he IMF after COVID-19: Between Geopolitics, Borrower Agency, and Selective Adaptation

Entre la geopolítica, la agencia de los deudores y la adaptación selectiva

Abstract

The article offers a critical review of recent scholarship on International Monetary Fund programs, with particular emphasis on the post-COVID-19 period. It examines how geopolitical pressures, the agency of debtor countries, and the Fund’s institutional logic shape the design, implementation, and effects of these programs. It argues that IMF programs cannot be explained by a single causal logic: they result from the interaction among major shareholders, creditors, markets, the domestic political dynamics of borrowing governments, and the Fund’s own bureaucratic routines. The review shows that the institution’s interventions vary in size, conditionality, flexibility, and tolerance of non-compliance, while their effects are also heterogeneous. Although in some cases they may stabilize expectations and improve market access, they often produce regressive distributive, social, institutional, and political consequences. The article concludes that the IMF’s recent trajectory reflects a process of selective adaptation: it incorporates new agendas, such as climate change, gender, and social protection, without substantially altering its mandate or the asymmetries that structure its relationship with debtor countries.