ABSTRACT
When people talk of the International Financial Institutions (IFIs), they mean the two Bretton Woods institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Of course, strictly speaking, any multilateral organization with financial operations is an IFI – for example, the regional multilateral banks, regional monetary authorities, some agencies of the UN that disburse funding, etc. However, in practice, by IFIs is meant the two global IFIs – the Fund and the Bank. In recent years there has been growing discussion of the role of these institutions in the provision of International Public Goods (IPGs). An aid-fatigued public in the rich North, beset by its own internal budgetary problems (for example, the looming social security crisis of an aging population) and convinced by tales of waste and corruption in aid flows, has grown weary and wary of conventional country-specific development assistance. In contrast, the notion of IPGs seems attractive to Northern publics – at least their representatives have adopted the IPG refrain in international fora.1
