| While there is currently a large and growing literature on the moral status and obligations of states and peoples in the international system, international organizations have been neglected my moral theory. When international financial institutions in particular are examined, it is often in a disorganized or contradictory way: they are criticized both for interfering too much in the internal affairs of borrower countries (mainly through the mechanism of loan conditionality), and for not interfering enough (by not using their power to protect human rights and other international standards). A consistent critique requires a better understanding of what international financial institutions are, and how they operate. After making the case first that such organizations are in fact independent moral actors, and secondly that they are neglected by existing moral theory, the World Bank is taken as a sample case. It is argued that the World Bank is similar to a private corporation in three ways that are important to moral theory: it has only limited resources at its disposal, it is marked by a separation of ownership from a class of professional managers, and it lacks the authority that comes from governmental authority. But to act morally in a diverse world, an institution needs a source of authority with which to act. A case is made that the World Bank can draw on the notion of “epistemic authority,” or the authority of expertise. This is particularly well suited to development work. Looking at the debt crisis of the 1980s, and the current move of the Bank into an interest in governance and human rights, it is shown how the notion of moral epistemic authority would change both the World Bank's organizational structure and development priorities. It is then suggested how this framework can be extended to other sorts of international organizations. |
