Foreign Aid and Global Governance: Buying Bretton Woods - The Swiss-bloc case

Power in the world’s preeminent international financial institutions—the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund—resides in their Executive Boards. How do governments get elected to these international committees? This study quantitatively explores whether wealthy governments provide more foreign aid to poor governments that offer them political support. The focus is on Switzerland, which is elected to the Executive Board of the Bretton Woods Institutions by a group of countries from Central and Western Asia, and Eastern and Southern Europe. Results confirm the hypothesis. Implications for governance in a multipolar world are discussed.