From lending in the Andes to thriving in Latin America: CAF’s continuity, growth and long-term financing in the region
Bibliographic record
Abstract
What explains the Development Bank of Latin America’s (CAF, in Spanish) continuity and expansion since the 1990s? This thesis explores how an initially small Andean development bank crafted a successful strategy to survive in a troubled region and eventually thrive as an important lending source. This thesis argues that CAF’s expansion can be attributed to four main factors: 1) leadership, 2) institutional design, 3) member governments’ preferences and 4) Brazil’s push for regional cooperation beyond trade.\nTheoretically, this thesis draws upon two sets of interrelated academic debates to explain CAF’s growth: 1) International Political Economy (IPE) and International Organization (IO) theories discussing the main motivations for the design, culture, and behaviour of international institutions, and 2) IPE and International Relations (IR) literature on national interests, regional cooperation and development governance in South America.\nThis thesis makes an empirical contribution to existing literature by providing the first detailed analysis of the history of CAF, while seeking to explain the reasons behind its expansion within a region in which defaults on external debt obligations have not been uncommon. Theoretically, this thesis invites scholars to reengage with the study of leadership in IOs. The study of CAF highlights the importance of successful agency under strong leadership in the survival and growth of RFIs. This thesis accounts for how and when CAF has employed its granted discretion and taken advantage of its institutional features to expand its mission and act in ways that were not originally outlined by its principals. It also examines how CAF has successfully balanced in its own terms the distinct demands of two types of stakeholders (member countries and credit rating agencies), while partaking in regional discussions and agendas related to infrastructure development. Moreover, this thesis shows that the rise of certain states as regional leaders can also influence an IO’s strategy in trying to understand and engage more often with a state that is leading the agenda on regional cooperation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".