New book: reinventing the World Bank

News|Bretton Woods Project|17 September 2002|update 30|url
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Attacked by the Right as the last bastion of socialism and by the Left as an instrument of economic imperialism, the Bank has struggled to adapt to a changing post-Cold War era. The failure to articulate and implement a convincing strategy to reduce world poverty has left it vulnerable to the charge that it has outlived its usefulness. In a book neither funded nor controlled by its subject, leading North American and British scholars critically examine the World Bank. They contend that an institution that has grown to unmanageable proportions through internally driven "to effect its own reform program. All the Bank's previous attempts at self-redesign have failed, and the contributors argue it is beyond reform; it must be reinvented.

The book, with chapters from a range of academic and activist commentators, proposes a thoroughgoing and externally controlled process of transformation, starting from basic principles and encompassing three closely related dimensions: operations, or the fit between the Bank's lending program and its development objectives; concepts, its vision of development and anti-poverty strategy; and power, which includes the Bank's relationships with member countries and the wider public, as well as structures of internal governance and accountability.

Reinventing the World Bank, Cornell University Press

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Published: 17 September 2002 , last edited: 15 July 2003

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