A Thousand Cuts : Social Protection in

the Age of Austerity Alexandros

Kentikelenis
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A Thousand Cuts
 A Thousand Cuts
Social Protection in the Age of Austerity
ALEXANDROS KENTIKELENIS AND THOMAS STUBBS
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kentikelenis, Alexandros, author. |
Stubbs, Thomas (College teacher), author.
Title: A thousand cuts : social protection in the age of austerity /
Alexandros Kentikelenis and Thomas Stubbs.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2023] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023006076 (print) | LCCN 2023006077 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190637736 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190637750 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: International Monetary Fund. | Structural adjustment
(Economic policy)—Social aspects. | Social policy. | Public welfare.
Classification: LCC HD87 .K457 2023 (print) | LCC HD87 (ebook) |
DDC 338.9—dc23/eng/20230209
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023006076
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023006077
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190637736.001.0001
Στη Φρειδερίκα Νομικού, που μου έμαθε το πραγματικό
νόημα της οικογένειας
—ΑΚ
For Isobel, Jacob, and Nevyn
—TS
 Contents

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction

PART I. 40 YEARS OF STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT

2. The Evolution of IMF Conditionality
3. How to Evaluate the Effects of IMF Conditionality

PART II. SOCIAL PROTECTION AND STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT

4. Conditionality and Health Policy
5. Conditionality and Income Inequality
6. Conditionality and Health Outcomes

PART III. LOOKING FORWARD

7. The IMF and the COVID-19 Response
8. The Future of IMF Lending: A Better Way?

Appendix: A New Dataset on Conditionality, 1980–2019

References
Index
 Acknowledgments

This book is the outcome of more than a decade’s worth of

intellectual exchange and extensive collaboration between its two
authors. Our starting point was the observation that the types of
policies that were being proposed and implemented in the aftermath
of the Global Financial Crisis that started in 2007 bore striking
similarities to those that were proposed and implemented after every
other major crisis since the 1980s: deregulation, liberalization,
privatization. Academic scholarship and policy research had long cast
serious doubts on whether such policy packages offered a reliable
and durable way forward for countries in crisis. Yet we saw the
promotion of the same set of policies by the “experts” of global
economic governance over and over again—from Athens to Accra,
from Buenos Aires to Bangui, from Kingston to Kigali. Were the
critics wrong? We set out to definitively resolve these debates by
collecting a lot of new data and developing new methodological
approaches to capture the impact of austerity policies.
To complete this endeavor we accrued debts to many scholars,
policymakers, and activists, who generously gave their time and
energy to discuss our findings, debate our conclusions, and open
doors for our research. Here, we limit ourselves to thanking those
colleagues without whose input this book would not have been
possible. Lawrence King provided encouragement in the early stages
of the project and worked with us to publish the initial set of
findings. Through generous funding by the Institute for New
Economic Thinking and the Cambridge Political Economy Society
Trust we were fortunate enough to be able to build a larger research
team at the University of Cambridge. Bernhard Reinsberg and Timon
Forster joined us on this project and their contributions to the
research underpinning this book were invaluable. We draw—directly
and indirectly—on the findings of our team throughout this volume.
We were also privileged to have received guidance, support, and
friendly criticisms from David Adler, Sarah Babb, Cornel Ban, David
Brady, Miriam Brett, Emma Burgisser, Daniela Gabor, Kevin Gallagher,
Ilene Grabel, Jo Marie Griesgraber, Neesha Harnam, William Kring,
Valentin Lang, Christina Laskaridis, Martin McKee, Isabel Ortiz,
Rebecca Ray, Leonard Seabrooke, David Stuckler, and Robert Wade.
The collective input of this group strengthened our arguments and
prompted us to think about how abstract processes occurring at the
global level impact the lives of people on the ground. At Oxford
University Press, we are grateful to James Cook for believing in this
project and tolerating delays as we changed jobs, moved countries,
and weathered a global pandemic.
On a personal level, Alexandros is grateful to Giovanni Menegalle,
Domna Maria Michailidou, Philipa Mladovsky, Michał Murawski, and
Charlotte Kühlbrand for the many hours spent discussing the impacts
of economic crises and their reverberations on politics and society,
and to Bart van der Heide for helping him maintain sanity and
motivation while wrapping up this manuscript amidst much
uncertainty. Thomas thanks Roisin Orchard and William Cochrane for
their emotional and material support.
 1
Introduction

On Monday, June 4, 2018, Jordan’s prime minister Hani Mulki was

tendering his resignation after just two years in office. His
government had been rocked by five days of intense protests
throughout the country, culminating in several thousand
demonstrators gathering outside his office the night before. At issue
were the introduction of extensive budget cuts and steep tax hikes
that the government had signed on to as part of its loan agreement
with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Jordan had already
implemented increases in general sales taxes and removed bread
subsidies following the IMF’s policy recommendations, but this time
the population vehemently resisted. Protesters, egged on by
parliamentarians, took to the streets and demanded change: the
IMF-backed reforms were unwelcome. Responding to these calls, the
new government promptly announced their intention to revisit the
terms of the agreement and dispatched a team to seek a new deal
with the IMF. A few months and minor concessions later, the
controversial tax reforms were passed by parliament in November.
Protesters gathered yet again calling for change, but it was now too
late. Under the pressure of deteriorating economic conditions, the
government had capitulated to IMF demands for a rapid scale-back
of public debt from 94 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to
77 percent in just three years. The funds raised through budget cuts
and tax hikes would be directed to that goal.
Around the same time, on the other side of the world, Argentina’s
government, facing economic crisis, went back to the doors of the
IMF on Tuesday, May 8, 2018, to request financial assistance. This
came almost 15 years after Argentina’s last encounter with the IMF’s
policy prescriptions that left nearly a fifth of the workforce
unemployed. Unsurprisingly, the Argentine people were not content.
Protests erupted all over the country against the steep budget cuts
that the government pledged in exchange for the IMF loan. The 2.7
percent deficit in 2018 was supposed to become a 0.5 percent
surplus within three years. Protests intensified in subsequent months
as the government prepared to enact these cuts. On July 9,
Argentina’s Independence Day, protestors mobilized again with signs
reading “Independence Cannot Be Negotiated” and “No to the IMF.”
That September, general strikes saw hundreds of thousands block
the main streets surrounding parliament in Buenos Aires. Despite
protests, however, the government pressed ahead. By the end of the
year, Argentina was already implementing an array of unpopular
measures—slashing energy subsidies, hiking taxation on
cooperatives, reducing fiscal transfers to provinces, and instituting a
hiring freeze for public sector employees.
In both cases, the IMF stands out as the key actor pushing
countries to adopt tough budget cuts and structural reforms that
fundamentally reshape their policy environments in exchange for
providing much-needed loans at preferential terms. This loans-for-
reforms practice is known as “conditionality” and is one of the most
controversial outputs of any international organization, as it
restructures political-economic environments among borrowing
countries. The IMF’s loans are intended for countries facing external
shocks or unsustainable debt burdens, thereby placing the
organization at the center stage of global economic governance as a
key “financial firefighter.” In turn, conditionality is used both to avert
moral hazard—that is, the risk that countries continue to adopt
unsustainable policies if they can always anticipate yet another IMF
bailout with limited strings attached—and to ensure that the funds
are actually repaid to the organization.
Conditionality has afforded the IMF substantial domestic policy
influence, with major implications for social policy. Countries like
Jordan and Argentina resort to the IMF because the alternative—
defaulting on external debt—can be much worse for their citizens. It
would result in international lenders withholding further credit, which
could plunge governments, firms, and households into crisis (Roos, 2
019). For example, a default would ripple through the wider
economy by provoking capital flight and a collapse of domestic
banks; exporters and importers would lose access to trade credit,
resulting in shortages of necessary goods; producers would find it
difficult to obtain foreign or domestic investment, and would lay off
workers; and households would struggle to obtain credit for
consumption (Roos, 2019). Faced with such bleak options, most
governments still choose the IMF. What has been the scale and
scope of IMF conditionality over the past four decades, and how has
it impacted social policies and outcomes? These questions are
important because they highlight the role of the IMF—primarily an
economic institution—in materially shaping the social conditions of
its borrowers. This has obvious distributional implications, as IMF
policy advice explicitly or implicitly promotes the interests of some
social groups at the expense of others. How budget cuts are
distributed is, after all, a core political question. But the IMF’s impact
on social protection systems also shapes economic conditions in the
long run, as adverse effects on these systems reverberate across
time: they shape the income, health, and living conditions of
individuals, and—by extension—key attributes of the future
workforce of countries in crisis. Tracing the many links between
austerity and social protection is the task of the present volume. But
before outlining the ambition and contributions of the book, some
opening remarks on the histories of the IMF and austerity are in
order.

A Brief History of the IMF

In the global economy, no nation is an island. Each depends for
many of the things it consumes on imports from other countries, and
on revenues from the goods it exports to other countries. There is
also a constant migration of capital flows (in the form of investment
or loans) back and forth across national borders. When a country’s
export revenues and financial inflows add up to less than the cost of
imports and capital outflows, the country is said to have a balance of
payments deficit. This causes its central bank to lose reserves, and
perhaps ultimately leads to a devaluation in its national currency.
Orderly, incremental currency adjustments are routine events.
Sometimes, however, there are big destabilizing shocks—a spike in
the price of imports, or a crisis in the national financial system—that
can cause large, disorderly devaluations, with a host of undesirable
side effects: escalating debt, the mass exodus of nervous investors,
spiraling inflation, and the contagious spread of financial instability
to other countries. Enter the IMF as the most important global
financial firefighter to provide loans to governments to manage and
contain balance of payments crises.
Among the multitude of multilateral bureaucracies, the IMF stands
out for the power it has over borrowing countries and for its role as
the focal institution of global economic governance (see Box 1.1).
The roots of the organization lie in the Bretton Woods Conference in
July 1944, when representatives from 44 nations gathered in a
mountain resort in New Hampshire to negotiate the foundations of
the post–Second World War economic order (Mazower, 2012). The
towering figure in these discussions was renowned British economist
John Maynard Keynes, even though the ultimate outcome was much
closer to the policy preferences of the United States, then already
emerging as the world’s largest economy and creditor (Ikenberry, 19
92; Steil, 2013). In response to appeals for a system of global
financial and monetary governance, the IMF was established in
1945. Its original role was to oversee the system of pegged
exchange rates of member governments and make financial
resources available on advantageous economic terms to countries
facing balance of payments crises. But following the shift to floating
exchange rates in 1973, only the second facet endured.

Box 1.1 Activities of the IMF

The IMF engages in three main operational activities. First, the

organization conducts regular surveillance missions, in which it
monitors economic performance and risks at the national, regional,
and global levels. These missions form the basis of nonbinding
policy advice communicated to countries via annual discussions,
called “Article IV consultations.” The IMF’s second core activity is
the provision of technical assistance and training on economic
issues to central banks, finance ministries, and statistical agencies.
It is delivered via a combination of short-term staff missions, long-
term in-country placements of resident advisors, and regional
capacity development centers. Third, the IMF lends to countries
experiencing balance of payments crises. In exchange for financial
support, borrowing countries must agree to a package of obligatory
policy reforms, or conditionality, administered through a lending
program lasting from six months to four years. Loan disbursements
are phased over the duration in tranches, contingent upon the
implementation of policy reforms assessed on a quarterly or
biannual basis.

Today, the IMF has an estimated one trillion US dollars of lending

firepower (Gallagher et al., 2020). In principle, all member-states
can turn to it for financial support, but in practice high-income
countries rarely do anymore—with the notable exceptions of Cyprus,
Greece, Iceland, Ireland, and Portugal in the aftermath of the 2007–
2008 Global Financial Crisis. The main purpose of the IMF’s support
is to prevent financial crises in one country spreading to its trading
partners, forestall sharp or disorderly devaluations, and allow
countries to keep servicing their external debts. In doing so, the
organization became infamous for using these resources as a lever
for inducing governments to implement policy reforms that are
timetabled in lending agreements and assessed on a regular basis.
Nonimplementation can result in delays in loan disbursements and—
ultimately—the suspension of lending altogether.
But the nature of the conditions required of countries has
changed substantially over the years. Until the 1980s, the IMF
primarily required reforms to fiscal, monetary, and exchange rate
policies with the aim of controlling inflation, stabilizing currencies,
and reaching sustainable balance of payments (Dell, 1981, 1982; Dia
z-Alejandro, 1981; Williamson, 1983). These reforms appeared in
loan documents as a series of quantifiable targets, such as
reductions in the fiscal deficit and money supply. While potentially
painful to local populations, IMF intervention was short-term in
nature—usually about one year in duration—and did not disrupt the
relative role of states and markets in domestic economies, a matter
considered beyond the IMF’s mandate (Finch, 1983). In the mid-
1980s, however, the IMF introduced a series of lengthier lending
programs—typically up to three years in duration—targeting
structural change. The term “structural adjustment” became
shorthand for an extensive range of reforms in these programs to
promote fundamental, comprehensive, and enduring overhaul of a
borrowing country’s policy arrangements.
Against a background of protracted economic crises in the 1980s
and 1990s, structural adjustment programs became ubiquitous,
achieving notoriety for requiring developing countries to implement
market-liberalizing reforms (Chang & Grabel, 2004). The IMF’s
advocacy of an erstwhile narrow set of reforms—mostly on fiscal and
monetary policy—thus expanded to a much wider remit: the
elimination of barriers to trade and the movement of international
finance to facilitate access to international markets and promote
foreign direct investment; repeal of government rules, regulations,
and checks and balances surrounding economic activity—such as
industry entry criteria and labor standards—to abolish perceived
inefficiencies in the functioning of the private sector; and the selling
of state-owned enterprises and natural resources to the private
sector, with the hope of improving the economic management of
these industries (Summers & Pritchett, 1993; Toye, 1994; Williamso
n, 1990).
The augmentation of the remit of IMF activities to target policy
areas that were hitherto under much greater state control was seen
as evidence of “mission creep” and prompted intense controversies
(Babb & Buira, 2005). On the one hand, these policies were seen as
an undue imposition of a radical free market agenda on countries
caught up in a crisis (Simmons et al., 2008). The fact that it was an
international organization dominated by the Global North (see Box 1.
2) forcing countries in the Global South to implement extensive
reforms that expanded the remit of markets and reshaped state
infrastructures led observers to draw parallels to the colonial era,
only now rich countries were operating more stealthily through the
cloak of a venerable multilateral institution (Browne, 1984).

Box 1.2 Governance of the IMF

The IMF is located in Washington, DC, and headed by a managing

director who is, by convention, a European national—since October
2019 Kristalina Georgieva from Bulgaria. It is staffed by technocrats
trained in neoclassical economics at elite universities, typically in
the United States or United Kingdom. The IMF’s highest decision-
making body is the Board of Governors, where all its 190 members
are represented, and which meets twice a year. In terms of day-to-
day operations, the organization is governed by an executive board
that meets up to three times per week, composed of 24 executive
directors that are appointed by member countries to decide on a
range of key issues, including the approval of loans and the
establishment of organizational policies. The institutional setup of
the IMF reinforces dominance by the United States and other
economically powerful countries that contribute to its resource
base. In contrast to many other international organizations, their
voting power is linked to this dominance. The United States holds
the largest block of voting shares (16.5% of votes in 2021),
followed by Japan (6.2%), China (6.1%), Germany (5.3%), France
(4.0%), United Kingdom (4.0%), Russia (2.6%), and Saudi Arabia
(2.0%). These eight shareholders appoint their own executive
directors, whereas other countries must form constituencies
(except for Syria, which is represented by the Russian executive
director). The most important decisions, such as changes to the
mandate, require a supermajority of 85%, giving veto power to the
United States. Resistance to organizational changes that would
grant greater influence to developing countries remains a major
source of contention and conflict (Vestergaard & Wade, 2013;
Wade, 2013a, 2013b; Wade & Vestergaard, 2015).

But it was not only the ideological orientation of these policies

that attracted attention. The types of reforms promoted by the IMF
sought to irrevocably alter the policy environments of its borrowers
by reducing governments’ options on how to deal with economic
predicaments. Once many of the IMF-mandated reforms had been
implemented, they were—by design—very difficult to reverse, as
they create their own self-enforcing dynamics (Appel & Orenstein, 20
16; Stallings & Peres, 2011). For instance, attempts by countries like
Argentina or Ecuador to renationalize national resources or
companies sold off as part of IMF conditionality in the past have
been met with vehement resistance from the multinational
corporations that now own them and resulted in years of expensive
litigation.
The promise of the IMF’s painful reforms was that they would be
justified in the long run by sustained economic growth, which
generally failed to materialize. This was most emphatically the case
in sub-Saharan Africa, where the 1980s were dubbed a “lost decade”
following a succession of IMF-endorsed crisis management measures
that precipitated negative growth rates and triggered rapid rises in
poverty (Harrison, 2010; van de Walle, 2001). Faced with
disconfirming evidence, the IMF’s view was that their programs had
paid insufficient attention to the institutions that allow markets to
function, such as laws and judicial systems, but that the underlying
market-liberalizing impetus was essential correct. By the 1990s,
conditionality had expanded further to include rule of law and
governance issues, and also become a staple vehicle for
implementing the transition to capitalism in postcommunist
countries. The IMF was extensively criticized in subsequent years,
especially following their handling of financial crises in Mexico, East
Asia, Russia, and Argentina (Babb & Carruthers, 2008; Stiglitz, 2002;
Wade & Veneroso, 1998). By the early 2000s, in response to such
criticism, the IMF pledged to strengthen the pro-poor orientation of
their programs (IMF, 2001b). We evaluate this track record later in
this book.

Austerity and Its Discontents

A narrow interpretation of the term “austerity” refers to a reduction
in the government budget balance. The budget or fiscal balance
equates to the difference between what a government spends and
the revenues it collects. A reduction in this balance, otherwise
known as “fiscal consolidation,” occurs when governments cut
expenditure and when they generate more revenues, such as by
raising taxes. From a pragmatic standpoint, many economists—
including IMF staff—view austerity as a desirable policy prescription
in times of balance of payments crisis because it frees up
government resources to repay external debts and replenish
international reserves (Ban & Patenaude, 2019; Chwieroth, 2010; Mo
mani, 2005; Nelson, 2014a). Ideologically speaking, austerity also
guards against having a big interventionist state, seen as anathema
by orthodox economists, for whom the market is thought to be able
to provide services to the population more efficiently (Ban, 2016).
The idea goes that austerity is a form of voluntary deflation that
allows a government to adjust via reductions in wages, prices, and
public spending to restore competitiveness and inspire business
confidence (Blyth, 2013). As austerity advocate John Cochrane of
Stanford University proclaimed, “Every dollar of increased
government spending must correspond to one less dollar of private
spending. Jobs created by stimulus spending are offset by jobs lost
from the decline in private spending. We can build roads instead of
factories, but fiscal stimulus can’t help us to build more of both”
(cited in Blyth, 2013).
A wide mix of policies have been historically used to consolidate
budgets (Blyth, 2013; Ortiz & Cummins, 2019, 2021). Cuts or caps
on the government wage bill reduce or freeze the salaries and
number of public sector workers. Reducing or removing social
welfare programs—occasionally big budget items even in countries in
the Global South that still spend considerably less than high-income
countries—can free-up funds. This includes overhauls of public
health and education systems, like raising fees and introducing co-
payments for patients or students, which reduce public spending.
Labor market flexibilization reforms help limit salary adjustments and
decentralize collective bargaining, which encourages precarization of
employment and further depresses incomes. Privatizations of state-
owned enterprises can both remove expensive institutions from the
budget balance sheet and generate short-term revenues that can
limit budgetary pressures. Finally, increases in consumption taxes on
basic goods and services, such as value-added taxes or excise taxes,
has very commonly been a staple policy to bolster revenues.
In rich countries, the onset of austerity measures is commonly
associated with the ascendancy of right-wing governments in the
1980s—most notably, Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and
Ronald Reagan in the United States—that had ideological
predispositions toward reducing the role of the state in the economy
and expanding the remit of markets (Blyth, 2013; Harvey, 2005). In
developing countries, however, it was often the IMF that advised
governments to undertake austerity reforms, either as part of its
regular surveillance missions or when countries had to sign up to its
“structural adjustment programs” to borrow money. For this reason,
the term “austerity” is sometimes used synonymously with
“structural adjustment,” even though in practice IMF programs can
entail a broader set of policies. As Larry Summers and Lant Pritchett
explained, these programs were designed to target “the four ‘-
ations’—stabilization, liberalization, deregulation, privatization” (Sum
mers & Pritchett, 1993). That is, they went beyond simply balancing
the budget in the short term, as a narrow understanding of austerity
implies, but were more ambitious in their nature. In this book we
adopt this wider understanding, and use the terms “austerity” and
“structural adjustment” interchangeably in reference to the broader
suite of measures, unless stated otherwise.
Austerity policies have been consistently criticized for prioritizing
short-term fiscal objectives over longer-term social investments such
as health. For example, civil society organizations contend that
decades of austerity promoted by the IMF—as well as its sibling
institution, the World Bank—have undermined social protection,
impeding the ability of governments to respond to major shocks,
including the COVID-19 pandemic (Griffiths & Todoulos, 2014; Ortiz
& Cummins, 2019; Ortiz & Stubbs, 2022). Further, close observers
claim that austerity had a detrimental impact on the population—
that inequalities grew, and millions were pushed into poverty, with
women particularly affected (UN Women, 2015). Some countries,
like Pakistan and Jordan, have seen the emergence of widespread
social mobilization to fight the introduction of austerity. Evidence on
worldwide social protests suggests that 53 percent of them were
resisting austerity measures and over 10 percent explicitly targeted
at IMF conditionality (Ortiz et al., 2022).
In this book, we weigh in on controversies surrounding the social
consequences of IMF-mandated austerity. These controversies have
a long history (Payer, 1974). Critics argue that—by design or by
omission—IMF conditionality can result in extensive collateral
damage in developing countries (Babb, 2005), and that a social
development policy agenda was never institutionalized within the
organization even though it has become a widely recognized
international priority (Vetterlein, 2010). But despite early recognition
by the IMF that—in the words of its then managing director
—“adjustment that pays attention to the health, nutritional and
educational requirements of the most vulnerable groups is going to
protect the human condition better than adjustment that ignores
them” (de Larosiere, 1986), criticisms of its policy advice only
intensified. Trailing the expansion of the IMF’s remit into an ever-
growing number of policy areas, a new generation of studies
furnished additional evidence of the links between IMF-designed
reforms—like privatization, trade and financial liberalization, and the
marketization of social policies—and adverse social consequences (C
olclough & Manor, 1991; Stewart, 1991; Toye, 1994; van der Hoeven
& Stewart, 1994). The IMF responded to these criticisms by claiming
that its modus operandi now incorporates due attention to social
protection issues (Fedelino et al., 2006; Gupta, 2015, 2017; IMF, 200
8, 2015b; Martijn & Tareq, 2007; McDonald, 2007; Verhoeven & Seg
ura, 2007; IMF, 2019b).
Who is correct? Is the organization right to proclaim that it has
addressed criticisms and adapted the policies attached to its financial
assistance packages vis-à-vis social protection? Or are critics
accurate in their portrayal of the IMF as “going backwards” (Griffiths
& Todoulos, 2014)? Tackling these contested questions requires new
data, the use of appropriate quantitative methods, and extensive
reanalysis of the impact of IMF-mandated reforms on public policies
and the human condition. This is the task for the remainder of the
book. In taking on these questions, we build on scholarship across
the social sciences that has highlighted the connections and tensions
between global processes and local outcomes, between economic
reform and social change, between supposedly apolitical
technocratic knowledge and attempts by peoples and movements to
defend rights and livelihoods (e.g., Almeida, 2014; Almeida & Martín,
2022; Ghodsee & Orenstein, 2021; Kentikelenis, 2018; Orenstein, 20
08; Pfeiffer & Chapman, 2010; Walton & Seddon, 1994).

The Ambition and Contributions of This Book

Writing a book on structural adjustment in 2023 might appear
anachronistic to some readers. Indeed, the IMF jettisoned this term
altogether at the turn of the millennium and has carefully distanced
itself ever since. The official narrative emanating from the institution
is that they “do not do that anymore” (IMF, 2014k). But a starting
point for our analysis is that taking the IMF narrative—or any self-
serving narrative by an international organization, for that matter—at
face value is inappropriate. To be sure, “structural adjustment
programs” were replaced by “poverty reduction and growth
programs”—but does that really mean that the latter were
substantially new creatures, and ultimately delivered poverty
reduction and growth? These are empirical questions, with important
real-world implications. After all, the IMF’s conditions fundamentally
reshape domestic policy environments in borrowing countries,
thereby having a direct impact on socioeconomic development and
long-run development trajectories.
However, answering these empirical questions has been marred
with many difficulties until very recently. Most notably, social
scientists did not have access to detailed and easy-to-use data on
conditionality (Vreeland, 2006), thereby leading to highly imprecise
measurement. For example, scholars studying the impact of IMF
programs on different indicators tended to use a binary variable for
the presence of a program or not in a given country in a given year.
This assumes that all IMF programs are alike, when in fact they
contain different types of conditions: some programs may emphasize
labor market reforms, others might prioritize privatizations, and
some may focus on rule of law and anti-corruption issues.
Pretending they are all alike impedes a fine-grained evaluation of
which precise policies help or hurt in relation to social outcomes.
This volume makes three key contributions. First, we present a
comprehensive new dataset of IMF conditionality, which we also
make publicly available at www.imfmonitor.org. Based on archival
material on the IMF’s lending operations, we identified all policy
conditionality in loan agreements between 1980 and 2019. In total,
we retrieved over 6,100 loan-related documents, from which we
extracted 65,707 individual conditions applicable across 132
countries. We then classified these conditions into eight mutually
exclusive policy areas. The detailed codebook is available in the
appendix. Through this data, we can initially show that “structural
adjustment” is not a term with delimited use to describe 1980s and
1990s conditionality, but still highly relevant. There is a clear family
resemblance of the reforms introduced in the past and those
advocated today, albeit with modifications that we trace and clarify.
Second, we introduce a novel methodological approach to capture
the effects of IMF programs. Our approach is an improvement on
existing methods because it allows us to isolate where an effect is
derived from among several types of IMF conditions, promising
greater nuance for our findings and their policy implications. For
instance, we can establish whether it is trade liberalization or state-
owned enterprise reform that influences social outcomes, whereas
earlier studies could only identify that IMF intervention had an
overall effect. Our approach also allows us to make causal—rather
than correlational—arguments by addressing statistical biases that
have hamstrung earlier analyses: that governments choose to
participate in IMF programs reflecting, inter alia, the severity of
economic crises and the political will of leaders to address the
situation; and that once participating in a program, governments
receive more or less conditions depending on domestic
characteristics that also affect social outcomes, such as the extent to
which democratic rights are respected.
Finally, with these two tools, we can turn to making a range of
substantive contributions based on new analyses on the impact of
IMF programs on social protection. Our findings provide grounds for
continued skepticism about the role of conditionality. Across a range
of empirical analyses, we show that IMF programs have led to the
introduction of regressive public policies, which in turn have adverse
impacts on social outcomes. Relatedly, we document that while the
organization has made some strides in the introduction of pro-social
spending measures, these are often cosmetic changes that are
frequently not enforced. In short, there is still scope for extensive
reforms in IMF programs if they are to underpin equitable
socioeconomic development, especially in the context of the
postpandemic recovery.
A note on what this book does not attempt is also relevant. We
focus on the activities of the IMF due to its key role in influencing
policy design at the level of central government decision-making. Its
mandated reforms directly target tax and spending policies designed
by finance ministries, and spell out structural changes in most major
areas of economic policy. In doing so, the IMF shapes the policy
space available to decision-makers across levels of government. But
the IMF is not the only organization with the power to do so. The
World Bank and the European Union can also attach conditions to
their support, sometimes in cooperation with the IMF (Broome, 201
3; Kranke, 2020; Lütz & Kranke, 2014). In particular, the World Bank
has also had a role in designing structural adjustment programs for
low- and middle-income countries around the world since the 1980s.
Yet for the Bank, such programs—now revamped as “development
policy lending”—form a relatively small share of its lending activities,
with the bulk going to finance large projects like infrastructure or
health facilities. Even so, criticisms of the role of World Bank projects
and policies abound, but these receive extensive coverage elsewhere
(e.g., Cormier & Manger, 2022; Gabor, 2021; Malik & Stone, 2018; N
oy, 2017, 2021; C. L. Shandra et al., 2011).

Outline
The goal of this book is to explore how the IMF has influenced social
protection worldwide. Without denying the importance of other
areas of IMF activity (such as economic surveillance and technical
assistance), we turn our attention to the decisive role played by the
organization’s practice of conditionality in shaping public policies and
social outcomes.
In Chapter 2, we situate our inquiry within contemporary
scholarly debates and media criticism over the extent to which the
IMF’s official narrative of organizational reform matches reality. Since
the onset of the Global Financial Crisis in 2007–2008, a number of
analysts have observed a “new, cuddly IMF” (Wolf, 2011). This has
been coupled with a proliferation of self-congratulatory
organizational factsheets, discussion notes, and public statements
telling us that the IMF is now a changed institution. If the hype is to
be believed, the IMF took on board the many criticisms of yesteryear
and reformed its practices. The pièce de résistance of the new IMF is
an organizational mantra of enabling policy flexibility for borrowing
countries, a marked shift from the rigid structural reforms that
shackled governments and were so notorious as to elicit a “phobia of
the IMF” among people in countries participating in structural
adjustment programs (IMF, 2014k). The chapter sets out to examine
whether IMF rhetoric on policy flexibility for its borrowers matches
the actual conditions attached to the organization’s loans. In so
doing, the chapter offers useful context for Part II of the book by
providing an overview of IMF conditionality, including its
organizational and technical apparatuses. Using our original data, we
focus on whether the IMF has evolved to allow for more policy space
by empirically exploring the patterns of conditionality in loan
agreements between 1980 and 2019. What does the available
evidence show? It provides little support for arguments claiming a
fundamental transformation of practices by the IMF. Instead, we find
that the scale of organizational change was both modest and short-
lived. In the immediate aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis the
scope of reforms was somewhat reduced, but as the IMF solidified
its role as the central institution charged with crisis management, its
programs re-incorporated many of the reforms that it claimed to no
longer advocate. To explain this finding, we conceive of the IMF as
an open system influenced both by external environments and
internal pressures and demands that give rise to a decoupling
between stated goals and actual practices of conditionality. Put
simply, what the IMF says is not necessarily what the IMF does.
Before proceeding with the analyses, it is essential to scrutinize
the methods social scientists use to evaluate the effects of IMF
conditionality. Chapter 3 takes on this task, arriving at a
methodological template applied to the quantitative studies
undertaken in Part II of this book. To understand the issues involved
in pinpointing effects of IMF intervention on social outcomes, we
consider the oft-used analogy of the IMF as a doctor giving
treatment to a patient. Countries opt into an IMF program because
they are suffering from macroeconomic maladies. The IMF
prescribes a series of conditions to treat the patient, or ailing
economy. If we fail to account for the fact that the patient—or
country—was initially feeling poorly, then we underestimate the
effectiveness of the doctor’s—or IMF’s—treatment. Scholars are, of
course, acutely aware of such issues and have developed complex
statistical solutions as a result, techniques we consider in the
chapter. Yet these studies rely on a crude indicator of IMF
intervention that statistically treats all programs as if they are
identical, since data on conditionality was not yet available for this
earlier generation of studies. Once we consider information on
conditionality, additional steps must be included in statistical
analyses to ensure that we capture the effect of IMF intervention
and not pre-existing circumstances that prompted the country’s
government to seek a program. Thus, we develop a sophisticated
state-of-the-art statistical strategy capable of testing the effects of
IMF conditionality. In so doing, we can account for the two main
sources of statistical bias. First, countries decide to enter an IMF
program based on an array of domestic and global economic,
political, and social characteristics, some of which cannot be directly
observed or measured, which may in turn influence the outcome of
interest. And second, these characteristics may also determine the
number and type of conditions included in the IMF program. By
statistically controlling for these factors, we are able to ascertain
whether there is truly a causal relationship between IMF
conditionality and social policy and outcomes, rather than being a
mere correlation.
Chapter 4 focuses on health systems and is the first of three
chapters in Part II that apply our statistical strategy to examine the
social consequences of IMF conditionality. Strengthening public
health systems is central to achieving universal health coverage and
to minimizing the fall-out of global health emergencies, witnessed so
acutely during the COVID-19 pandemic. In setting fiscal priorities for
borrowing countries through the practice of conditionality, the IMF
has emerged as a key player in shaping the design and
implementation of health policies and systems throughout the world.
While the IMF has long been criticized for impeding the development
of public health systems in borrowing countries, the organization has
persistently argued to the contrary, claiming their programs have in
fact strengthened public health systems. We wade in on this debate
by focusing on cross-national and historical comparisons of
government health spending in response to IMF conditionality. The
results demonstrate that IMF conditionality has a robust and
powerful negative influence on government health spending. These
effects are mostly channeled through labor-related reforms, such as
wage and employment ceilings, which limit the ability of
governments to hire and retain civil servants, including key medical
personnel. We also find some evidence that fiscal, revenue, and tax
reforms—such as ceilings on general government expenditures and
floors on the fiscal balance—shrink fiscal space for spending in the
health sector. We then show how these channels of influence bear
out on the ground in an analysis of additional archival documents for
West Africa, a region that stands out due to the sheer magnitude of
health and developmental challenges and near-constant presence of
IMF programs over the past three decades.
Chapter 5 evaluates the impact of IMF conditionality on income
inequality. The IMF has in recent years styled itself as a champion of
reducing inequalities, representing a sharp departure from the
reputation of the organization. According to its critics, the IMF has
increased social inequalities through its own policy advice. Both sides
of the argument have been guilty of resorting to selective anecdotes
—rather than rigorous scientific inquiry—to consolidate their
positions. Given the centrality of the IMF in guiding post-COVID
economic recovery, it is crucial to obtain something approaching
closure on the IMF’s record on income inequality. We therefore set
out to test these competing claims systematically across a broad
range of countries and years. Our results validate the position of the
critics: IMF conditionality drives increases in income inequality, as
measured by the income Gini. These findings are driven by reforms
pertaining to the liberalization of flows of goods and capital as well
as currency changes. Workers’ rights are often adversely affected by
trade liberalization, as firing is made easier and employment
relations favor business interests rather than worker protections; and
the expansion of portfolio investments from liberalizing capital flows
can increase market volatility and amplify financial crises,
disproportionately affecting poorer individuals. Using an auxiliary
dataset measuring the intensity of fiscal adjustment required by
countries participating in IMF programs, we also show that IMF fiscal
consolidation—conditions calling for cuts to government spending
and increases in revenues—fostered inequality by concentrating
income to the richest 10 percent of the population, with middle-class
and low-income earners accruing the biggest losses. This occurred
via wage, employment, and pension cuts for civil servants, as well as
through rises in value-added taxes over income and corporate taxes.
 Has IMF conditionality ultimately harmed population health? Chap
ter 6, which is the last of the three chapters in Part II, investigates
this issue. Apart from any impact that conditionality has on
government health spending, increasing attention has focused on
the effects of broader public policies on the social determinants of
health, understood as the circumstances “in which people are born,
grow, live, work, and age” (Commission on Social Determinants of H
ealth, 2008, p. 1). The chapter initially focuses on two key measures
of health outcomes: a universal health coverage index based on a
series of risk-standardized death rates from 32 causes, and the
neonatal mortality rate. Based on the most rigorous statistical
techniques available, the evidence shows that across multiple
decades throughout the world conditionality reduced coverage of
essential health services and increased neonatal mortality, regardless
of how much a government spends on health. This effect is derived
from state-owned enterprise privatization and labor conditions,
which affect health systems indirectly by weakening state capacity to
deliver a range of effective public health services and interventions,
as well as depriving public sector workers of high-quality healthcare
access where such employment benefits are withdrawn. These
conditions have a cascading impact on key social determinants of
health, as changing work patterns and unemployment lead to stress
and social exclusion, affecting access to food and fueling self-
destructive behaviors such as alcoholism. We also find a detrimental
effect linked to health sector restructuring, as well as price increases
for basic needs goods like food, water, public transport, and shelter,
access to which influences key social determinants of health like
stress and early life experiences. To further explore the effects of
IMF conditionality on health outcomes, the chapter then draws on
data for 23 additional indicators featured as health targets nested
within Sustainable Development Goal 3 (i.e., to ensure healthy lives
and promote well-being for all at all ages). Of these, 10 were
influenced adversely by IMF conditionality: maternal mortality,
under-five mortality, malaria cases, hepatitis B incidence, vaccination
coverage, health worker density (nurses and midwives, physicians,
and summed across cadres), deaths from poisoning, and deaths
attributed to unsafe water, sanitation, and hygiene. The only
indicator where we detected a beneficial impact was for the
prevalence of smoking, a likely product of conditions calling for
increases in excise and value-added taxes, thereby shrinking
demand for tobacco due to rising prices.
Chapter 7 grapples with the question of how the IMF has changed
since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The IMF stressed the
importance of avoiding a divergent recovery from the pandemic,
where some countries race ahead and others fall further behind. To
this end, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva called for an
economic recovery from the pandemic that should not witness
budget cuts, but rather investments in employment and human
capital (Georgieva, 2021b). Given these statements, are our findings
on the detrimental social impact of IMF conditionality still relevant in
a post-COVID world? Based on public spending projections from the
IMF’s highly influential World Economic Outlook report, we find—as
we did in Chapter 2 for an earlier era—that the IMF’s proclamations
cannot be taken at face value. A total of 86 countries are projected
to face fiscal contractions by 2023—that is to say, they will be
spending less than their 2010s average—exposing 2.3 billion people
to the socioeconomic consequences of budget cuts. These
projections become prescriptions for many developing countries,
especially IMF borrowers where they get inscribed as conditions. We
also present new data on IMF financing approved to combat COVID-
19 and subsequent economic recovery. While no-conditionality
facilities were the prevalent lending instrument for the initial phase
of the pandemic, these are being replaced by lending arrangements
that mandate the introduction of policy reforms—those that have
been the topic of analyses throughout this book. To better
understand the requirements of post-COVID IMF programs, we
examine the precise content of IMF conditionality in three of these
programs: Ecuador, Kenya, and Madagascar. We find that these
programs continue to include steep austerity measures and
structural reforms like privatizations or civil service restructuring. The
narrative on the abandonment of austerity is therefore dubious, as
there is every indication that the IMF is returning to its business-as-
usual approach. Mistakes of the past—such as conditions that have
reduced government health spending, increased income inequality,
and detrimentally impacted health outcomes—may well be repeated
without decisive action to forge an alternative approach.
Looking forward, what is to be done? In the concluding Chapter
8, we elaborate on how the IMF can effectively live up to its promise
and potential by encouraging more effective engagement with social
protection policies and avoiding the adverse socioeconomic
consequences that we document in this book. In the immediate
aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2008, commentators
remarked on what appeared at the time as a period “pregnant with
new development possibilities” (Grabel, 2011, p. 805), which—as our
data shows—never came to fruition. And while international political
economic history does not repeat itself, it does sometimes rhyme.
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, no-conditionality IMF facilities
supported rapid and substantive increases in health and social
protection spending; the longer-term outlook presents a bleak
picture of austerity redux. But a window of opportunity does present
itself. This window is closing but has not shut completely. Among
governments and international institutions, social policy is receiving
renewed attention and there has become a much clearer recognition
that “we are only as strong as the weakest health system,” as UN
Secretary General Antonio Gutiérrez put it (United Nations, 2020).
The chapter contemplates how IMF programs will interface with
social protection policies in a status quo scenario. We then home in
on a fledgling area of IMF engagement that is likely to become the
dominant battleground for social protection issues: climate change
adaptation and mitigation policies. Finally, we reflect on whether the
IMF’s mandate is consistent with achieving a socially just world
economy (it is!), before proposing concrete recommendations on
how the organization can move toward addressing the criticisms
raised in this book.
Another random document with
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 “Nothing but the five statutory questions,” said Ellen to the
rawboned man with big sagging eyes like oysters into whose long
shirtfront she was talking.
“And so the decree is granted?” he asked solemnly.
“Surely in an uncontested ...”
“Well I’m very sorry to hear it as an old family friend of both
parties.”
“Look here Dick, honestly I’m very fond of Jojo. I owe him a great
deal.... He’s a very fine person in many ways, but it absolutely had to
be.”
“You mean there is somebody else?”
She looked up at him with bright eyes and half nodded.
“Oh but divorce is a very serious step my dear young lady.”
“Oh not so serious as all that.”
They saw Harry Goldweiser coming towards them across the big
walnut paneled room. She suddenly raised her voice. “They say that
this battle of the Marne is going to end the war.”
Harry Goldweiser took her hand between his two pudgy-palmed
hands and bowed over it. “It’s very charming of you Elaine to come
and keep a lot of old midsummer bachelors from boring each other
to death. Hello Snow old man, how’s things?”
“Yes how is it we have the pleasure of still finding you here?”
“Oh various things have held me.... Anyway I hate summer
resorts.” “Nowhere prettier than Long Beach anyway.... Why Bar
Harbor, I wouldnt go to Bar Harbor if you gave me a million ... a cool
million.”
Mr. Snow let out a gruff sniff. “Seems to me I’ve heard you been
going into the realestate game down there, Goldweiser.”
“I bought myself a cottage that’s all. It’s amazing you cant even
buy yourself a cottage without every newsboy on Times Square
knowing about it. Let’s go in and eat; my sister’ll be right here.” A
dumpy woman in a spangled dress came in after they had sat down
to table in the big antlerhung diningroom; she was pigeonbreasted
and had a sallow skin.
“Oh Miss Oglethorpe I’m so glad to see you,” she twittered in a
little voice like a parrakeet’s. “I’ve often seen you and thought you
were the loveliest thing.... I did my best to get Harry to bring you up
to see me.”
“This is my sister Rachel,” said Goldweiser to Ellen without getting
up. “She keeps house for me.”
“I wish you’d help me, Snow, to induce Miss Oglethorpe to take
that part in The Zinnia Girl.... Honest it was just written for you.”
“But it’s such a small part ...”
“It’s not a lead exactly, but from the point of view of your
reputation as a versatile and exquisite artist, it’s the best thing in the
show.”
“Will you have a little more fish, Miss Oglethorpe?” piped Miss
Goldweiser.
Mr. Snow sniffed. “There’s no great acting any more: Booth,
Jefferson, Mansfield ... all gone. Nowadays it’s all advertising; actors
and actresses are put on the market like patent medicines. Isn’t it the
truth Elaine?... Advertising, advertising.”
“But that isn’t what makes success.... If you could do it with
advertising every producer in New York’d be a millionaire,” burst in
Goldweiser. “It’s the mysterious occult force that grips the crowds on
the street and makes them turn in at a particular theater that makes
the receipts go up at a particular boxoffice, do you understand me?
Advertising wont do it, good criticism wont do it, maybe it’s genius
maybe it’s luck but if you can give the public what it wants at that
time and at that place you have a hit. Now that’s what Elaine gave us
in this last show.... She established contact with the audience. It
might have been the greatest play in the world acted by the greatest
actors in the world and fallen a flat failure.... And I dont know how
you do it, nobody dont know how you do it.... You go to bed one
night with your house full of paper and you wake up the next morning
with a howling success. The producer cant control it any more than
the weather man can control the weather. Aint I tellin the truth?”
“Ah the taste of the New York public has sadly degenerated since
the old days of Wallack’s.”
“But there have been some beautiful plays,” chirped Miss
Goldweiser.
The long day love was crisp in the curls ... the dark curls ...
broken in the dark steel light ... hurls ... high O God high into the
bright ... She was cutting with her fork in the crisp white heart of a
lettuce. She was saying words while quite other words spilled
confusedly inside her like a broken package of beads. She sat
looking at a picture of two women and two men eating at a table in a
high paneled room under a shivering crystal chandelier. She looked
up from her plate to find Miss Goldweiser’s little birdeyes kindly
querulous fixed hard on her face.
“Oh yes New York is really pleasanter in midsummer than any
other time; there’s less hurry and bustle.”
“Oh yes that’s quite true Miss Goldweiser.” Ellen flashed a sudden
smile round the table.... All the long day love Was crisp in the curls of
his high thin brow, Flashed in his eyes in dark steel light....
In the taxi Goldweiser’s broad short knees pressed against hers;
his eyes were full of furtive spiderlike industry weaving a warm sweet
choking net about her face and neck. Miss Goldweiser had relapsed
pudgily into the seat beside her. Dick Snow was holding an unlighted
cigar in his mouth, rolling it with his tongue. Ellen tried to remember
exactly how Stan looked, his polevaulter’s tight slenderness; she
couldn’t remember his face entire, she saw his eyes, lips, an ear.
Times Square was full of juggled colored lights, crisscrossed
corrugations of glare. They went up in the elevator at the Astor. Ellen
followed Miss Goldweiser across the roofgarden among the tables.
Men and women in evening dress, in summer muslins and light suits
turned and looked after her, like sticky tendrils of vines glances
caught at her as she passed. The orchestra was playing In My
Harem. They arranged themselves at a table.
 “Shall we dance?” asked Goldweiser.
She smiled a wry broken smile in his face as she let him put his
arm round her back. His big ear with solemn lonely hairs on it was on
the level of her eyes.
“Elaine,” he was breathing into her ear, “honest I thought I was a
wise guy.” He caught his breath ... “but I aint.... You’ve got me goin
little girl and I hate to admit it.... Why cant you like me a little bit? I’d
like ... us to get married as soon as you get your decree.... Wouldn’t
you be kinder nice to me once in a while...? I’d do anything for you,
you know that.... There are lots of things in New York I could do for
you ...” The music stopped. They stood apart under a palm. “Elaine
come over to my office and sign that contract. I had Ferrari wait....
We can be back in fifteen minutes.”
“I’ve got to think it over ... I never do anything without sleeping on
it.”
“Gosh you drive a feller wild.”
Suddenly she remembered Stan’s face altogether, he was
standing in front of her with a bow tie crooked in his soft shirt, his
hair rumpled, drinking again.
“Oh Ellie I’m so glad to see you....”
“This is Mr. Emery, Mr. Goldweiser....”
“I’ve been on the most exordinately spectacular trip, honestly you
should have come.... We went to Montreal and Quebec and came
back through Niagara Falls and we never drew a sober breath from
the time we left little old New York till they arrested us for speeding
on the Boston Post Road, did we Pearline?” Ellen was staring at a
girl who stood groggily behind Stan with a small flowered straw hat
pulled down over a pair of eyes the blue of watered milk. “Ellie this is
Pearline.... Isn’t it a fine name? I almost split when she told me what
it was.... But you dont know the joke.... We got so tight in Niagara
Falls that when we came to we found we were married.... And we
have pansies on our marriage license....”
 Ellen couldnt see his face. The orchestra, the jangle of voices, the
clatter of plates spouted spiraling louder and louder about her ...
And the ladies of the harem
Knew exactly how to wear ’em
In O-riental Bagdad long ago....
“Good night Stan.” Her voice was gritty in her mouth, she heard
the words very clearly when she spoke them.
“Oh Ellie I wish you’d come partying with us....”
“Thanks ... thanks.”
She started to dance again with Harry Goldweiser. The
roofgarden was spinning fast, then less fast. The noise ebbed
sickeningly. “Excuse me a minute Harry,” she said. “I’ll come back to
the table.” In the ladies’ room she let herself down carefully on the
plush sofa. She looked at her face in the round mirror of her
vanitycase. From black pinholes her pupils spread blurring till
everything was black.

Jimmy Herf’s legs were tired; he had been walking all afternoon.
He sat down on a bench beside the Aquarium and looked out over
the water. The fresh September wind gave a glint of steel to the little
crisp waves of the harbor and to the slateblue smutted sky. A big
white steamer with a yellow funnel was passing in front of the statue
of Liberty. The smoke from the tug at the bow came out sharply
scalloped like paper. In spite of the encumbering wharfhouses the
end of Manhattan seemed to him like the prow of a barge pushing
slowly and evenly down the harbor. Gulls wheeled and cried. He got
to his feet with a jerk. “Oh hell I’ve got to do something.”
He stood a second with tense muscles balanced on the balls of
his feet. The ragged man looking at the photogravures of a Sunday
paper had a face he had seen before. “Hello,” he said vaguely. “I
knew who you were all along,” said the man without holding out his
hand. “You’re Lily Herf’s boy.... I thought you werent going to speak
to me.... No reason why you should.”
“Oh of course you must be Cousin Joe Harland.... I’m awfully glad
to see you.... I’ve often wondered about you.”
“Wondered what?”
“Oh I dunno ... funny you never think of your relatives as being
people like yourself, do you?” Herf sat down in the seat again. “Will
you have a cigarette.... It’s only a Camel.”
“Well I dont mind if I do.... What’s your business Jimmy? You dont
mind if I call you that do you?” Jimmy Herf lit a match; it went out, lit
another and held it for Harland. “That’s the first tobacco I’ve had in a
week ... Thank you.”
Jimmy glanced at the man beside him. The long hollow of his gray
cheek made a caret with the deep crease that came from the end of
his mouth. “You think I’m pretty much of a wreck dont you?” spat
Harland. “You’re sorry you sat down aint you? You’re sorry you had a
mother who brought you up a gentleman instead of a cad like the
rest of ’em....”
“Why I’ve got a job as a reporter on the Times ... a hellish rotten
job and I’m sick of it,” said Jimmy, drawling out his words.
“Dont talk like that Jimmy, you’re too young.... You’ll never get
anywhere with that attitude.”
“Well suppose I dont want to get anywhere.”
“Poor dear Lily was so proud of you.... She wanted you to be a
great man, she was so ambitious for you.... You dont want to forget
your mother Jimmy. She was the only friend I had in the whole damn
family.”
Jimmy laughed. “I didnt say I wasnt ambitious.”
“For God’s sake, for your dear mother’s sake be careful what you
do. You’re just starting out in life ... everything’ll depend on the next
couple of years. Look at me.”
 “Well the Wizard of Wall Street made a pretty good thing of it I’ll
say.... No it’s just that I dont like to take all the stuff you have to take
from people in this goddam town. I’m sick of playing up to a lot of
desk men I dont respect.... What are you doing Cousin Joe?”
“Don’t ask me....”
“Look, do you see that boat with the red funnels? She’s French.
Look, they are pulling the canvas off the gun on her stern.... I want to
go to the war.... The only trouble is I’m very poor at wrangling
things.”
Harland was gnawing his upper lip; after a silence he burst out in
a hoarse broken voice. “Jimmy I’m going to ask you to do something
for Lily’s sake.... Er ... have you any ... er ... any change with you?
By a rather unfortunate ... coincidence I have not eaten very well for
the last two or three days.... I’m a little weak, do you understand?”
“Why yes I was just going to suggest that we go have a cup of
coffee or tea or something.... I know a fine Syrian restaurant on
Washington street.”
“Come along then,” said Harland, getting up stiffly. “You’re sure
you don’t mind being seen with a scarecrow like this?”
The newspaper fell out of his hand. Jimmy stooped to pick it up. A
face made out of modulated brown blurs gave him a twinge as if
something had touched a nerve in a tooth. No it wasnt, she doesnt
look like that, yes Talented Young Actress Scores Hit in the
Zinnia Girl....
“Thanks, dont bother, I found it there,” said Harland. Jimmy
dropped the paper; she fell face down.
“Pretty rotten photographs they have dont they?”
“It passes the time to look at them, I like to keep up with what’s
going on in New York a little bit.... A cat may look at a king you know,
a cat may look at a king.”
“Oh I just meant that they were badly taken.”
VII. Rollercoaster

T
he leaden twilight weighs on the dry
limbs of an old man walking towards
Broadway. Round the Nedick’s stand at
the corner something clicks in his eyes.
Broken doll in the ranks of varnished
articulated dolls he plods up with drooping
head into the seethe and throb into the
furnace of beaded lettercut light. “I
remember when it was all meadows,” he
grumbles to the little boy.

L
ouis Expresso Association, the red letters on the placard jig
before Stan’s eyes. Annual Dance. Young men and girls going
in. Two by two the elephant And the kangaroo. The boom and
jangle of an orchestra seeping out through the swinging doors of the
hall. Outside it is raining. One more river, O there’s one more river to
cross. He straightens the lapels of his coat, arranges his mouth
soberly, pays two dollars and goes into a big resounding hall hung
with red white and blue bunting. Reeling, so he leans for a while
against the wall. One more river ... The dancefloor full of jogging
couples rolls like the deck of a ship. The bar is more stable. “Gus
McNiel’s here,” everybody’s saying “Good old Gus.” Big hands slap
broad backs, mouths roar black in red faces. Glasses rise and tip
glinting, rise and tip in a dance. A husky beetfaced man with deepset
eyes and curly hair limps through the bar leaning on a stick. “How’s a
boy Gus?”
“Yay dere’s de chief.”
“Good for old man McNiel come at last.”
“Howde do Mr. McNiel?” The bar quiets down.
 Gus McNiel waves his stick in the air. “Attaboy fellers, have a
good time.... Burke ole man set the company up to a drink on me.”
“Dere’s Father Mulvaney wid him too. Good for Father Mulvaney....
He’s a prince that feller is.”
For he’s a jolly good fellow
That nobody can deny ...
Broad backs deferentially hunched follow the slowly pacing group
out among the dancers. O the big baboon by the light of the moon is
combing his auburn hair. “Wont you dance, please?” The girl turns a
white shoulder and walks off.
I am a bachelor and I live all alone
And I work at the weaver’s trade....
Stan finds himself singing at his own face in a mirror. One of his
eyebrows is joining his hair, the other’s an eyelash.... “No I’m not
bejases I’m a married man.... Fight any man who says I’m not a
married man and a citizen of City of New York, County of New York,
State of New York....” He’s standing on a chair making a speech,
banging his fist into his hand. “Friends Roooomans and countrymen,
lend me five bucks.... We come to muzzle Cæsar not to shaaaave
him.... According to the Constitution of the City of New York, County
of New York, State of New York and duly attested and subscribed
before a district attorney according to the provisions of the act of July
13th 1888.... To hell with the Pope.”
“Hey quit dat.” “Fellers lets trow dis guy out.... He aint one o de
boys.... Dunno how he got in here. He’s drunk as a pissant.” Stan
jumps with his eyes closed into a thicket of fists. He’s slammed in the
eye, in the jaw, shoots like out of a gun out into the drizzling cool
silent street. Ha ha ha.
For I am a bachelor and I live all alone
And there’s one more river to cross
One more river to Jordan
One more river to cross ...
It was blowing cold in his face and he was sitting on the front of a
ferryboat when he came to. His teeth were chattering, he was
shivering ... “I’m having DT’s. Who am I? Where am I? City of New
York, State of New York.... Stanwood Emery age twentytwo
occupation student.... Pearline Anderson twentyone occupation
actress. To hell with her. Gosh I’ve got fortynine dollars and eight
cents and where the hell have I been? And nobody rolled me. Why I
havent got the DT’s at all. I feel fine, only a little delicate. All I need’s
a little drink, dont you? Hello, I thought there was somebody here. I
guess I’d better shut up.”
Fortynine dollars ahanging on the wall
Fortynine dollars ahanging on the wall
Across the zinc water the tall walls, the birchlike cluster of
downtown buildings shimmered up the rosy morning like a sound of
horns through a chocolatebrown haze. As the boat drew near the
buildings densened to a granite mountain split with knifecut canyons.
The ferry passed close to a tubby steamer that rode at anchor listing
towards Stan so that he could see all the decks. An Ellis Island tug
was alongside. A stale smell came from the decks packed with
upturned faces like a load of melons. Three gulls wheeled
complaining. A gull soared in a spiral, white wings caught the sun,
the gull skimmed motionless in whitegold light. The rim of the sun
had risen above the plumcolored band of clouds behind East New
York. A million windows flashed with light. A rasp and a humming
came from the city.
The animals went in two by two
The elephant and the kangaroo
There’s one more river to Jordan
One more river to cross
In the whitening light tinfoil gulls wheeled above broken boxes,
spoiled cabbageheads, orangerinds heaving slowly between the
splintered plank walls, the green spumed under the round bow as
the ferry skidding on the tide, gulped the broken water, crashed, slid,
settled slowly into the slip. Handwinches whirled with jingle of chains,
gates folded upward. Stan stepped across the crack, staggered up
the manuresmelling wooden tunnel of the ferryhouse out into the
sunny glass and benches of the Battery. He sat down on a bench,
clasped his hands round his knees to keep them from shaking so.
His mind went on jingling like a mechanical piano.
With bells on her fingers and rings on her toes
Shall ride a white lady upon a great horse
And she shall make mischief wherever she goes ...
There was Babylon and Nineveh, they were built of brick. Athens
was goldmarble columns. Rome was held up on broad arches of
rubble. In Constantinople the minarets flame like great candles round
the Golden Horn.... O there’s one more river to cross. Steel glass,
tile, concrete will be the materials of the skyscrapers. Crammed on
the narrow island the millionwindowed buildings will jut, glittering
pyramid on pyramid, white cloudsheads piled above a thunderstorm
...
And it rained forty days and it rained forty nights
And it didn’t stop till Christmas
And the only man who survived the flood
Was longlegged Jack of the Isthmus....
Kerist I wish I was a skyscraper.

The lock spun round in a circle to keep out the key. Dexterously
Stan bided his time and caught it. He shot headlong through the
open door and down the long hall shouting Pearline into the
livingroom. It smelled funny, Pearline’s smell, to hell with it. He
picked up a chair; the chair wanted to fly, it swung round his head
and crashed into the window, the glass shivered and tinkled. He
looked out through the window. The street stood up on end. A
hookandladder and a fire engine were climbing it licketysplit trailing a
droning sirenshriek. Fire fire, pour on water, Scotland’s burning. A
thousand dollar fire, a hundredthousand dollar fire, a million dollar
fire. Skyscrapers go up like flames, in flames, flames. He spun back
into the room. The table turned a somersault. The chinacloset
jumped on the table. Oak chairs climbed on top to the gas jet. Pour
on water, Scotland’s burning. Don’t like the smell in this place in the
City of New York, County of New York, State of New York. He lay on
his back on the floor of the revolving kitchen and laughed and
laughed. The only man who survived the flood rode a great lady on a
white horse. Up in flames, up, up. Kerosene whispered a
greasyfaced can in the corner of the kitchen. Pour on water. He
stood swaying on the crackling upside down chairs on the upside
down table. The kerosene licked him with a white cold tongue. He
pitched, grabbed the gasjet, the gasjet gave way, he lay in a puddle
on his back striking matches, wet wouldn’t light. A match spluttered,
lit; he held the flame carefully between his hands.

“Oh yes but my husband’s awfully ambitious.” Pearline was telling

the blue gingham lady in the grocery-store. “Likes to have a good
time an all that but he’s much more ambitious than anybody I every
knew. He’s goin to get his old man to send us abroad so he can
study architecture. He wants to be an architect.”
“My that’ll be nice for you wont it? A trip like that ... Anything else
miss?” “No I guess I didn’t forget anythin.... If it was anybody else I’d
be worryin about him. I haven’t seen him for two days. Had to go and
see his dad I guess.”
“And you just newly wed too.”
“I wouldnt be tellin ye if I thought there was anythin wrong, would
I? No he’s playin straight all right.... Well goodby Mrs. Robinson.”
She tucked her packages under one arm and swinging her bead bag
in the free hand walked down the street. The sun was still warm
although there was a tang of fall in the wind. She gave a penny to a
blind man cranking the Merry Widow waltz out of a grindorgan. Still
she’d better bawl him out a little when he came home, might get to
doing it often. She turned into 200th Street. People were looking out
of windows, there was a crowd gathering. It was a fire. She sniffed
the singed air. It gave her gooseflesh; she loved seeing fires. She
hurried. Why it’s outside our building. Outside our apartmenthouse.
Smoke dense as gunnysacks rolled out of the fifthstory window. She
suddenly found herself all atremble. The colored elevatorboy ran up
to her. His face was green. “Oh it’s in our apartment” she shrieked,
“and the furniture just came a week ago. Let me get by.” The
packages fell from her, a bottle of cream broke on the sidewalk. A
policeman stood in her way, she threw herself at him and pounded
on the broad blue chest. She couldnt stop shrieking. “That’s all right
little lady, that’s all right,” he kept booming in a deep voice. As she
beat her head against it she could feel his voice rumbling in his
chest. “They’re bringing him down, just overcome by smoke that’s
all, just overcome by smoke.”
“O Stanwood my husband,” she shrieked. Everything was
blacking out. She grabbed at two bright buttons on the policeman’s
coat and fainted.
VIII. One More River to Jordan

A
man is shouting from a soapbox at
Second Avenue and Houston in front of
the Cosmopolitan Cafè: “... these fellers,
men ... wageslaves like I was ... are sittin on
your chest ... they’re takin the food outen
your mouths. Where’s all the pretty girls I
used to see walkin up and down the
bullevard? Look for em in the uptown
cabarets.... They squeeze us dry friends ...
feller workers, slaves I’d oughter say ... they
take our work and our ideers and our
women.... They build their Plaza Hotels and
their millionaire’s clubs and their million
dollar theayters and their battleships and
what do they leave us?... They leave us
shopsickness an the rickets and a lot of dirty
streets full of garbage cans.... You look pale
you fellers.... You need blood.... Why dont
you get some blood in your veins?... Back in
Russia the poor people ... not so much
poorer’n we are ... believe in wampires,
things come suck your blood at night....
That’s what Capitalism is, a wampire that
sucks your blood ... day ... and ... night.”
It is beginning to snow. The flakes are
giltedged where they pass the streetlamp.
Through the plate glass the Cosmopolitan
Cafè full of blue and green opal rifts of
smoke looks like a muddy aquarium; faces
blob whitely round the tables like illassorted
fishes. Umbrellas begin to bob in clusters up
 the snowmottled street. The orator turns up
his collar and walks briskly east along
Houston, holding the muddy soapbox away
from his trousers.

aces, hats, hands, newspapers jiggled in the fetid roaring

F subway car like corn in a popper. The downtown express passed
clattering in yellow light, window telescoping window till they
overlapped like scales.
“Look George,” said Sandbourne to George Baldwin who hung on
a strap beside him, “you can see Fitzgerald’s contraction.”
“I’ll be seeing the inside of an undertaking parlor if I dont get out
of this subway soon.”
“It does you plutocrats good now and then to see how the other
half travels.... Maybe it’ll make you induce some of your little
playmates down at Tammany Hall to stop squabbling and give us
wageslaves a little transportation.... cristamighty I could tell em a
thing or two.... My idea’s for a series of endless moving platforms
under Fifth Avenue.”
“Did you cook that up when you were in hospital Phil?”
“I cooked a whole lot of things up while I was in hospital.”
“Look here lets get out at Grand Central and walk. I cant stand
this.... I’m not used to it.”
“Sure ... I’ll phone Elsie I’ll be a little late to dinner.... Not often I
get to see you nowadays George ... Gee it’s like the old days.”
In a tangled clot of men and women, arms, legs, hats aslant on
perspiring necks, they were pushed out on the platform. They walked
up Lexington Avenue quiet in the claretmisted afterglow.
“But Phil how did you come to step out in front of a truck that
way?”
“Honestly George I dunno.... The last I remember is craning my
neck to look at a terribly pretty girl went by in a taxicab and there I
was drinking icewater out of a teapot in the hospital.”
“Shame on you Phil at your age.”
“Cristamighty dont I know it? But I’m not the only one.”
“It is funny the way a thing like that comes over you.... Why what
have you heard about me?”
“Gosh George dont get nervous, it’s all right.... I’ve seen her in
The Zinnia Girl.... She walks away with it. That other girl who’s the
star dont have a show.”
“Look here Phil if you hear any rumors about Miss Oglethorpe for
Heaven’s sake shut them up. It’s so damn silly you cant go out to tea
with a woman without everybody starting their dirty gabble all over
town.... By God I will not have a scandal, I dont care what happens.”
“Say hold your horses George.”
“I’m in a very delicate position downtown just at the moment that’s
all.... And then Cecily and I have at last reached a modus vivendi.... I
wont have it disturbed.”
They walked along in silence.
Sandbourne walked with his hat in his hand. His hair was almost
white but his eyebrows were still dark and bushy. Every few steps he
changed the length of his stride as if it hurt him to walk. He cleared
his throat. “George you were asking me if I’d cooked up any
schemes when I was in hospital.... Do you remember years ago old
man Specker used to talk about vitreous and superenameled tile?
Well I’ve been workin on his formula out at Hollis.... A friend of mine
there has a two thousand degree oven he bakes pottery in. I think it
can be put on a commercial basis.... Man it would revolutionize the
whole industry. Combined with concrete it would enormously
increase the flexibility of the materials at the architects’ disposal. We
could make tile any color, size or finish.... Imagine this city when all
the buildins instead of bein dirty gray were ornamented with vivid
colors. Imagine bands of scarlet round the entablatures of
skyscrapers. Colored tile would revolutionize the whole life of the
city.... Instead of fallin back on the orders or on gothic or
romanesque decorations we could evolve new designs, new colors,
new forms. If there was a little color in the town all this hardshell
inhibited life’d break down.... There’d be more love an less
divorce....”
Baldwin burst out laughing. “You tell em Phil.... I’ll talk to you
about that sometime. You must come up to dinner when Cecily’s
there and tell us about it.... Why wont Parkhurst do anything?”
“I wouldnt let him in on it. He’d cotton on to the proposition and
leave me out in the cold once he had the formula. I wouldn’t trust him
with a rubber nickel.”
“Why doesnt he take you into partnership Phil?”
“He’s got me where he wants me anyway.... He knows I do all the
work in his goddamned office. He knows too that I’m too cranky to
make out with most people. He’s a slick article.”
“Still I should think you could put it up to him.”
“He’s got me where he wants me and he knows it, so I continue
doin the work while he amasses the coin.... I guess it’s logical. If I
had more money I’d just spend it. I’m just shiftless.”
“But look here man you’re not so much older than I am.... You’ve
still got a career ahead of you.”
“Sure nine hours a day draftin.... Gosh I wish you’d go into this tile
business with me.”
Baldwin stopped at a corner and slapped his hand on the
briefcase he was carrying. “Now Phil you know I’d be very glad to
give you a hand in any way I could.... But just at the moment my
financial situation is terribly involved. I’ve gotten into some rather
rash entanglements and Heaven knows how I’m going to get out of
them.... That’s why I cant have a scandal or a divorce or anything.
You dont understand how complicatedly things interact.... I couldnt
take up anything new, not for a year at least. This war in Europe has
made things very unsettled downtown. Anything’s liable to happen.”
“All right. Good night George.”
 Sandbourne turned abruptly on his heel and walked down the
avenue again. He was tired and his legs ached. It was almost dark.
On the way back to the station the grimy brick and brownstone
blocks dragged past monotonously like the days of his life.
Under the skin of her temples iron clamps tighten till her head will
mash like an egg; she begins to walk with long strides up and down
the room that bristles with itching stuffiness; spotty colors of pictures,
carpets, chairs wrap about her like a choking hot blanket. Outside
the window the backyards are striped with blue and lilac and topaz of
a rainy twilight. She opens the window. No time to get tight like the
twilight, Stan said. The telephone reached out shivering beady
tentacles of sound. She slams the window down. O hell cant they
give you any peace?
“Why Harry I didnt know you were back.... Oh I wonder if I can....
Oh yes I guess I can. Come along by after the theater.... Isnt that
wonderful? You must tell me all about it.” She no sooner puts the
receiver down than the bell clutches at her again. “Hello.... No I
dont.... Oh yes maybe I do.... When did you get back?” She laughed
a tinkling telephone laugh. “But Howard I’m terribly busy.... Yes I am
honestly.... Have you been to the show? Well sometime come round
after a performance.... I’m so anxious to hear about your trip ... you
know ... Goodby Howard.”
A walk’ll make me feel better. She sits at her dressingtable and
shakes her hair down about her shoulders. “It’s such a hellish
nuisance, I’d like to cut it all off ... spreads apace. The shadow of
white Death.... Oughtnt to stay up so late, those dark circles under
my eyes.... And at the door, Invisible Corruption.... If I could only cry;
there are people who can cry their eyes out, really cry themselves
blind ... Anyway the divorce’ll go through....”
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given
Gosh it’s six o’clock already. She starts walking up and down the
room again. I am borne darkly fearfully afar.... The phone rings.
“Hello.... Yes this is Miss Oglethorpe.... Why hello Ruth, why I
haven’t seen you for ages, since Mrs. Sunderland’s.... Oh, do I’d love
to see you. Come by and we’ll have a bite to eat on the way to the
theater.... It’s the third floor.”
She rings off and gets a raincape out of a closet. The smell of furs
and mothballs and dresses clings in her nostrils. She throws up the
window again and breathes deep of the wet air full of the cold rot of
autumn. She hears the burring boom of a big steamer from the river.
Darkly, fearfully afar from this nonsensical life, from this fuzzy idiocy
and strife; a man can take a ship for his wife, but a girl. The
telephone is shiveringly beadily ringing, ringing.
The buzzer burrs at the same time. Ellen presses the button to
click the latch. “Hello.... No, I’m very sorry I’m afraid you’ll have to tell
me who it is. Why Larry Hopkins I thought you were in Tokyo.... They
havent moved you again have they? Why of course we must see
each other.... My dear it’s simply horrible but I’m all dated up for two
weeks.... Look I’m sort of crazy tonight. You call up tomorrow at
twelve and I’ll try to shift things around.... Why of course I’ve got to
see you immediately you funny old thing.” ... Ruth Prynne and
Cassandra Wilkins come in shaking the water off their umbrellas.
“Well goodby Larry.... Why it’s so so sweet of both of you.... Do take
your things off for a second.... Cassie wont you have dinner with
us?”
“I felt I just had to see you.... It’s so wonderful about your
wonderful success,” says Cassie in a shaky voice. “And my dear I
felt so terribly when I heard about Mr. Emery. I cried and cried, didnt I
Ruth?”
“Oh what a beautiful apartment you have,” Ruth is exclaiming at
the same moment. Ellen’s ears ring sickeningly. “We all have to die
sometime,” gruffly she blurts out.
Ruth’s rubberclad foot is tapping the floor; she catches Cassie’s
eye and makes her stammer into silence. “Hadnt we better go
along? It’s getting rather late,” she says.
“Excuse me a minute Ruth.” Ellen runs into the bathroom and
slams the door. She sits on the edge of the bathtub pounding on her
knees with her clenched fists. Those women’ll drive me mad. Then
the tension in her snaps, she feels something draining out of her like
water out of a washbasin. She quietly puts a dab of rouge on her
lips.
When she goes back she says in her usual voice: “Well let’s get
along.... Got a part yet Ruth?”
“I had a chance to go out to Detroit with a stock company. I turned
it down.... I wont go out of New York whatever happens.”
“What wouldnt I give for a chance to get away from New York....
Honestly if I was offered a job singing in a movie in Medicine Hat I
think I’d take it.”
Ellen picks up her umbrella and the three women file down the
stairs and out into the street. “Taxi,” calls Ellen.
The passing car grinds to a stop. The red hawk face of the
taxidriver craning into the light of the street lamp. “Go to Eugenie’s
on Fortyeighth Street,” says Ellen as the others climb in. Greenish
lights and darks flicker past the lightbeaded windows.

She stood with her arm in the arm of Harry Goldweiser’s dinner
jacket looking out over the parapet of the roofgarden. Below them
the Park lay twinkling with occasional lights, streaked with nebular
blur like a fallen sky. From behind them came gusts of a tango,
inklings of voices, shuffle of feet on a dancefloor. Ellen felt a stiff
castiron figure in her metalgreen evening dress.
“Ah but Boirnhardt, Rachel, Duse, Mrs. Siddons.... No Elaine I’m
tellin you, d’you understand? There’s no art like the stage that soars
so high moldin the passions of men.... If I could only do what I
wanted we’d be the greatest people in the world. You’d be the
greatest actress.... I’d be the great producer, the unseen builder,
d’you understand? But the public dont want art, the people of this
country wont let you do anythin for em. All they want’s a detective
melodrama or a rotten French farce with the kick left out or a lot of