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Abstract
Why does the International Monetary Fund (IMF) overlook non-compliance in some borrower states while punishing others for lesser infractions? This thesis interrogates the political logic behind IMF enforcement by comparing four authoritarian borrowers: Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, and Mexico. Each failed to fully comply with loan conditionality but received starkly different treatment from the Fund. Existing literature on IMF conditionality has largely focused on the design of loan programs and domestic barriers to implementation, with insufficient attention to how the Fund itself enforces or forgives violations. This study advances a novel theoretical framework that synthesizes international political economy scholarship on conditional lending, authoritarian regime typologies, and the audience cost literature to explain enforcement variation. I argue that the IMF’s response to borrower non-compliance is structured by the interaction of two variables: regime type, operationalized through a regime’s ability to generate domestic audience costs, and the borrower’s geopolitical importance to powerful IMF shareholders. Using process tracing and comparative case analysis, I find that personalist regimes with high strategic value are most likely to receive lenient treatment, while institutionalized regimes with low geopolitical utility face stricter enforcement. These findings illuminate the informal political incentives that shape international institutional behavior, challenging conventional portrayals of the IMF as a neutral technocratic lender. By identifying the patterned discretion with which enforcement decisions are made, this thesis contributes to a more critical understanding of the IMF’s role in global economic governance and raises urgent questions about the legitimacy and credibility of conditionality in an era of mounting geopolitical contestation.