Financial Crisis, the IMF and State Repression

This chapter builds on the theoretical framework presented in Chapter 2 to explore the short-term domestic political impact of the concurrent outbreak of “sudden reversals” and currency crises under IMF programs. We suggest that when a concurrent outbreak of a sudden reversal and currency crisis occurs in a country under an IMF program, it reduces the uncertainty voters and opposition groups experience about who to blame for this devastating twin crisis. Thus, governments are unable to deflect blame for the crisis on other actors. The government’s participation in the IMF program becomes the focus of opposition groups “blame-game politics” and citizen mobilization. We then explain how and why such blame-game politics can lead to a “surge” in human rights violations by the program-recipient government in the crisis stricken country as it seeks to maintain power and signal continuity and stability to the IMF and foreign financial investors. The analysis in this chapter leads to Hypothesis 2 and a corollary associated with this hypothesis.