International Organisations and Regulatory States: Symbiotic Evolution at the Inter-American Development Bank

Abstract

International organisations can play an important role in the formation of regulatory states, particularly in the global South. However, our understanding of the international organisation-regulatory state relationship remains limited. Where existing accounts present a largely static picture of these external agents, by exploring housing policy at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) I demonstrate the need for a more dynamic theorisation. Having initially played a prominent role in catalysing the formation of regulatory housing sector governance across Latin America and the Caribbean, the IDB has recently responded to reconfigured domestic political constellations by transforming the nature of its housing sector interventions. Symbiotic evolution has seen the IDB move from the provision of finance and narrow technical advice to state partners, to the provision of a suite of resources including regulatory advice, finance, and securitisation-related services to a range of state, quasi-market, and market actors. These developments highlight the need for understandings of ‘post-Washington Consensus’ practices to be extended to take account of increasingly prominent market-making interventions. Given inherent features of regulatory state transformation, aspects of this symbiotic evolution are likely to be common across issue areas and geographic spaces.