1st Edition
The World Bank and Governance A Decade of Reform and Reaction
This timely book offers the first critical examination of World Bank policy reforms and initiatives during the past decade.
The World Bank is viewed as one of the most powerful international organizations of our time. The authors critically analyze the influence of the institution’s policy and engagement during the past decade in a variety of issue areas, including human rights, domestic reform, and the environment.
The World Bank and Governance delves into the bowels of the World Bank, exploring its organizational structure, professional culture and bureaucratic procedures, illustrating how these shape its engagement with an increasingly complex, diverse and challenging operational environment. The book includes chapters on two under-researched divisions of the World Bank: the International Finance Corporation and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency. Several illuminating country studies are also included, analyzing the World Bank's activities in Argentina, Bolivia, Lebanon, Hungary and Vietnam.
This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, development, politics and economics.
List of Tables
Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Diane Stone and Christopher Wright
The Currency of Change: World Bank Lending and Learning in the Wolfensohn Era
Part One: Policy Change Inside ‘the Black Box’
2. Desmond McNeill and Asuncion St Clair
Development Ethics and Human Rights as the Basis for Poverty Reduction:
The Case of the World Bank
3. Nilima Gulrajani
The Art of Fine Balances: The Challenge of Institutionalizing the Comprehensive Development Framework Inside the World Bank
4. Christopher Wright
From ‘Safeguards’ to ‘Sustainability’: The Evolution of Environmental Discourse Inside the International Finance Corporation
5. Lauren Flejzor
Explaining Change in the World Bank’s Forest Strategy and Operational Policy
6. M. Ramesh
The World Bank and Pension Reforms
7. Antje Vetterlein
Change in International Organizations: Innovation or Adaptation? A Comparison of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund
Part Two: Confronting the Outside
8. Celine Tan
The Poverty of Amnesia: PRSPs in the Legacy of Structural Adjustment
9. Susan Park
Becoming Green: Diffusing Sustainable Development Norms throughout the World Bank Group
10. Pascale Hatcher
Partnership and the International Aid Reform: Challenging Citizenship and Political Representation?
11. Maria Pia Riggirozzi
The World Bank as Conveyor and Broker of Knowledge and Funds in Argentina's Governance Reforms
12. Nisrine El Ghaziri
The Missing Link in Development Cooperation Integrative Frameworks: Revelations from Lebanon’s Post-war Experience in Donor-Assisted Administrative Reform
13. Krisztina Tóth
Fiscal Decentralisation in Transition Economies: The World Bank in a Learning Process
Biography
Diane L. Stone, Christopher Wright
