Democracy and civil society rise up Bank’s agenda

At the end of February the World Bank and the Government of Korea hosted a conference entitled Democracy, Market Economy and Development. As Bank President Wolfensohn stressed in his introduction, this was the first time that the Bank has used this word, a “significant departure” which moves the institution’s discourse beyond “governance” and “corruption”.

In a related move, Wolfensohn has asked staff to prepare a methodology for rating countries’ environment for civil society groups on a scale of one to five.