"The practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own"
Identified Instances of Plagiarism
1. Thesis Page 52, Line 1
- Local government must develop transparent and accountable systems that enable grassroots communities to have access to the information they need to perform effective monitoring.
Source: Civil Society and Gobal Finance by Jan Aart Scholte and Albrecht Schnabel, Page 61
(link to plagiarised passage)
2. Thesis Page 52, Line 4
- The IMF cannot be blamed directly for all of the problems with the way PRSPs have been developed in particular countries; however, the fact that creating and implementing a PRSP has become a key mechanism for securing IMF finance means that these failures in the PRSP process take on an importance far beyond the problems with citizen participation in policy-making in those countries that are not subject to conditionality, e.g., the UK. The use of conditionality to enforce PRSPs makes the normal democratic process—whereby policies, once put in a plan by government, are subsequently scrutinised, changed and sometimes reversed—difficult, if not impossible, and is therefore fundamentally anti-democratic.
Source: Denying democracy: How the IMF and World Bank take power from people, Page 22
- While the IFIs cannot be blamed directly for all of the problems with the way PRSPs have been developed in particular countries, the fact that
creating and implementing a PRSP has become a key mechanism for securing IFI finance means that these failures in the PRSP process take
on an importance way beyond the problems with citizen participation in policy-making in countries not subject to conditionality (eg, the UK). The
use of conditionality to enforce PRSPs makes the normal democratic process – whereby policies, once put in a plan by government, are subsequently scrutinised, changed and sometimes reversed – difficult if not impossible and is therefore fundamentally anti-democratic.
3. Thesis Page 44, Line 16
- in 1971–73, the IMF became more involved with its member countries’ economic policies, advising on fiscal policy and monetary policy as well as microeconomic changes such as privatisation, of which it became a forceful advocate. In the 1980s it played a leading part in addressing the problems of developing countries’ mounting debt. More recently it has several times coordinated and helped to finance assistance to countries with a currency crisis.
Source: Essential economics: an A-Z guide By Matthew Bishop
(link to start of plagiarised passage, end of passage)
4. Thesis Page 57, Line 8
Each member’s quota is broadly determined by its economic position relative to other members. Various economic factors are considered in determining changes in quotas, including GDP, current account transactions, and official reserves.When a country joins the IMF, it is assigned an initial quota in the same range as the quotas of those existing members considered by the IMF to be broadly comparable in economic size and characteristics.
Source: IMF Office Memorandum, source of passage (secondary source?)
5. Thesis page 46, line 1
In 1999 the IMF introduced the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) which set new conditions for access to debt relief and the Fund’s concessional loan programmes. This was a response to the criticism that policies were being forced upon countries.
A PRSP supposedly sets out a government’s strategy for reducing poverty over a three-year period, a strategy that is developed in consultation with the civil society in a country. The international financial institutions (IFIs) and donor governments, such as the UK Department for International Development (DfID), suggest that PRSPs are ‘country-owned’ documents developed between governments, civil society and the private sector in countries, whose proposals donors then decide to fund: ‘The IMF attaches great importance to country ownership. The recipient country is fully involved in the entire process of technical assistance, from identification of need, to implementation, monitoring, and evaluation’.75
This would be an important step forward for the legitimacy of the IMF if it were indeed the case. However, in practice it has been extremely difficult—if not impossible—for the poorest countries to truly determine their own development strategies, for several key reasons. First, the content of a PRSP is influenced by already-existing IMF programme conditions. Rather than start afresh, these IMF-determined policies are generally ‘cut and pasted’ into the PRSP with no further analysis or scrutiny.76 Second, even in the absence of previous conditions, representatives of the IMF tend to have significant influence over the content of the PRSP. There are numerous examples of IFI staff telling country officials of policies that need to be included in, and changes that need to be made to, the final PRSP document. Third, and perhaps most tellingly, the final PRSPs are signed-off by the Boards of both the IMF and World Bank. If country directors on the Board do not like the content of a PRSP, they can just reject it. The PRSP will then need to be redrafted to meet the Board’s expectations, and debt relief, aid and new loans will be withheld until it does. The G24 group of developing countries’ Secretariat stated that PRSPs ‘are imported rather than home-grown and are accepted under pressure as a means to obtain debt-relief and, as a result, often they do not succeed’.77
Copied with slight changes from Tim Jones and Peter Hardstaff, "Denying Democracy: How the IMF and World Bank take Power from People", May 2005, p. 9-10. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPRS1/Resources/PRSP-Review/WDMPRSPsdoc.pdf - the source is mentioned in a footnote but does not indicate that this is a quote from the text.
6. Thesis page 38, line 3
The term is currently often used by critics and activists as a reference to sources of resistance and to that domain of social life which needs to be protected against globalisation.
Copied from Miguel Braganza, "Government, NGOs, CSOs and CSWs: Understanding Who is Who and what is happening around you!," available here: http://www.mail-archive.com/goanet@lists.goanet.org/msg20611.html
7. Thesis page 39
The working definition of the London School of Economics Centre for Civil Society is illustrative and is considered to capture the multi-faceted nature of the concept, whilst also being empirically and analytically useful:
Civil Society refers to the arena of un-coerced collective action around shared interests, purposes and values. In theory, its institutional forms are distinct from those of state, family and market, though in practice, the boundaries between state, civil society, family and market are often complex, blurred and negotiated. Civil Society commonly embraces a diversity of spaces, actors and institutional forms, varying in their degree of formality, autonomy and power. Civil Societies are often populated by organisations such as registered charities, development non-governmental organisations, community groups, women’s organisations, faith-based movements, professional associations, trade unions, self-help groups, social movements, business associations, and coalition and advocacy groups. (Updated March 2004)
Drawing on work by Mary Kaldor and the team at the London School of Economics, ‘civil society’ is taken to mean all non-governmental actors, including faith-based organisations, professional associations, trade unions, self-help groups, social movements and business associations. In theory, its institutional forms are distinct from those of the state, family and market. In practice, however, the boundaries between the state, family, market and civil society are often complex.
Copied with some alteration from the top section of http://www.trcollege.net/faculty/directory/teaching-staff/46-staff-directory/29-mawia
8. Thesis page 297, line 8
In the absence of strict rules about the agenda, membership and frequency of the informal meetings, the informal protocols of interaction and culture of the WTO assume overwhelming importance. Rubens Ricupero notes that in this context, the ‘almost English Club atmosphere ... the codified language’, has made the Green Room consultative process daunting and inaccessible to some developing countries, even if they are present.
Copied from Amrita Narlika, International Trade and Developing Countries (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 37
9. Thesis page 297, line 13
The importance of informal processes in WTO decision-making results in substantial reliance on the role and discretion of the chairperson as the broker, mediator and facilitator of the negotiations. While the onus of decision-making falls on the members themselves, the importance of informal procedures means that the chairs at all levels have a major role to play in consensus-building. The chairperson enjoys considerably leeway in setting the parameters of the agenda and in deciding the frequency of, and invitees to, the informal meetings. Given the frantic pace of meetings and the over-taxed delegations, these decisions have more significance than mere procedure, and can exercise considerable impact on the de facto exclusion of certain members and their interests.
Copied with some minor alteration from Amrita Narlika "WTO Decision Making and Developing Countries," T.R.A.D.E. Working Papers, p.10. Available at: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBMQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.southcentre.org%2Findex.php%3Fgid%3D225%26lang%3Den%26option%3Dcom_docman%26task%3Ddoc_download&rct=j&q=%22substantial%20reliance%20on%20the%20role%20and%20discretion%22&ei=eU5lTbvmL4GglAeit6TRBg&usg=AFQjCNGvE4bxKaa-MqLynyMbKcXIGPCT9w&cad=rja