Reinventing the World Bank

Jonathan R. Pincus

ISBN 10: 0801440378 / ISBN 13: 9780801440373

Published by Cornell University Press Aug 2002, 2002

About this Item

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Seller Inventory # 9780801440373

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Reinventing the World Bank
• Publisher: Cornell University Press Aug 2002
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801440378
• ISBN 13: 9780801440373
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 235W x 155H x 22D millimeters 235 millimeters width by 155 millimeters height by 22 millimeters depth
• Weight: 520 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Largely ignored for decades, the World Bank increasingly finds itself at the center of an international political maelstrom. 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. Still the world's leading development institution in terms of size and influence, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development's failure to articulate and implement a convincing strategy to reduce world poverty has left it vulnerable to the charge that, at least in its present form, 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 change cannot realistically be expected 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.

Reinvention involves 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.

About the Author

Jonathan R. Pincus is Lecturer in Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His books include Class Power and Agrarian Change: Land and Labour in Rural West Java. Jeffrey A. Winters is Associate Professor of Political Economy at Northwestern University and author of Power in Motion: Capital Mobility and the Indonesian State, also from Cornell.