LAUSR

To what extent do powerful stakeholders shape policy in international organizations? Using an under-utilized data set on the conditions associated with World Bank development policy loans, we find that borrower countries that vote with the U.S. at the UN are required to enact fewer domestic policy reforms, and on fewer and softer issue areas. Though American preferences permeate World Bank decisionmaking, we do not find evidence that borrower countries trade favors and get the U.S. to actively intervene on their behalf, perhaps because they apply their limited political leverage to more stringent IMF conditions. Instead, we propose that U.S. influence operates indirectly when World Bank staff design programs that reflect the interests of its largest shareholder. While IMF conditions have been studied extensively, our study provides a direct quantitative examination of World Bank conditions as well as novel descriptive analysis comparing the substance of conditionality at the two leading international financial institutions.