The World Bank recently released a near-final version of its 2008 World Development Report on 'agriculture for development', ahead of the official release on 19 October.
Analysis
Accountability
Analysis
Consolidating ideology in law?
The World Bank has vastly increased the resources it commits to good governance, with a large portion of that going to a complex and under-researched area: legal and judicial reform. Researcher Victoria Harris explores how the Bank uses such reforms to cement in place its preferred market-based development paradigm.
Infrastructure
Analysis
At the crossroads: Which way the World Bank's transport strategy?
Following an IEG evaluation of the World Bank's work in transport, and delays in the release of a new Bank transport strategy, Public World director Brendan Martin asks what the Bank has learned. With spending on transport likely to increase, what direction will the Bank's transport projects take from here and who is in the driver's seat?
Land
Analysis
Concerns e-voiced: WDR on 'agriculture for development' in consultation process
The World Bank released a first draft of its latest World Development Report on 'agriculture for development' on 9 April.
Social services
Analysis
The elusive quest for ‘fiscal space’
For the last several years the World Bank and IMF have squared off against governments, NGOs, UN agencies and even each other over the concept of ‘fiscal space’. This often nebulous and ill-defined term has caused much confusion. Nancy Alexander finds that at the heart of the matter is a difference of opinion over how and when governments should be allowed to invest in both infrastructure and basic services.
Analysis
Recent Update Features
Recent features in the Bretton Woods Update
IFI governance
Analysis
Bridging the democratic deficit
The IMF should implement a double majority voting system that requires the achievement of two separate majorities - one based on one-country one-vote and the other on economically weighted quotas - for any decision to be made. This paper describes this system as a state-weight double majority, reflecting the two components of the suggested approach.
Accountability
Analysis
The IFCs lessons of experience & the Chad-Cameroon oil and pipeline project
In September 2006 the IFC published its first issue of a new publication entitled Lessons of Experience. However, the IFC's lessons drawn from the external compliance monitoring group in the Chad-Cameroon project read more like a tool to market the concept of external monitors to IFC clients than lessons meant to design a more effective role for the external monitor in improving implementation of social and environmental commitments.
Accountability
Analysis
Research, knowledge and the art of “paradigm maintenance”
Robin Broad, professor in the School of International Service at American University, describes six mechanisms by which the World Bank's development economics vice-presidency performs a "paradigm-maintenance" role, privileging individuals whose work "resonates" with the neo-liberal free-market ideology.
Finance
Analysis
Too much, too soon: IMF conditionality and inflation targeting
Gerald Epstein, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, finds that despite little evidence of the success of inflation targeting in promoting economic growth, employment creation or poverty reduction, the IMF is increasingly using loan conditions and technical assistance to push its use. There is an urgent need for viable alternatives that focus on employment generation, poverty reduction, export promotion and investment enhancement to be given more attention.
IFI governance
Analysis
Beware the big, bland wolf
What has most surprised World Bank watchers is how little Paul Wolfowitz has changed the institution he took over one year ago. On Africa, infrastructure, debt relief and the environment, he has stayed the course - for better or worse - set by his predecessor James Wolfensohn. On the high-profile issue of corruption, he has created a lot of noise, but many question whether or not he has a plan. Only in his management moves has he lived up to the fears - or in some cases wishes - of his critic
Finance
Analysis
Trip wires and speed bumps in service of global financial stability: A proactive role for the IMF
Under the current IMF strategic review, a "review of the effectiveness of the Fund's instruments to facilitate crisis resolution" is planned. Ilene Grabel, professor of international finance at the University of Denver, argues that the Fund must move from being a reactive institution to being a pro-active one. The IMF should use its technical expertise to mitigate the risks that culminate in financial crises, involving a programme of 'trip wires and speed bumps'.
Featured briefings
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The Bretton Woods Observer: Winter 2024
16 October 2024
The Bretton Woods Observer: Autumn 2024
16 October 2024
The lost call for international financial architecture reform in the G20
At the 80th anniversary of the World Bank and IMF, global civil society must maintain pressure on the Brazilian and South African G20 presidencies to ensure the forth Financing for Development Conference in 2025 results in urgently required international financial architecture reform.