Argues that the Bank has become involved in too many issue areas and initiatives. There are significant tensions in trying to be a Bank, a social development agency, a Knowledge Bank and a Global Issues Bank all at the same time. Includes comments from Bank staff, parliamentarians and NGOs on how to resolve this.
Analysis
IFI governance
Analysis
IMF Governance Update
Information on processes and opportunities for influencing the IMF's governance structures.
WB/IMF roles
Analysis
Structural Adjustment for the IMF
Examines representation and power issues relating to the IMF’s Board, staff and management. Identifies and discusses reform proposals.
Conditionality
Analysis
New Development Tools or Empty Acronyms?
The reality behind the Comprehensive Development Framework and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (2000).
WB/IMF roles
Analysis
A Crisis Of Identity? Conflicting Roles For The IMF
Two forces for change have converged on the IMF in recent years. The first is in relation to the financial crisis that swept across the globe in 1997 and 1998. The second has arisen from the pressure for debt cancellation to be linked to poverty reduction objectives and the acceptance that structural adjustment policies have failed to achieve lower levels of poverty.
WB/IMF roles
Analysis
Comments on the paper “Making The IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office (EVO) Operational&
The Bretton Woods Project welcomes the establishment of an EVO.
Private Sector
Analysis
Assessing the IFC: for private gain or poverty reduction?
Bretton Woods Project contribution to compilation of analysis and case studies by a range of NGOs. (September 2000).
Social services
Analysis
Social principles: an update
When the social principles were proposed by Gordon Brown at the 1998 AGM of the Bank and IMF it was envisaged that they would apply to all countries and would be monitored as the other codes on Fiscal Transparency, Monetary Policy and Corporate Governance will be. The Development Committee charged the World Bank with the task of drawing up the principles (1999).
Conditionality
Analysis
The IMF’s Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility: What Role for Development?
Although it has sought to adapt, the Fund still has particular difficulties in dealing effectively with low income countries. The introduction of ESAF was an important attempt at adaptation but its programmes are still too short term, the scale of support is often too small, and the policy conditions laid down are too blinkered.
Conditionality
Analysis
What Role for the Multilateral Institutions, Donors, and NGOs in the New Framework for Poverty Eradi
This paper considers how the relationships and roles of intenational and national non-governmental organisations, donors and the multilateral institutions are likely to change as a result of new initiatives to put poverty reduction and country ownership at the centre of the development process (2000).
WB/IMF roles
Analysis
Beyond Meltzer
This briefing is a response to the “Meltzer Report” produced by the US congressional Committee led by Allan Meltzer on the roles of the IMF and World Bank. It examines the Committee’s recommendations and outlines why they are inappropriate and how they would actually increase the power of the IMF, whilst turning it into an institution that would serve the needs of private sector investors rather than assisting governments (2000).
Private Sector
Analysis
The IFC’s Beyond 2000 Strategy Paper: Missing the Point
Short note outlining concerns about the International Finance Corporation’s attempt to redefine its strategy. The new strategy ducks the key issue of how the IFC can use its leverage to improve companies’ social and environmental peformance. (February 1998)
Featured briefings
12 December 2024
The Bretton Woods Observer: Winter 2024
12 December 2024
Missing in action: accountability is noticeably absent from the World Bank Group’s new Corporate Scorecard
The Corporate Scorecard’s accountability gap is symptomatic of a broader failure on the part of the WBG to fully internalise, integrate and learn from the work of its accountability mechanisms.
16 October 2024