Explaining the G7 and G10's influence on World Bank decisions: The role of formal and informal rules of governance

This paper contributes to the literature examining the role played by donors' interests within International Financial Institutions by showing how the G7 and G10 countries manage to influence World Bank (WB) decisions to satisfy their interests. It demonstrates that the G7 and G10 meets the two conditions required to influence WB decisions: they form a unified group (1) possessing sufficient power (2). The main thrust of the argument is that the G7 and G10 provide opportunity for big countries to come together and unify their preferences regarding WB decisions. Referring to a new dataset I find conjunctions between the G7's declarations and the WB's decisions, primarily reflecting the G7's unity and influence over the WB. Then, relying on interviews with WB officials and an examination of WB formal and informal rules of governance, I show how G7 instructions provided outside the WB through declarations are relayed within to impact decisions.