Political Trust, Corruption and Ratings of the IMF and the World Bank

There are only a handful of studies that examine public support for the IMF and World Bank. At the individual level, evaluations of the economy feature prominently in these studies. Utilizing data from the Afrobarometer study, we find that evaluations of the economy, ideology and a range of socio-demographic factors including age, gender, employment status, health, education, and living conditions are not significantly related to ratings of effectiveness. Rather, we find that political trust and corruption – two very important concepts in the wider literature on individual level attitudes toward international relations and foreign policy issues – are strongly associated with ratings of effectiveness.