The World Bank

The transformation of the World Bank from an afterthought at Bretton Woods to one of the most powerful institutional mechanisms of contemporary global governance is examined in the discursive shifts that have underpinned the changing shape of bank policies and practices. A description of the bank's evolution identifies the five specialized agencies, the source of funding, & the function to contextualize & distinguish the "second generation reform" liberalism from the hyper aggressive "Washington Consensus" of the 1980s. The current discourse of "good governance" through "empowerment" is asserted to be less an "alternative" than a reformulation of earlier conceptualizations of marketization, privatization, flexibility nation and/or deep regulation. Although the focus on issues of equity, gender inequality & social development shifts the focus to an assumed relation between economic growth & social development, the rhetoric limits issues to the framework of development rationality that is both decidedly "Anglo-Saxon," & predicated on the view of development that devolves responsibility for securing economic opportunity to individuals. The subject of "conditionality" actually represents a discursive embedding of governance centric neoliberalism that is both more interventionist & less starkly coercive. The post-conditionality discourse of governance obscures the extent to which the bank operates as it has always done, as a powerful but culturally "Western" multilateral struggling to maintain its elevated position of "expertise" in an increasingly competitive international market. References. J. Harwell