IMF voting

Board of Governors

• The Board of Governors consists of one governor and one alternate governor for each member country.
•  Each member country appoints its two governors.
• The Board normally meets once a year and is responsible for electing or appointing executive directors to the Executive Board.
•  the Board of Governors is officially responsible for approving quota increases,
• special drawing right allocations, the admittance of new members, compulsory withdrawal of members, and amendments to the Articles of Agreement and By-Laws, in practice it has delegated most of its powers to the IMF's Executive Board.

The Board of Governors is advised by the International Monetary and Financial Committee and the Development Committee.

• The International Monetary and Financial Committee has 24 members and monitors developments in global liquidity and the transfer of resources to developing countries.

 The Development Committee has 25 members and advises on critical development issues and on financial resources required to promote economic development in developing countries. They also advise on trade and global environmental issues.^[23]

] Executive Board

24 Executive Directors make up Executive Board. The Executive Directors represent all 188 member-countries. Countries with large economies have their own Executive Directo, but most countries are grouped in constituencies representing four or more countries.^[24]
Following the 2008 Amendment on Voice and Participation, eight countries each appoint an Executive Director: the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, China, the Russian Federation, and Saudi Arabia.^[25] The remaining 16 Directors represent constituencies consisting of 4 to 22 countries. The Executive Director representing the largest constituency of 22 countries accounts for 1.55% of the vote.

 Managing Director

The IMF is led by a Managing Director, who is head of the staff and serves as Chairman of the Executive Board. The Managing Director is assisted by a First Deputy Managing Director and three other Deputy Managing Directors.^[26]Historically the IMF’s managing director has been European and the president of the World Bank has been from the United States. However, this standard is increasingly being questioned and competition for these two posts may soon open up to include other qualified candidates from any part of the world.^[27][28] In 2011 the world's largest developing countries, the BRIC nations, issued a statement declaring that the tradition of appointing a European as managing director undermined the legitimacy of the IMF and called for the appointment to be merit-based.^[28][29]The head of the IMF's European department is António Borges of Portugal, former deputy governor of the Bank of Portugal. He was elected in October 2010.^[30]

Dates	Name	Nationality
May 6, 1946 – May 5, 1951	Camille Gutt	Belgium
August 3, 1951 – October 3, 1956	Ivar Rooth	Sweden
November 21, 1956 – May 5, 1963	Per Jacobsson	Sweden
September 1, 1963 – August 31, 1973	Pierre-Paul Schweitzer	France
September 1, 1973 – June 16, 1978	Johannes Witteveen	Netherlands
June 17, 1978 – January 15, 1987	Jacques de Larosière	France
January 16, 1987 – February 14, 2000	Michel Camdessus	France
May 1, 2000 – March 4, 2004	Horst Köhler	Germany
June 7, 2004 – October 31, 2007	Rodrigo Rato	Spain
November 1, 2007 – May 18, 2011	Dominique Strauss-Kahn	France
July 5, 2011 –	Christine Lagarde	France

On June 28, 2011, Christine Lagarde was named Managing Director of the IMF, replacing Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Previous Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested in connection with charges of sexually assaulting a New York room attendant. Strauss-Kahn subsequently resigned his position on May 18.^[31] On June 28, 2011 Christine Lagarde was confirmed as Managing Director of the IMF for a five-year term starting on July 5, 2011.^[32][33]

[edit] Voting power

Voting power in the IMF is based on a quota system. Each member has a number of “basic votes" (each member's number of basic votes equals 5.502% of the total votes),
 plus one additional vote for each Special Drawing Right (SDR) of 100,000 of a member country’s quota.^[35]

• The Special Drawing Right is the unit of account of the IMF and represents a claim to currency. It is based on a basket of key international currencies. The basic votes generate a slight bias in favor of small countries, but the additional votes determined by SDR outweigh this bias.^[36]

 Effects of the quota system

The IMF’s quota system was created to raise funds for loans.^[37] Each IMF member country is assigned a quota, or contribution, that reflects the country’s relative size in the global economy. Each member’s quota also determines its relative voting power. Thus, financial contributions from member governments are linked to voting power in the organization.^[38]This system follows the logic of a shareholder-controlled organization: wealthy countries have more say in the making and revision of rules.^[39] Since decision making at the IMF reflects each member’s relative economic position in the world, wealthier countries that provide more money to the fund have more influence in the IMF than poorer members that contribute less.^[40]

[edit] Developing countries

Quotas are normally reviewed every five years and can be increased when deemed necessary by the Board of Governors. Currently, reforming the representation of developing countries within the IMF has been suggested. ^[41] These countries’ economies represent a large portion of the global economic system but this is not reflected in the IMF's decision making process through the nature of the quota system. Joseph Stiglitz argues "There is a need to provide more effective voice and representation for developing countries, which now represent a much larger portion of world economic activity since 1944, when the IMF was created." ^[42] In 2008, a number of quota reforms were passed including shifting 6% of quota shares to dynamic emerging markets and developing countries