US politics and World Bank IDA-lending

Abstract

This paper studies the role of US political factors in the allocation of World Bank concessional lending, where US political interests are proxied by voting similarity in the United Nations General Assembly on issues identified as important by the US Department of State. In contrast to previous studies we find that the US exerted a significant influence on IDA lending during the period 1993–2000. We demonstrate that the influence was both statistically as well as economically significant. Finally, we demonstrate that our result is robust with respect to the omission of the IDA Country Performance Rating index.     

World Bank Lending and the Quality of Economic Policy

This study investigates the impact of World Bank development policy lending on the quality of economic policy. It finds that the quality of policy increases, but at a diminishing rate, with the cumulative number of policy loans. Similar results hold for the cumulative number of conditions attached to policy loans, although quadratic specifications indicate that additional conditions may even reduce the quality of policy beyond some point. The paper measures the quality of economic policy using the World Bank’s Country Policy and Institutional Assessments of macro, debt, fiscal, and structural policies, and considers only policy loans targeted at improvements in those areas. Previous studies finding weaker effects of policy lending on macro stability have failed to distinguish loans primarily intended to improve economic policy from other loans targeted at improvements in sector policies or in public management. The paper also shows that investing in economic policy does not ‘crowd out’ policy improvements in other areas, such as public sector governance or human development. The results are robust to using alternative indicators of policy quality and correcting for endogeneity with system generalized methods of moments and cross-sectional two-stage least squares. The more positive results in the study relative to some previous studies are consistent with claims by the World Bank that it has learned from its mistakes with traditional adjustment lending.     

The World Bank and India's irrigation reform

The decisions to be taken on canal irrigation in India during the next five years will have repercussions well into the next century, and the World Bank's role in those decisions will be substantial. Yet the Bank's approach to improving existing canal systems and designing new ones fails to match the components of the approach with their environments. This paper suggests that in a wide range of social and physical environments the Bank's proposals are likely to give little net benefit compared with alternatives. An alternative way of thinking about irrigation improvement programmes would emphasise operational procedures and the information ‘system’.     

Exploring Social Capital Debates at the World Bank

This article explores the ways in which discussions of social capital have emerged within the World Bank, and how they interacted both with project practices and with larger debates in the institution. These debates are understood as a ‘battlefield of knowledge’, whose form and outcomes are structured but not determined by the political economy of the Bank. Understanding the debates this way has implications for research on the ways in which development discourses are produced and enacted, as well as for more specific discussions of the place of social capital in development studies. The article concludes with a reflection on implications of these debates for future research, policy, and practice.     

The Relational Dynamics of World Bank Survey Missions

This article demonstrates that World Bank internal learning has led to significant changes in how the organization interacts with government officials through survey missions. Reviewing evidence of institutional learning and associated changes in practice and focusing on the relational modes being manifest in technical assistance, the article identifies three main phases of World Bank survey missions: general survey missions (1940s–1960s), country assistance strategies (1990s–2000s), and country partnership frameworks (2010s). Overall, World Bank reviews have repeatedly highlighted the importance of non-hierarchical interactions between Bank staff and country officials. In recent years, practice has begun to catch up with these operational insights.     

New BRICS Bank a Building Block of Alternative World Order

In 1990, right after the Berlin Wall fell, NPQ published our Spring edition, titled “The New World Disorder,” about the nationalistic chaos and up‐in‐theair sensibility of that fraught new historical moment. Nearly a quarter of a century later, the regime of globalization that had supplanted the Cold War world of blocs is itself coming apart at the seams. Even Henry Kissinger these days says “the world order is crumbling.” Will this New World Disorder 2.0 revert to a system of conflicting blocs, as during the Cold War, or will we be mature enough to save the interdependence of plural identities that is the foundation of a new global civilization? In this section our contributors offer their perspectives on what the future holds.     

Disjunction between policy research and practice: Social benefit-cost analysis and investment policy at the World Bank

One often comes upon cases where, even allowing for long lags, policy-makers do not utilize readily available policy research. The gap between policy research and practice has important consequences, both for researchers and for practitioners. In an effort to clarify the causes of the phenomenon, this paper discusses a specific experience: social benefit-cost analysis for investment choice in the World Bank. The analysis may be useful both to the social scientists who do policy research and to the practitioners who might make more use of it.     

How the World Bank manages social risks: implementation of the Social Risk Mitigation Project in Turkey

This paper aims to assess the World Bank’s social risk management approach to poverty by focusing on the implementation details of the Social Risk Mitigation Project in Turkey, a World Bank project that depends on this approach. The paper looks at the approach through the concept of neoliberal governmentality, as an attempt to produce responsible poor citizens during a period when the responsibility for providing social services is transferred to the market and the family. By using field research it demonstrates that, with the intervention of local factors, several unintended consequences emerge in the implementation of a social risk management project. The article concludes that these outcomes, although not planned or intended, have all been instrumental in depoliticising poverty and the poor in the country. Moreover, in spite of all the problems and dissatisfaction, thanks to the Bank’s own portrayal, this project has contributed to the image of the Bank as a development institution that achieves successes in its fight with poverty.     

International Organisations and the Production of Hegemonic Knowledge: how the World Bank and the oecd helped invent the Fragile State Concept

This article examines the role of the World Bank and the oecd in the emergence and circulation of the ‘fragile state’ concept. These organisations were critical to the early development of the concept and in the consolidation of a knowledge-based agenda set out by Western aid donors to justify international assistance to poor and conflict-ridden countries. Attention is focused on three normative processes affecting the production of transnational knowledge: normalisation, fragmentation and assimilation. ‘Normalisation’ is the process by which influential knowledge producers help to transform a rough concept into a widely accepted transnational norm based on expert knowledge, detailed definitions and statistical exercises. Once the concept has been appropriated by several international actors, it undergoes normative ‘fragmentation’ as it is subjected to various interpretations across time and space. ‘Assimilation’ is the process by which the overarching concept is renewed, enriched and gradually adapted through the incorporation of additional insights. The article argues that the World Bank and oecd have functioned as central knowledge hubs, facilitating the circulation of new and controversial ideas on fragile states and their integration into the prevailing policies of the most powerful aid donors. The two organisations have thus taken an active role in the consolidation and perpetuation of the aid donors’ policy doctrine, ultimately protecting it from major normative dissent.     

Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania

Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania: underdevelopment and an uncaptured peasantry Goran Hyden London: Heinemann. 1980. 270pp. £7.50. £3.50 pb     

The revenue implications of the Uganda and Tanzania plans 1

A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830–1920. By Hugh Tinker for the Institute of Race Relations, London, New York, Bombay: Oxford University Press. 1974. Pp. xvi + 432, maps, diagrams and illustrations. £5.75.

Modernization in South‐East Asia. Edited by Hans‐Dieter Evers. Singapore and Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Pp. xix + 249. £7–25.

Protest Movements in Rural Java. By Sartono Kartodirdjo. London, New York, Singapore, etc.: Oxford University Press, 1973. Pp. xv + 229, maps, price not indicated.

Economic Prospects of Bangladesh. By Austin Robinson. London: Overseas Development Institute Ltd., 1973. Pp. vii + 59: £1.50.

Disaster in Bangladesh: Health Crises in a Developing Nation. Edited by Lincoln C. Chen. London: Oxford University Press, 1973. Pp. xxviii + 290, figures, tables, glossary, index; £4.25 (cloth); £2.70 (paper).

Socialisms and Development. By Rene Dumont with Marcel Mazoyer. London, Andre Deutsch, 1973. Pp. 352. £3.50.

Economic Growth and Development in West Malaysia, 1947–1970. By David Lim. London: Oxford University Press, 1974. Pp. xvi + 346. £9.95.

Land and Family in Pisticci. By J. Davis. London: The Athlone Press, and New York: Humanities Press, 1973. Pp. x + 200, maps, diagrams. £3–50.

The Green Revolution in West Pakistan: Implications of Technological Change. By Leslie Nulty. New York: Praeger and London: Pall Mall, 1972. Pp. xxi + 150. £5.25.

Taxing a Peasant Society: The Example of Graduated Taxes in East Africa. By Kenneth Davey. London: Charles Knight and Co. Ltd., 1974. Pp. 226. £2.50.

Regional Development Banks: The Asian, African and Inter‐American Development Banks. By John White. New York: Praeger and London: Pall Mall, 1972. Pp. vii + 204. £5.25.

Human Fertility in India: social components and policy perspectives, by David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1974. Pp. ix + 132. $6.00 and £3.00.     

Religion,identity and politics in Tanzania

In Samuel Huntington's world of hostile civilisations, Tanzania would fall into the category of a torn country, a battle ground for the forces of African, Western and Islamic meta-cultures to expand their influence. On the surface, this might seem the case. Tanzania is an impoverished country where the benefits of economic liberalisation have reached only a narrow stratum and the fruits of political liberalisation are yet to be seen, placing severe strain on national social cohesion. There is certainly a possibility that pent up economic and political frustrations could be channelled into religious extremist movements. However, religion has not served as a primary fault-line for sustained political violence and conflict, although there are signs that this might be changing. In this paper we argue that uncovering and analysing these relationships elucidates how cross-cutting cleavages complicate the mobilisation of individuals and organised groups based on identity, not only in Tanzania, but in other societies as well.     

Agricultural Production and the Nutritional Status of Family Members in Tanzania

Abstract

The paper studies the effect of crop output value and livestock ownership on the nutrition of children, adolescents and adults in agricultural households. Using anthropometric data to measure nutritional status, this paper finds that both crop values and large livestock ownership have positive and significant effects on the nutrition of children under age 10. The effects persist after controlling for household socioeconomic status. Higher crop values and ownership of livestock are linked to better long-term indicators of nutrition (height-for-age) among the youngest children and better short-term indicators (BMI-for-age and weight-for-age) among older children. The effects also vary between boys and girls.     

Fiscal Capacity Equalisation in Tanzania

Fiscal equalisation aims at enabling decentralised governments to supply similar services at similar tax rates. In order to equalise fiscal disparities, differences in both fiscal capacities and in fiscal needs have to be measured. This paper focuses on the measurement of fiscal capacity in a developing country. The current intergovernmental transfer system in Tanzania does not take differences in fiscal capacity into account. As a result, local governments in rich areas are able to generate considerably more revenue per capita than those in poor areas. Public services in poor areas are hard to finance. We propose a way of measuring fiscal capacities of local governments in Tanzania using poverty data. We use this measure to derive an equalisation grant that would support local governments that have a low fiscal capacity.