The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a cooperative institution established to meet the common objectives of international financial stability and economic growth. The IMF's legitimacy and effectiveness in fulfilling these objectives depends critically on its ability to adequately represent...

The paper reviews the role of the IMF since its inception in 1944 and discusses some of the challenges for the IMF, and the international community more broadly, arising from recent developments in the world economy. It proposes that the IMF's role up to the end of the 1970s evolved in a broadly...