World Bank reform: A critical investigation. Change and continuity in the World Bank's approach to development in the 1990s

Based on the assumption that critical and emancipatory approaches to development should be adopted to overcome the current impasse in development theory and practice, this thesis evaluates the World Bank's response to the changing global environment of the 1990s, to its past failures and to the severe criticism. The Bank's reform efforts—the Strategic Compact, the Knowledge Bank, the Comprehensive Development Framework, a changed attitude towards the state—are found insufficient to change the Banks apolitical, technocratic, economistic and elitist approach to development. The Bank is less dynamic than it portrays itself to be and the changes that do take place represent only adjustments in the Bank's strategy. The goal of development defined as achieving economic growth through integrating into the global economic system persists; the flaws of the global economic system itself remain unchallenged. The main obstacle to emancipatory change are the structural constraints that result from the dominance of the neo-liberal paradigm in the global political economy and the political, cultural, social and economic institutions of the dominant member states, especially the US. The institutional inertia of a large bureaucracy like the Bank constitutes a further hindrance. The result is a reproduction and further dissemination of the neo-liberal approach to development through the World Bank.