Perfect scapegoats? Blaming and defending the International Monetary Fund

Abstract International organizations (IOs) are considered ideal scapegoats for opportunistic member state governments. Yet we know surprisingly little about whether and when governments indeed shift blame onto IOs. We argue that IO scapegoating is not as pervasive as commonly assumed because blaming IOs is costly. Blaming IOs undermines governments’ credibility and threatens their cooperation gains. To reap cooperation gains, governments can instead defend the IO and bear public discontent. We theorize a Cooperation-Contestation Trade-Off that explains when governments blame or defend IOs: governments that rely heavily on international cooperation are more likely to defend IOs while governments that expect costly domestic contestation are more likely to blame them. We assess our theory by examining governments’ communication about the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – an IO commonly assumed to be a perfect scapegoat. With an originally collected dataset of more than 800 statements referring to the IMF made by heads of governments in major IMF borrower countries, we find supportive evidence for our expectations. Crucially, we observe that whilst governments do frequently blame the IMF, they in fact defend the Fund more than they blame it. Our findings yield important implications for international cooperation in times of heightened politicization of IOs.