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Are international organizations like the Bank for International Settlements unable to die? : A historical case study of the BIS

Bernholz, Peter

In: The Review of International Organizations, 2009, vol. 4, no. 4, p. 361-381

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    Title
    • Are international organizations like the Bank for International Settlements unable to die?
      A historical case study of the BIS
    Author
    • Bernholz, Peter. Center for Economics and Business (WWZ), University of Basel, CH-4003, Basel, Switzerland
    Document Type
    • Postprint
    Language
    • English
    Published in
    • The Review of International Organizations, 2009, vol. 4, no. 4, p. 361-381. Springer US; http://www.springer-ny.com
    Other Version
    OAI-PMH Identifier
    • oai:doc.rero.ch:319047
    Summary
    International Organizations seem to be immortal or at least long-lived. In this paper several factors which may be responsible for this fact are put forward and then analyzed by studying the empirical case of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which has now survived for seventy-eight years all threats to its existence. This is the more surprising since it was heavily attacked by the government of the most powerful country of the world, the USA for some years. This country demanded the dissolution of the BIS at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 as a precondition for allowing nations to join the planned International Monetary Fund. Before this the Bank was also able to master the crisis resulting from the demise of the gold (exchange) standard and the end of the German reparation payments agreed on in the Dawes and Young Plans, both consequences of the Great Depression. The Bank even survived the events of the Second World War threatening it, and reacted creatively to the crisis posed by the founding of the European Monetary Union. It is shown that all suspected factors favoring the survival of international organizations were present in the case of the BIS