International Financial Institutions and the Promotion of Autocratic Resilience
International Financial Institutions and the Promotion of Autocratic Resilience (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818325101276) was written by Christina Cottiero and Christina J. Schneider in 2026. It was published in International Organization.
The authors examine the role of international financial institutions. After excluding 'universal' lenders (e.g., the World Bank), they characterize each IFI by its membership composition. They also note that regional and cross-regional IFIs are generally borrower-led, so are highly sensitive to the needs of borrowers.
The authors start with the COW IGO dataset for the set of IFIs, although some regional development banks were added. V-Dem is used to construct democracy scores for member countries. Polyarchy scores below 0.5 are labeled autocratic.
- An IFI is considered 'consolidated democratic' if the average polyarchy score of members is consistently (over time) above 0.5. Conversely it is considered 'consolidated autocratic' if the average is consistently below 0.5.
- Examples of the latter category are the Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation and the Development Bank of the Central African States.
- An inconsistent history is considered 'hybrid'.
The primary analysis uses the 18 consolidated autocratic IFIs. These IFIs have 143 borrower relationships in 1967 to 2021. They substantially expanded lending in the 00s.