scholarly journals Social Sciences at the World Bank and the Broadening of the Development Paradigm

2021 ◽  
pp. 59-79
Author(s):  
Ismail Serageldin
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Middle East ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Broad Spectrum ◽  
Graduate Studies ◽  
Young Professional ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World ◽  
Development Paradigm

AbstractI joined the World Bank in 1972 as a ‘Young Professional’, recruited right after my graduate studies at Harvard. Over the years the Bank entrusted me with diverse jobs and responsibilities, mostly in the Middle East and Africa regions, regarded as the most difficult. This broad spectrum of assignments exposed me to many types of the Bank’s activities, each one a school for understanding complexity and a place of experiential enrichment.

scholarly journals The Important Contribution of Social Knowledge to International Development

2021 ◽  
pp. 3-25
Author(s):  
Leif E. Christoffersen
Keyword(s):  
International Development ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Social Knowledge ◽  
Professional Sociologist ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World ◽  
People First ◽  
Individual Scale ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Development Paradigm

AbstractThis essay will reflect on how the contribution of sociology and anthropology enrich the practice of economic development and broader sustainable development aimed at reducing poverty. It decribes the context and reasons why in the early 1970s the World Bank decided to create the first in-house position of a professional sociologist within its central staff. From a tentative experiment starting at the individual scale, a process emerged that built a strong and respected community of development sociologists and anthropologists that has become influential in the World Bank. They produced enduring changes in the Bank’s thinking, policies, operations, and ethics. They brought a distinct body of social knowledge and methods that they practiced and advocated both in-house and internationally. Under their call for Putting People First, they substantially broadened the Bank’s development paradigm.

The World Bank Financial Intermediary Funds as a Multilateral Mechanism to Channel Assistance to Politically Unstable Regions: The Case of the Middle East and North Africa Transition Fund

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 72-108
Author(s):  
Vladimir Bartenev ◽  
◽  
Alexey Solomatin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World Bank ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Governance Structure ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
Fragile States ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Financial Intermediary ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World

In recent years there has been a steady growth of “multi-bilateral aid,” or voluntary earmarked contributions transferred by international donors through multilateral organizations. The World Bank Group’s financial intermediary funds (FIFs) and trust funds have gained an especially wide recognition and have been particularly instrumental in channelling aid to fragile states — a priority group of partners for achieving the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. But researchers have paid much less attention to FIFs than to trust funds.This article identifies characteristic features of World Bank IFIs as a multilateral mechanism to channel aid to politically unstable regions, focusing on the Middle East and North Africa Transition Fund (MENA TF) established in 2012 to support Arab countries undergoing political transitions as a result of the Arab Awakening. The introductory section examines the particularities, benefits and risks of establishing FIFs as multilateral mechanisms to transfer development assistance. These parameters are illustrated in subsequent sections which discuss the MENA TF’s establishment procedures, governance structure, and mobilization and allocation of funds.The article concludes that for each of the parties involved, hypothetically, World Bank FIFs are a quite convenient mechanism for supporting fragile states. However, the example of the MENA TF conclusively shows that everything depends on the concrete political context of their establishment and operation. In terms of some key parameters (establishment procedure, governance structure) the MENA TF mechanism is very similar to other funds of the same type, but its operation is strongly affected by challenges uncommon to the majority of FIFs, which are focused on more politically neutral sectors. These challenges stem from several factors, including the predominance of political decisions within the Deauville Partnership, a unique list of contributors, and a severity of discord among them given the drastic deterioration of the political climate in the Arab world and beyond in 2014. This not only disrupted plans to engage more donors and mobilize the planned amount of funds, but it also stipulated a visible politicization of aid allocation. Political risks which materialized in the MENA TF operations might occur in other FIFs focused on fragile states and situations. The establishment of additional multilateral mechanisms, thus, requires learning from experience and prioritizing risk assessment and mitigation.

Failing forward: A case study in neoliberalism and abandonment in Calama

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 235-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally Babidge ◽  
Madeleine Belfrage
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
World Bank ◽  
International Monetary Fund ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Mining City ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World ◽  
The International Monetary Fund

Neoliberalism’s failings as a social order are a commonplace in the critical social sciences, and lately such critique has even been ventured from within the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. How has such a problematic form of capitalism both sustained criticism and flourished? Chilean neoliberalism might tell us something of how neoliberal forms weather critique to sustain elite power and significant social inequality, that is, how neoliberalism ‘fails forward’? We examine a case study in the Chilean mining city of Calama where a series of communal strikes and the authorities’ response demonstrate the resilience of neoliberalism and its significant failures that citizens experience as abandonment.

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