Author Meets Critics: "The Financial Statecraft of Borrowers"

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

This Author Meets Critics panel will discuss Alexandra O. Zeitz's "The Financial Statecraft of Borrowers: African Governments and External Finance", forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.

In an era of financial globalization and the rise of emerging powers, developing countries are diversifying their external finance sources beyond traditional donors and multilateral banks, a trend particularly evident in sub-Saharan Africa. This book explores how diversifying to Chinese lenders and international bonds can enable governments to enhance their bargaining leverage in aid negotiations, a strategy defined as debt-based financial statecraft. The effectiveness of this strategy varies, depending on the recipient’s significance to donors and the donors’ trust in the recipient’s credibility. Through statistical analysis and case studies of aid negotiations in Ethiopia, Ghana, and Kenya, based on over 170 interviews, the book shows how aid negotiations are affected by countries’ portfolios of external finance. The argument illuminates the impacts of financial interdependence for developing countries, showing how governments can, under the right conditions, leverage asymmetric borrowing relationships to their advantage.

Sub Unit

• Division 16: International Political Economy

Chair

• Alexandra Olivia Zeitz Concordia University

Presenters

• Layna Mosley Princeton University

• Mark Copelovitch University of Wisconsin, Madison

• Saori N. Katada University of Southern California