PYQ Vault · Paper 2 · Evolution of the International Economic System
How far are the world governance mechanisms, dominated by IMF and World Bank, legitimate and relevant? What measures do you suggest to improve their effectiveness in global governance?
How the answer moves
The flow snapshot — the routes in, the body, the counter-view and the routes out.
Flow snapshot — how the answer moves
Intro routes
rR! legitimacy # relevance → two separate tests → the twins pass them unequally → function intact, consent missing R2 votes fixed in 1944, economy of today → they still do work nobody else does → the authority to do it was never renewed
Body flow
relevance secure: 191 members, surveillance + emergency liquidity, Bank’s long-term finance → India 1991, world 2008, COVID → Sri Lanka / Pakistan disliked the terms, no other door → legitimacy breaks: quota vote, US ~16.5% + 85% threshold = effective veto, G7 over 40% → European MD / American Bank President by convention alone → Cox: institutions never neutral → Stiglitz: conditionality blind to national conditions, welfare cuts, protest → the gap now costs them: BRICS weight without vote → exit begins: AIIB, NDB → Kahler: reform, or watch them build their own → measures: quotas to track economic weight (2010 = first instalment), end the leadership convention, conditionality that leaves room to grow → Mottley / Bridgetown: climate vulnerability, not income, to decide concessional access
Counter-view
Weiss: incremental reform cannot save an architecture already obsolete → answer to it: no replacement machinery is on offer
Conclusion routes
R1 the vote must match the economy R2 reform is now self-preservation for the twins, not a concession to the South
Model answer
Handwritten, in the form it would be written in the examination hall.
