach that emphasizes the interaction of structural, international institutional, and domestic political factors on recipient economic reform constitutes the best explanation of the process of development diplomacy in these cases.; Part III (chapter six) concludes that a dynamic, multi-level bargaining approach provides the most comprehensive account of the process of development diplomacy in these countries and, perhaps, most LDCs. As a result, chapter six assesses the implications of these results for contemporary, systemic-dominated international relations theory and the implications for the contemporary debate over the influence of the IMF and World Bank on LDC economic policy making.