Year

2009

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Faculty of Law

Abstract

The 1990s was a decade marked by the implementation of market reforms worldwide. Countries in Latin America and Asia experimented with neoliberal programs sponsored by international financial institutions (IFIs) in order to adopt the arrangements required for the functioning of a market economy. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) joined in these efforts and incorporated structural requirements in its programs as conditions for the provision of financial assistance, including requirements associated with the strengthening of governance and the rule of law that limited the scope of ad hoc decision making schemes. However, by the end of the 1990s the results of IMF-sponsored reforms were controversial. This thesis explores, from a legal perspective, IMF conditionality as a mechanism to strengthen the rule of law and the relations between these two concepts and exceptional powers in the banking sector. The main argument developed in this thesis is that in spite of the official discourse regarding the promotion of governance and the rule of law, IMF conditionality did not contribute to strengthening this notion in the 1990s. In contrast, conditionality was involved with episodes of instability and the invocation of states of emergency in some developing countries. The analysis is undertaken through a comparative case study approach in which the legal responses of the governments of Malaysia and Venezuela to address the financial crises that affected those countries in the 1990s are examined. Malaysia declined the help of the IMF during the crash and instead it implemented its own program to manage the financial turmoil. The Malaysian solution provides useful insights and differences from the ad hoc legal management crisis style employed by the Venezuelan government that had the technical and financial assistance of the IMF. Overall, the findings of this thesis suggest that in the case of Venezuela, IMF conditionality did not contribute to the strengthening of the rule of law and the urgency of the measures contributed to the use of exceptional powers by the Venezuelan government in addressing the banking crisis. In contrast, Malaysia, a nation that adopted its own domestic solution, provides a more adequate legal management approach to a financial crisis that helped to strengthen the rule of law in the banking system.

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Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed in this thesis are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the University of Wollongong.