Seeing like the IMF on capital account liberalization

This paper pursues a twofold objective. First, the paper is in interested in understanding how the IMF made the issue of capital account liberalization legible. That is to say, the paper aims at unveiling the legibility map adopted by the IMF and sponsored across its membership. Second, the paper is interested in understanding how the IMF’s map was accepted by member states. Specifically, the paper investigates how member countries were persuaded to adopt the policies prescribed by the Fund. In order to assess the persuasiveness of the IMF’s map, the paper traces the debate within the IMF Board related to the decision to amend the IMF’s Articles of Agreement to give the Fund mandate and jurisdiction over capital account liberalization so to complement the Fund’s existing mandate and jurisdiction over current account transactions. Tracing the negotiations on the amendment, the paper argues and illustrates that the IMF used the ambiguities that characterized its cognitive map on capital account liberalization to persuade member countries about the need to amend the Articles. Nevertheless, when the Asian crisis vividly showed the urgency of solving the ambiguities in the Fund’s cognitive map in order to effectively manage the integration of world’s capital markets, the persuasiveness of the IMF’s map declined.