State power in a multilateral context: Voting strength in the Asian development bank

This article assesses how weighted voting in the Asian Development Bank (ADB) impacts members’ abilities to influence the formation of winning coalitions in its Board of Directors. Voting weights do not adequately measure an actor's ability to affect outcomes because they do not account for either the possible number of coalitions that may form or the number of votes needed to pass a resolution. In short, weighted voting systems cannot be straightforwardly analyzed with reference to voting weights but instead require the determination of . relative voting power. Using the Johnston index of voting power, values are presented for all members at four time points starting in 1980. Results indicate that the United States and Japan, as expected, hold the largest percentages of voting power. Also as expected, most borrowing members do not hold voting power in the Board of Directors. Unexpectedly, there is a pattern of dictators in the syndicates that comprise the Board of Directors whereby some members are able to ensure their election to the Board. Hence, non‐dictatorial members of these syndicates have no formal influence on the Board of Directors. These countries include relatively large donors such as the United Kingdom, the Nordic countries, and New Zealand. This raises the question, posed in the conclusion, of why a member would provide substantial monetary support for an organization where it holds little or no voting power. The answer I offer is simply that formal institutional rules do not always result in the intended political outcomes.