Blinding with Science or encouraging debate? Part II How World Bank analysis determines PRSP policies

Contents - Part II

• World Bank research: Influential, but narrow
• Conclusions and Strategy Suggestions
• Appendix
• Reference List

World Bank research: Influential, but narrow

"Knowledge generated by and for 'global' centres of power may in fact tell us very little about poverty as it is actually lived in everyday experience" (Patel & Rademacher, 2002, p. 167).

"PRSPs from wildly divergent countries reveal great universality in vocabulary, process, form, content and even prescription. With some exceptions, PRSPs provide a good deal of evidence of the macro still driving the national, the global the local, the rational the practical, the technical driving the political and economic" (Craig & Porter, 2001, p. 26).

Many contributors to the recent official review of PRSPs recognised that "in several cases countries put forward macroeconomic and structural policies that were similar to those of the recent past" (World Bank & IMF, 2001). The Bank argues that this was because countries recognise that these policies represent the most effective way of ensuring sustained growth and poverty reduction. There is concern, however, that countries are reluctant to propose alternative approaches as they know the limits of what policies international financial institutions are prepared to accept.

The World Bank seems to be promoting the same core policies as ever. By making it appear that no workable alternatives exist, the World Bank does not always have to exercise "hard power" by withholding money to compel countries to agree to certain conditions; it can win arguments upstream with its global "aid effectiveness" research mirrored by national-level policy research. Its country studies regularly refer to the global studies and conclude that countries need lower tariffs, more private service delivery and particular governance reforms. The continuity of assumptions and approaches at the Bank is exemplified by many of the studies and models it uses in various fields. The World Bank has recently expanded the issue areas it considers to be within its remit, and has extended its research work into many aspects of national policymaking (Martin, 2000).

The Bank's research is widely disseminated and respected among many important audiences. A survey of 271 high-level policymakers (mainly senior civil servants) in 36 developing and transition countries found that 84 percent of respondents used Bank analytical reports; respondents rated the Bank their most important information source out of a list of 17 domestic and international organisations; and the majority of respondents considered the Bank's work "technically sound, relevant and objective" (World Bank, 2000c, p. 101).

Yet many NGO and academic commentators are not convinced of this objectivity. Whilst recognising that a range of different papers and views do emerge from the Bank, Lyla Mehta, a fellow at the Institute for Development Studies in the UK, complains that "the Bank's knowledge agenda often tends to be centralised and absolutist, and draws on economistic and technocratic models. These trends contribute to the emergence of a narrow knowledge agenda that both neglects sociocultural issues and those concerning a wider political economy" (Mehta, 2001). Professor Yash Tandon, Director of the Southern and Eastern African Trade, Information and Negotiations Institute, commented: "To most objective observers from the South there is, in fact, no such change in thinking or even an acceptance of change in the World Bank. [The Bank remains] a bastion of control over knowledge" (Tandon, 2000). A study carried out for the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs concluded that "the World Bank continues to be dominant as the main purveyor of development ideas. A 'the Bank can never be wrong' mentality still prevails in much of the institution's thoughts and actions. This impairs the World Bank's ability to learn and creates an accountability deficit" (Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2000, p. 27).

Continuing disagreement

Much official development agency literature suggests that there is a basic consensus on how to understand poverty and what to do about it, but this view is rejected by many people. Ravi Kanbur, a former World Bank analyst and country director and now a professor at Cornell University, is in a particularly good position to comment on the continuing disagreements. In 1998 the World Bank appointed him to lead its team preparing its major World Development Report on Poverty and in this capacity he read and travelled very widely, soliciting views from a wide range of civil society organisations, officials and academic researchers. In May 2000 he resigned from this position, under pressure from senior World Bank and US government officials concerned that his report would dilute orthodox thinking on liberalisation and economic growth. Kanbur commented that "especially among some parts of the international financial institutions and the G7 Treasuries, the tendency is for the policy messaging - for example on trade and openness - to be sharp and hard, for fear that to do otherwise would be read as a sign of weakness by 'the other side'" (Kanbur, 2001).

Kanbur outlined some general reasons for the continuation of major disagreements on poverty analysis. He concludes that development bank and finance ministry staff and economic analysts often have fundamentally different perspectives to NGOs, non-economist researchers and staff in UN specialised agencies, aid ministries and social sector line ministries. He says that disagreements are particularly clear on trade liberalisation, financial liberalisation and privatisation.

This, he argues, is largely because the two groups view poverty at different levels of aggregation, and have different views of markets and time horizons. Officials often want to have a bird's-eye view of national, regional or international trends, while NGOs and non-economists may focus on particular categories of people. International financial institution staff tend to view markets as neutral, while NGOs and non-economist researchers consider that they are riddled with power relations and therefore often disadvantage the poor. On timing, officials mainly address the five- to ten-year consequences of policies, while NGOs and others are worried about short-term consequences that can drive families into starvation, or force them to pull children out of school. NGOs are also often concerned about whether economic growth can be sustained in the long-term given resource depletion and the earth's limited carrying capacity, while officials tend to be optimistic that new technologies will be created in time to solve problems (Kanbur, 2001).

Technical approaches to political questions

The World Bank and other development agencies have made welcome moves to recognise that poverty is complicated and multi-dimensional (World Bank, 2001f). It is not therefore appropriate just to produce a "poverty line" and measure the number of people below it, but concepts such as insecurity, risk, social exclusion, environmental health and empowerment are now mentioned. However, the way that they are actually understood and dealt with is still often very limited.

This multi-dimensionality poses challenges for people who are used to producing orthodox economic number-crunching analyses. Some seem to have reacted by trying to quantify ever more aspects of life, in order to plug them into technical models. One example is the construction of elaborate indices of "social capital", a concept that has been picked up by the Bank to encompass social relationships previously invisible to many economists. Ben Fine, a professor of economics, argues that social capital is an aspect of "the colonisation of the non-economic by the economists. [This] is a severe setback to development studies, with key topics such as industrialisation, gender and ethnicity being stripped of their empirical and intellectual traditions" (Fine, 2000, p. 169).

Numbers on social trends are often fed into equations of economic trade-offs. The use of quantification for research is supposed to encourage more objective and rational decision-making. But some see these exercises not as illuminating the best development options but as ignoring or downplaying complex political debates on property rights and value systems - whether on land titling, unpaid work by women and men in the home and community, or access to common property resources.

Sociologist Wendy Espeland has examined the use of cost-benefit analysis as the main tool for deciding whether to build a dam with severe consequences for a Native American community. She concludes that "quantification privileges some forms of expertise at the expense of others. Those who fix the terms of what is being disaggregated and integrated, and those who evaluate the technical adequacy of it, do so at the expense of local, practical knowledge, altering relations of authority in profound ways" (Espeland, 1999, p. 3). Frequently, officials appear to fit the description by Nobel Prize-winning economist Herbert Simon:

"Administrative man recognises that the world he perceives is a drastically simplified model of the buzzing, blooming confusion that constitutes the real world. He is content with the gross simplification because he believes that the real world is mostly empty - that most of the facts of the real world have no great relevance to any particular situation he is facing and that most significant chains of causes and consequences are short and simple" (Simon, cited in Scott, 1998, p. 45).

David Craig and Doug Porter, from the University of Auckland and the Asian Development Bank respectively, argue that conventional PRSP processes display a "lopsidedness between the 'technical' and the 'political'". They find that "much is lost as a consequence of the PRSP-style focus on representing and categorising poverty in global terms, and dumbing down poverty into strategic mantras of 'pro-poor growth', 'inclusive social development' and 'good governance'" (Craig & Porter, 2001, p. 25).

Extractive and conclusive research

Too much Bank research aims to reach sweeping conclusions about the state of poverty and what should be done about it. It would be more usefully geared towards contributing to public debate, presenting data and results for different audiences to consider. Viewing research in this way will require researchers to communicate better and to unpack their assumptions. In other words, to view themselves less as experts and more as facilitators.

Such a view will also, in many cases, compel those who commission research to allow their staff or consultants to spend sufficient time with the communities they are studying, and to ensure that this relationship continues through all stages of the work, including taking responsibility for outcomes. These points were well made by Manuel Fernández de Villegas of the Mexican NGO Trasparencia:

"From our point of view, it would be worthwhile to propose a code of ethics for social development professionals who work as consultants, setting out the terms of their relationships with the communities and social organisations who are the target of their research. It is very rare for the communities and organisations mentioned in the reports to receive copies of them, so that they are not even aware of what is said about them, much less have an opportunity to state their opinion about the findings or the way in which the results are obtained during the (always brief) field visits. Currently consultants are giving priority to their source of temporary employment, over and above the interests and rights of the communities and social organizations" (Fernández de Villegas, 2000).

Michael Goldman, a US academic who has closely studied the World Bank in Laos and elsewhere, agrees that "important institutional factors shape the knowledge production process". He argues that the most important factors are the rapid time allocated for conducting the research and the requirement that all rights to data and research findings remain with the employer - the World Bank (Goldman, 2001, p. 197). Describing the assessment process for the Nam Theun II dam in the Lao PDR, which would be the most costly infrastructure project ever built in that country, he relates a conversation with a biologist. This scientist knew many details of the complex interactions between people living on the Mekong floodplain and their natural environment. They depend on the floods to fertilise the soils, to grow rice, to provide building materials, and snakes, fish and frogs to eat. Yet the biologist's official consultancy report mentioned hardly any of this, as the Bank had hired him only for a narrow study of river aquaculture options. Goldman concludes that "the most sophisticated expertise, analyses, data, observations, wisdom and practices never appear in formal scientific reports commissioned by development institutions if they conflict with those institutions' larger purposes" (p. 198).

The limitations of Bank research on selected issues

This section contains some examples of World Bank approaches to selected key policy areas which tend to downplay or ignore alternative analytical or policy approaches.

Investment climate

The World Bank's new Private Sector Development strategy aims to expand private sector provision of services such as health and education, and work to improve the "investment climate". It is a continuation of previous Bank policies to reduce the state to a coordination and regulation role, leaving private companies to organise production and service delivery. Improving the investment climate is supposed to increase investment, boosting growth and thereby reducing poverty.

The strategy includes plans for the Bank to conduct investment climate assessments in client countries. This will involve surveying companies on their views of what obstructs their activities. These assessments will inform the Bank's policy advice and conditionality. Senior World Bank researcher David Ellerman comments, however, that: "'Bankthink' tends to interpret investment climate in terms of foreign investors". The Bank often does not seem to realise that "improving the investment climate for one group may make it worse for some other groups", such as domestic investors. Furthermore the assessment of foreign investors' needs is often "dangerously narrow". The Bank tends to favour labour market flexibility over job stability and human capital investment, and stock market liquidity over long-term, predictable investment flows (Ellerman, 2002). Craig and Porter comment that development agency studies tend to display a "stunning poverty of the imagination when it comes to the potential roles of the state in relation to productive opportunity" (Craig & Porter, 2001, p. 26).

The Bank's record is poor. Advice to the Czech Republic and Bosnia to introduce voucher privatisation funds, for example, resulted not in sustained investment but in asset stripping by foreign "vulture funds". The Bank has also pushed many countries to amend their mining legislation in order to provide a "sound investment climate" for mining companies. In the case of Indonesia, in early 2002 the World Bank threatened suspension of loan payments if the government did not comply with a range of recommendations - including the relaxation of restrictions on mineral exploration and extraction in officially protected forests and small islands. The Bank argues this is necessary because "the prohibited areas include a number of potentially rich mining prospects" (World Bank, 2001g). In order to get at these deposits, the Bank recommends that the Government of Indonesia pass a new energy law to make Indonesia's natural resources sector more attractive to foreign investors. Ophelia Cowell of the Transnational Institute comments: "Bank pressure to remove environmental protections does not contribute to sustainable development but reduces its prospects. Current Bank-led reform in Indonesia will define the rules for the industry for years to come." (Cowell, 2002)

It is also unclear how the Bank's new investment climate assessment agenda fits with the existing studies on the same issues being conducted by other agencies such as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Trade

In February 2002, the heads of six major international institutions met to discuss trade-related capacity building. The heads of the World Bank, IMF, WTO, UNDP, UNCTAD and ITC discussed the Integrated Framework (IF) - an initiative to enable these agencies to collaborate to help governments in poorer countries understand increasingly complex trade policy areas and better participate in multilateral trade negotiations. Their statement "reaffirmed the lead role of the World Bank in supporting the process to mainstream trade into development plans and strategies for poverty reduction" (World Bank, 2002c).

The IF process begins with the Bank leading Diagnostic Trade Integration Studies (DTIS) to "identify specific technical assistance activities and investments that will enhance trade capacities" (World Bank, 2002d). The results of these studies - which will be carried out by World Bank staff or by consultants - are then expected to be integrated into Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and tabled at donor coordination meetings.

The IF recently received US$18 million from official donors, despite achieving very little in its first phase from 1996 to 2000, according to officials and critics alike (Prowse, forthcoming, pp. 10-12). The first phase of the new IF has recently been completed in Cambodia, Madagascar and Mauritania. Integration studies are underway in 11 other LDCs, and are likely to start soon in the remaining 35 LDCs and perhaps also in middle-income countries (WTO, 2002).

The relationship between the DTIS and national poverty reduction plans is worrying; there is a distinct risk of putting the cart before the horse. Rather than shaping trade policies to achieve poverty reduction goals, Bank President James Wolfensohn suggests that DTIS "can become important building blocks for governments as they formulate their poverty reduction strategies" (Wolfensohn, 2001). When framed this way, the choice of models to analyse the benefits of the accepted wisdom of trade liberalisation will profoundly impact the PRSP. Concerns have already been raised that the World Bank is pursuing its traditional agenda of tariff reduction through these studies, overlooking supply-side measures relating to diversification and protection of new industries (Tan, forthcoming; Bretton Woods Project, forthcoming). Academics such as leading US economist Danny Rodrik have criticised the limitations of prominent Bank studies on trade, saying that they use "misleading indicators of trade policy selected to systematically bias results in favour of trade liberalisation and growth" (Rodrik, 2000).

Civil society organisations - including major international organisations and networks such as DAWN, International South Group Network and Public Services International - signed a statement in March 2002 arguing that the allocation of the lead role in trade capacity-building to the World Bank was "a cause for concern". Such groups have urged that developing governments be given "the flexibility to choose the agency and the form of assistance that they feel to be most appropriate" (Bretton Woods Project, 2002). This resonates with the recommendations of LDC Trade Ministers for an increase in the "resources for UNCTAD to carry out in a full and effective manner the technical assistance and capacity building activities on trade-related issues" (Zanzibar Declaration, 2001).

Governance

The importance of good governance and institutional quality has recently become a priority among officials in Washington and elsewhere. However, it is hard to measure good governance in a precise, objective and comprehensive manner. The World Bank has undertaken extensive research into areas such as institutional quality, governance and corruption. It conducts Institutional and Governance Reviews (IGRs) "to bring a greater focus on and understanding of governance arrangements in the public sector and their link to public sector performance". (World Bank, 2000d) IGRs have been conducted in Argentina, Armenia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, eastern Caribbean states, Indonesia, Nigeria and Peru. Numerous similar studies - including anti-corruption surveys of citizens, firms and/or policy makers - have also been conducted.

Governance is defined by the Bank as "the traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised" (Kaufmann et al, 2002, p. 4). The Bank examines civil liberties, political rights, the voting process, media independence, and political stability. It also tries to assess the quality of the civil service, its independence, and whether the government is pursuing market-unfriendly policies such as excessive regulation. The "Rule of Law" is also examined, by looking at the incidence of crime, the predictability of the judiciary, the enforceability of contracts and the incidence of corruption.

Trying to capture the quality of governance in comprehensive, objective indicators is problematic. It may be misleading to compare the responses of subjects across different countries because respondents will have different perceptions of corruption and governance (Kaufmann et al., 2002, p. 3). The Bank bases its indicators partly on research conducted by commercial polling companies. Yet many of these do not cover many of the world's smallest and poorest countries or the poorest people within them, as they are solely interested in finding out information for potential private investors. Given the complexity of producing indicators in this field it is essential that governance studies are open, involve broad discussions and are perceived to be produced by a neutral player.

Very few people involved in development would contest the need to study and improve governance systems. Many have welcomed the World Bank's recent acknowledgement of the importance of anti-corruption measures and institutional strengthening. However they would question whether the Bank is competent or legitimate to make judgements on these complex and sensitive areas (Santiso, 2002; Kapur & Webb, 2000; Harrison, 2001; Hildyard, 1998). Whilst the Bank has built some partnerships with independent agencies in this field, there are concerns that it is over-engaged in this area in its own right and should do more to foster and listen to the results produced by other organisations.

Measuring poverty

Estimating the number and type of people in poverty is clearly an essential starting point for further research or policy work by developing agencies. In the last decade there have been many innovations in poverty assessment approaches, with participatory elements being introduced in many countries. But it is rare for poor people themselves or their representatives to be fully involved in such studies, and so the headline conclusions may not capture what is observed by people on the ground.

National poverty statistics often conceal wide variations in outcomes for different regions or population groups. Ravi Kanbur gives the example of the Ghana Living Standards Survey, which focused on household consumption and did not capture the value of public services. So, for example: "if the bus service is cancelled, the health post runs out of drugs, or the teacher does not turn up to teach, it will not show up" (Kanbur, 2001). In their report on Uganda, Warren Nyamugasira and Rick Rowden give a further illustration of these diverging perspectives. They quote the Archbishop of Gulu, Monsignor John Baptist Odama, who challenged those who believe that the IMF and the World Bank have pulled his country out of poverty to "come and see for themselves". He said about 85 per cent of Ugandans in the north of the country live in misery and that "the riches of the nation are not well distributed" (Nyamugasira & Rowden, 2002).

A recent review of African PRSPs found that they still over-emphasise income measures and ignore power disparities and issues of empowerment - issues raised in the Bank's own Poverty World Development Report. Poverty Assessments provide statistics on the incidence of poverty but often fail to offer significant analysis of why poverty persists and what could be done about it. PRSPs from different countries employ a "remarkably uniform" approach to their analysis of poverty numbers, which are based on information which "tends to be patchy" (Thin et al, 2001, pp. 4-5). A recent paper finds that PRSPs frequently do not discuss "gender, differences between chronic and transient poverty, and extreme and less extreme poverty[, or] issues of ethnicity and race" (Marcus & Wilkinson, 2002). This analysis echoes other reviews of the Bank's Poverty Assessments (e.g., Hanmer et al, 1999). In November 2001 donor government officials renegotiating funding for the World Bank pressed the Bank to "improve the quality and policy relevance of much of its poverty analysis" (IDA, 2001).

Sanjay Reddy and Thomas Pogge of Columbia University, in a paper entitled "How not to count the poor", give a scathing account of the problems with the World Bank's poverty numbers. They say they are "surprised that the Bank has been publishing regular poverty statistics for twelve years now - 'precise' to six digits and very widely used in academic publications and popular media over the world - without significant attention having been paid to the massive flaws in its procedures. It is hard not to see this fact as indicative of the low priority that has hitherto been attached to the global problem of persistent severe poverty" (Reddy & Pogge, 2002, p. 32).

Robert Wade, Professor of Political Economy at the London School of Economics, argues that the Bank knows very well that some numbers, including the number of absolute poor, are politically sensitive. He expresses concern that "it is possible that the people who calculate such numbers - in the Bank or elsewhere - are inclined to make methodological choices that produce a relatively favourable result even as they remain in the bounds of the professionally defensible". Wade contests the fact that the World Bank, subject as it is to arm-twisting by its member states, is the world's principal provider of development statistics. As he puts it: "We would not want [cigarette transna-tional] Philip Morris research labs to be the only source of data on the effects of smoking even if the research met professional standards" (Wade, 2002, p. 5).

Box 4: Whose poverty knowledge counts in Uganda?

In a forthcoming report, researchers Karen Brock, Rosemary McGee and Richard Ssewakiryanga argue that, despite all the talk of ownership and donor coordination, the World Bank is often dismissive of poverty analyses produced by other organisations and has recently increased its own role in research. Donors have promoted the concepts of participation, thus opening some space for civil society organisations to act as researchers. But the influence of traditional international experts remains strong. They quote one DFID advisor saying "there are too many DFID advisors in this place". Of course, actors (NGOs, think-tanks, etc.) are also producing research; the question is not as much who generates information as what analysis is considered legitimate.

Poverty knowledge that originates at the grassroots and is reported by NGOs has often been treated as invalid, irrelevant or not even worth gathering. A qualitative study commissioned by the Ugandan NGO UWONET on the effect of structural adjustment on women saw its legitimacy undermined by heavy critiques from the World Bank on the grounds of methodological weakness. Similarly, the report reveals contradictions between World Bank claims of valuing grassroots poverty knowledge and what it actually takes it into account: "...the World Bank, main funder of the Northern Uganda Social Action Fund, based the programme's design on extensive micro-level consultations in the north, in which they found that 'the poor know their priorities very well'. However, even among those in the Bank who value grassroots participatory research, a common belief is that 'what the poor want is not necessarily what they should get'. Traditional 'expert' intervention is viewed as necessary to translate their expressed wishes [...] into policy-friendly, trustworthy outputs" (Brock et al., 2002). There have recently been debates about how to present poverty headcount data. Disparities between districts, regions or ethnic groups may be politically taboo, so disaggregating this data is not carried out in official studies despite being technically feasible.

The Bank, while championing "ownership", has sometimes failed to accept poverty information produced by other organisations. While Uganda succeeded in re-presenting its pre-existing Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) as a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper acceptable to the Bank, Brock et al. describe a conflict between the Bank, IMF and the Government of Uganda on how to monitor and report on the PEAP/PRSP. A Poverty Status Report produced by the Ministry of Finance to report on progress against PEAP objectives underwent efforts by the IMF and the Bank to change it to their own preferred reporting format. A Ministry of Finance observer relates that the Poverty Status Report posted by the World Bank on its website was different from the one previously produced by the Ministry. The only possible conclusion is that the World Bank revised it without consulting its authors.

Brock, McGee and Ssewakiryanga claim that the World Bank's role in producing poverty data has increased in Uganda since 2000, partly because "the Bank has a research agenda of its own that it is determined to pursue there, whether or not it dovetails with government's poverty research agenda". More generally, "donors are duplicating each others' efforts in research and poverty knowledge generation", apparently because donor visibility and sense of achievement comes from commissioning new reports (Brock et al., 2002).

Knowledge production does not necessarily influence key decisions. While broad consultations were carried out to inform the recent revision of Uganda's Poverty Eradication Action Plan, its actual drafting took place behind closed doors at the Ministry of Finance "with technical assistance from an expatriate consultant supported by DFID". Negotiations on the corresponding Poverty Reduction Support Credit with the World Bank took place behind closed doors too, and the World Bank successfully pushed for policy conditions that are not discussed in - and are inconsistent with - the actual Poverty Eradication plan.

Sources: Brock et al., 2002, Nyamugasira & Rowden, 2002. See also World Bank, 1996.

Macro-economic modelling

The World Bank has long been criticised for having a universal approach to policy-making in its client countries. One way that it pushes this approach is through its use of macroeconomic models which are generic and standard for all countries. The World Bank uses a complex computer spreadsheet to model the state of the economy and simulate what will happen if certain quantities and types of development assistance are provided. This model, the Revised Minimum Standard Model - Extended (RMSM-X), used in every WB client country, entirely ignores many analytical perspectives and options. The Integrated Social Development Centre in Ghana complains that the RMSM-X is based on a concept which "has been conclusively shown to have no support in either data or economic theory" (ISODEC, 2002, p. 9). Bank staff have themselves criticised the RMSM-X model and are developing some new approaches. Unfortunately, these retain some key flaws of RMSM-X, including its one-size-fits-all approach to developing countries and its implausible assumptions such as the existence of continuous full employment (ibid, pp. 13-17).

Despite their problems, however, these models lend a scientific gloss to negotiations about how much money the Bank should lend a country and what economic growth and poverty reduction will result. Ghanaian organisations led by ISODEC are currently developing an alternative model called Distributive Effects of Economic Policy (DEEP). This is a computer-based dynamic economic model of Ghana, which aims to "enrich the discussion of macroeconomic policies and poverty reduction by clarifying the macroeconomic trade-offs and their probable social implications" (ISODEC, 2002, p. 10). DEEP intends to reverse the logic that underlies existing models: "instead of starting from a generic model and adding Ghana-specific touches to it, we start from the specific Ghanaian situation as perceived through the discussions with the local economic experts and grassroots organisations and stylise it down to a manageable model". This model allows evaluation of policy trade-offs and alternative approaches. It uses a structuralist macro approach as opposed to the World Bank's neo-classical one. DEEP explicitly addresses geographic issues (region, rural/urban), differentiates impacts by occupation type and social group, and enables social service provision and income/distribution to be mapped against human development indicators.

Such a model represents a radical departure from RMSM-X. As its approach will be unfamiliar to Bank staff, it is not clear how they will react to its findings when it is fully operational. Rather than working within the confines of the Bank and Fund's existing approaches, however, it is very worthwhile for other NGOs to learn from the ISODEC experience and work with suitable researchers in their own countries to construct DEEP-style models.

Conclusion

Similar examples of narrow approaches to important issues could be drawn from other issue areas, such as the environment, education, health and gender. But this section illustrates the general point that there continue to be major disagreements on how to understand poverty and economic policy both in general and in particular areas. Within the World Bank these differences are also perceptible on occasion, as the staff certainly do not have a single view. But the external outputs of the Bank are not currently trusted by the range of stakeholders it seeks to engage in PRSPs and similar processes, reinforcing the need for changes in practice by the Bank and the further development of independent analysis. A diversification of the sources of data and policy-relevant research is the only way for more voices to come to the table and more ownership and capacity to be created.

Conclusions and Strategy Suggestions

"[We need to] end the analytic near-monopoly of the World Bank (and the other multilaterals) on the details of pension reform, privatisation of water systems, the ideal bank deposit insurance system, and so many of the other nitty-gritty issues of economic and social reform. The World Bank needs to foster and directly finance more use by country borrowers of its own competitors - including local research institutions and world-class private consultancies - not only in implementing but in designing policies and programs. Bank staff can and should take much more of a hands-off approach to policy design."

Nancy Birdsall, former Director, World Bank Policy Research Department (2000)

At a time when it is emphasising "capacity building", "partnerships", and the need for different voices to be heard, the World Bank is producing more studies on more areas than ever before. Whilst the Bank certainly has many highly-trained researchers and much information on hand, many people contest its dominant roles as a producer of research and analysis. Its analysis is often shaped more by internal Bank politics and processes than by the needs of poorer people. As these studies are the building blocks for Bank lending in its client countries, they may represent one reason for the failure of the PRSP process to spark major debates about macroeconomic policies.

The World Bank - and the IMF - are often depicted as judge and jury in their operations. World Bank staff or management can, consciously or not, be tempted to distort the research they produce to justify their operations or support their client governments. The Philip Morris analogy drawn by Robert Wade (see previous section) vividly illustrates these possible conflicts. They are similar to those faced in investment banks such as Merrill Lynch, where there have been clear tensions between the roles of financial analyst and investment banker .

The Bretton Woods Project urges NGOs, parliamentarians and other interested parties to focus more attention on the analytical work conducted or commissioned by the World Bank in their countries or sectors which may influence negotiations and financial allocations. They can monitor who carries out the studies and how, or can consider challenging those studies considered too limited in design or execution.

Bilateral development agencies should be wary of providing further funding to the World Bank to conduct analysis. Recipient countries should be allowed to specify their own needs and priorities and be able to buy in assistance from a range of official organisations or independent research institutes.

NGOs working at the international level may wish to raise these issues in various fora - for example, during the current review of the World Bank's Structural Adjustment Operational Directive, which guides staff on how to undertake adjustment work, or in the discussions about the Bank's social development strategy and empowerment guidelines. Public work and advocacy can also help counter the persistent "we know best" mentality of international financial institutions, as in the case of Bangladesh, where NGOs such as the People's Empowerment Trust and Action Aid Bangladesh launched a campaign in 2002 to challenge the PRSP process.

At the national level organisations may want to:

• get involved in the choice of study topics or analysts;
• have input into studies;
• obtain copies of studies and prepare responses in time for PRSP meetings;
• work with independent approaches being developed outside the Bank.

NGOs until now have concentrated most of their attention and energy on the PRS process, but it is perhaps more important to scrutinise who is writing and negotiating the country analysis and the actual PRGF and PRSC loan agreements (Nyamugasira & Rowden, 2002).

Towards genuine participation and options assessment

The announcement by the Bank and the Fund of a Poverty and Social Impact Analysis (PSIA) approach has the potential to increase the transparency of the Bank's support for particular policy positions. But on the information currently available PSIA is just a long listing of methodologies. It is not at all clear that it will lead to a dramatic transformation in who is involved in producing World Bank analysis and what it covers.

The World Bank has a system of "quality control" of the research it produces. This control - involving research protocols and peer reviews from Bank analysts - is part of the reason why the Bank often will not accept research produced by other organisations, including official donors. Is it too much to ask that the Bank extend its notion of "quality" to aspects beyond the merely technical? This analysis should be judged by the objectives set for the overall process. In the words of the Bank President: "the PRSP approach is rooted in the concept that countries themselves and their citizens need to own their poverty reduction strategies. It is also based on the concept of partnerships - partnerships within countries among government, NGOs, the private sector and the local communities in which poor people live, together with partnerships between countries and their external supporters, but always with the country in the lead" (Wolfensohn, 2002).

Poor people and their representatives should be directly involved in framing publicly-funded studies about their status, as well as in discussing the results. They must then have access to the data and reports so they can make direct use of them. The World Commission on Dams, a body comprising activists, analysts, company bosses and government representatives, made a series of relevant recommendations in its report. It expressed concern that the assessment of development "has been typically limited in scope and confined primarily to technical parameters". It defined participation in project planning to mean that there should be "demonstrable public acceptance" by affected people. This should be expressed in binding formal agreements "negotiated in an open and transparent process". Options assessment and planning should include:

• Formulating development needs and objectives through an open and participatory process before identifying and assessing options for development;
• Using planning approaches that take into account the full range of development objectives to assess all policy, institutional, management and technical options;
• Giving social and environmental aspects the same significance as technical, economic and financial factors (World Commission on Dams, 2000).

Bolstering independent approaches

As well as scrutinising and, where necessary, challenging the analyses produced or commissioned by the Bank, independent approaches need to be reinforced and further built up. Other institutions such as UNDP produce valuable information, for example in their global and national Human Development Reports, and many independent civil society initiatives deserve to be built on and given greater publicity. These may be ad hoc, around a particular initiative or policy, or sustained, to enable ongoing independent assessment.

The DEEP economic model produced by Ghanaian civil society groups appears to offer a good prospect for taking policy discussions out of their Washington-built black boxes and into the open where more actors can be part of the discussions. Examples in other countries of organisations establishing their own approaches to challenge the Bank's include the Economic Development and Research Centre in Armenia, and the KIKIS initiative in Indonesia (INFID, 2002). Selected examples of international initiatives for independent policy analysis are outlined in the appendix.

NGOs have also on occasion recruited heavyweight external analysts to support their positions. In May 2002 Ugandan NGOs encouraged economist Jeffrey Sachs to write a letter to the Ugandan government contesting the IMF's wisdom that a big increase in health spending in Uganda would have negative economic impacts (allAfrica.com, 2002). In early 2002 Ghanaian civil society groups set up an independent fact-finding mission involving academics, a World Health Organisation representative, British parliamentarians and trade union representatives to assess the proposed urban water privatisation in their country.

There is no question that further data collection and policy analysis are needed. But the World Bank must be persuaded to allow others to lead in many issue areas; and for areas where it continues to conduct policy analysis, to do so in a much more open manner throughout the process. This will enlarge the space where independent approaches, genuine debates, and creative solutions can develop.

Appendix

Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative (SAPRI)

A joint research project of the World Bank and civil society organisations that challenge the effects of adjustment. When the World Bank eventually refused to endorse its findings, SAPRI helped establish an international network of CSOs (SAPRIN), whose report draws conclusions regarding adjustment in numerous countries.

www.saprin.org

Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD)

An organisation established by Joe Stiglitz with others to help developing and transition countries explore economic policy alternatives. In cooperation with in-country partners, IPD convenes forums that bring together diverse stakeholders, including senior government officials, NGOs, labour, academics, business communities, think tanks and the media. These forums evaluate economic policy alternatives and promote understanding of the available options (See: IPD, 2002).

www.gsb.columbia.edu/ipd

Social Watch

Since 1999 the Social Watch network has monitored progress against commitments made at the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen and the Fourth Conference on Women in Beijing, using indicators related to the WSSD commitments and collecting data all over the world thanks to its member organisations. It produces thematic and country reports, as well as an annual global report.

www.socialwatch.org

IDEAs

A pluralist network of heterodox economists engaged in the teaching, research and application of critical analyses of economic development. IDEAs defines itself as a South-based network open to all those committed to developing more appropriate and progressive analysis of development challenges.

www.networkideas.org

The International Budget Project

An initiative to raise the interest and capacity of civil society groups to engage in budget negotiations.

www.internationalbudget.org

Micro Impacts of Macroeconomic and Adjustment Policies (MIMAP)

A network that connects developing country researchers, policy officials, NGOs and international experts. Through research, training and dialogue, the MIMAP network aims to better understand the human costs of macroeconomic policies and shocks, and to design improved policies and poverty alleviation programs.

www.mimap.org

Community Information, Empowerment and Transparency (CIET)

An international group of epidemiologists and social scientists who bring scientific research methods to local government and community levels. By involving people in evidence gathering and analysis, CIET helps them to participate, in an increasingly informed way, in decisions that affect their lives.

www.ciet.org

Debt Relief International

A non-profit organisation funded by five European governments, DRI was established in July 1997 to run a programme to build capacity of the governments of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) to manage their own debt strategy and analysis. DRI is currently working with 30 of the HIPCs.

www.dri.org.uk

Economic Policy Empowerment Programme (EPEP)

A programme coordinated by the European Network on Debt and Development (EURODAD) which aims to pool knowledge and build capacity in the South in order to improve debates on economic policy choices.

www.eurodad.org/5programmes/indexprogrammes1.htm

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