Speculating on the World Bank’s Involvement in Post-Conflict Reconstruction Operations and Activities

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 192-228
Author(s):  
Francesco Seatzu
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
State Building ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
Operational Management ◽  
Wide Experience ◽  
Definition Of

Over the last few decades, the World Bank (‘WB’) has gained wide experience in post-conflict peacebuilding by experimenting new approaches to peace-and state-building in a wide range of difficult, fragile and conflict-affected countries such as Burundi, Liberia, and Nepal, all of which were undergoing significant political processes in the area of post-conflict reconstruction and democratic consolidation. The WB is the principal organization of the UN system providing low-interest loans for improvements in countries in difficulties. This paper explores the extent to which the WB can assert a role in the operational management of post-conflict reconstruction and argues that the WB’s increasing engagement with post-reconstruction issues is proper and permissible according both to its Establishing Agreement and its Relationship Agreement with the UN. But this is only provided it is balanced against a recognition of its intrinsic and operational limitations: namely and in particular the limitations that arise, respectively, from the UN Security Council’s competing competence in the same sector and the enduring existence of political prohibition clauses in the WB’s and IDA’s Establishing Agreements. If the WB’s post-conflict activities continue, it will turn out to be a player of great significance and actuality in developing and applying international post-conflict reconstruction norms and principles. Ultimately, given the inextricable link between development and conflict, the WB’s competence over post-conflict reconstruction issues is functional to its legitimacy. Support for the WB’s evolving role in post-conflict reconstruction scenarios will be highest if the WB enacts measures to promote its substantive and procedural legitimacy among member countries. This paper therefore collocates its analysis within the framework of democratic decision-making and argues for a clearer definition of responsibilities among the WB financial institutions and other organizations and organs belonging to the same UN family, such the UN Security Council, ECOSOC and the UN Peacebuilding Commission.

Democracy and Development

1997 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 635-643 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ibrahim F. I. Shihata
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Broad Sense ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World ◽  
Definition Of

This note addresses the possible correlation between “democracy” and “development”, and the implications, if any, of such a correlation for the World Bank. This calls, first, for providing a definition of the two concepts as they are used here. To clarify the matter further, a distinction is made from the beginning between “development” in the broad sense and the concept of “economic growth” in the strict sense.

Economic African Development in the Context of FinTech

2020 ◽  
pp. 273-289
Author(s):  
Youssra Ben Romdhane ◽  
Sahar Loukil ◽  
Souhaila Kammoun
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Least Square ◽  
National Accounts ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Digital Infrastructure ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
Data Files

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the effect of FinTech and political incertitude on economic growth through a multiple regression. Thus, the authors employ the method of generalized least square (GLS) with panel data. The sample concerns 21 African countries during (2001-2014-2017). The authors use a wide range of measures from Global Findex Database 2017, the World Bank platform, the World Bank national accounts data, and the OECD National Accounts data files base in the context of Africa. Empirical results show that FinTech is a driver of economic growth unless it is actively used in a developed digital infrastructure. In fact, the authors prove that, when financial technologies are used in both transactions (receive and made digital payment), they significantly contribute to the economic cycle. Passive use like simple consumption actions are not a significant lever for the economy. The principal contribution is to highlight that the active use of financial innovations and not passive one and the developed digital infrastructure do promote economic growth in African countries.

Can Effective Industrial Restructuring be Compatible with Market- Oriented Structural Adjustment Policies? The Evidence from Turkey

1995 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 51-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fikret Şenses
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Import Substitution ◽  
Bretton Woods ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Adjustment Program ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
Bretton Woods Institutions ◽  
The Imf

One of the main objectives of the Stabilization and Structural Adjustment Program (SSAP) introduced in Turkey in January 1980 was to transform the industrial trade strategy from archetypal import-substitution to export-orientation and to attain a higher level of integration with the international economy through market-based policies. International financial institutions like the IMF and, in particular, the World Bank have been closely involved in this process. Apart from a number of stand-by agreements with the IMF, Turkey received five successive structural adjustment loans from the World Bank during 1980-84 with their conditionality extending into a wide range of spheres like import liberalization, export promotion, and financial liberalization. Not only was Turkey one of the first to conclude such agreements with the World Bank, it was also identified as one of the countries complying with their provisions with “low slippage”.3 Even when there were no formal agreements, successive governments since 1980 have had very close and amicable relations with both of these Bretton Woods institutions.

scholarly journals Entering the 21st century: the challenges for development

1999 ◽  
Vol 354 (1392) ◽  
pp. 1943-1948 ◽  
Author(s):  
James D. Wolfensohn
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Laser Surgery ◽  
Space Exploration ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Great Achievement ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World

By many people, the 20th century will be remembered as an era of great achievement in human endeavour, and of enormous economic growth and prosperity. Achievements in medical research, from eradicating infectious diseases to laser surgery; in engineering, from the transistor to space exploration; and in economic development have all contributed to greater well being in the world at the end of the 20th century. Among the challenges to development identified by the World Bank in the coming decades will be managing the twin processes of globalization and localization, as well as post–conflict reconstruction. These will form the backdrop of the Bank's main focus of creating a world free of poverty.

scholarly journals Diversification of Private Participation in Public Infrastructure in Developing Countries

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 12060-12070 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Public Infrastructure ◽  
Water Projects ◽  
Macroeconomic Conditions ◽  
Private Finance ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Private Participation ◽  
The World

Public Private Partnership (PPP) is widely practiced in delivering public infrastructure. PPP utilizes private finance and management strengths. A number of countries worldwide have diverse demands. Political, institutional and macroeconomic conditions are involved in PPP in a wide range of public infrastructures and services. In diverse situations, countries worldwide are involved in a multiple number of PPP projects. With the proliferation of wide engagement in PPP, this paper examines how countries are attracting the private sector in the development of public infrastructure. The paper also determines what is engaged in PPP infrastructure using the multiple discrete-continuous extreme value (MDCEV) model. By examining the 4,423 projects from 86 developing countries, we found that countries are likely to be involved in telecommunication projects, followed by the energy and transportation and water projects. Water is one of the least preferred sectors among the four major infrastructure sectors provided by the PPI database of the World Bank.

scholarly journals Imperialism, Globalization and Resistance

1970 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Vrousalis
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Liberal Imperialism ◽  
The Imf

Imperialism is the domination of one state by another. This paper sketches a nonrepublican account of domination that buttresses this definition of imperialism. It then defends the following claims. First, there is a useful and defensible distinction between colonial and liberal imperialism, which maps on to a distinction between what I will call coercive and liberal domination. Second, the main institutions of contemporary globalization, such as the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank, etc., are largely the instruments of liberal imperialism; they are a reincarnation of what Karl Kautsky once called ‘ultraimperialism’. Third, resistance to imperialism can no longer be founded on a fundamental right to national self-determination. Such a right is conditional upon and derivative of a more general right to resist domination. 

The changing relationship between the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund

1988 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 545-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard E. Feinberg
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
International Monetary Fund ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Policy Instruments ◽  
Performance Requirements ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
The International Monetary Fund

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been bedeviled since their common creation over how to define their areas of specialized competence and how to interact in areas of overlapping jurisdiction. The multiple shocks that have destabilized the global economy over the last two decades have stimulated the Bank and Fund to alter fundamentally their programs and approaches, often without fully taking into account their relation to the work of the other Bretton Woods agency.The Fund's traditional focus on short-term stabilization, correcting external account imbalances, and fighting inflation, contrasted with the World Bank's provision of long-term funds for investment in capital-intensive projects. But more recently, with the establishment of the IMF's Extended Fund Facility and the Bank's structural adjustment lending, both institutions share the objective of adjustment with growth, and each claims some responsibility for an extremely wide range of policy instruments. The new Structural Adjustment Facility, in particular, has the potential to link more tightly decision-making on Fund stand-by arrangements and Bank structural adjustment lending, increasing the probability of new forms of cross-conditionality—termed here consultative cross-conditionality, interdependent cross-conditionality, and indirect financial linkage.The Bank and Fund need to find ways to better delineate and manage their new relationship. Problems that should be addressed to do so include proper modes of collaboration between Bank and Fund staff, issue specialization, the avoidance of piling on excessively detailed performance requirements, and decisions on ineligibility. Enhanced cooperation between the Bank and Fund can not only produce more coherent adjustment programs, but can also help to mobilize other sources of official and private capital.

Decentralization Reborn

2019 ◽  
pp. 249-274
Author(s):  
Amy C. Offner
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
World Bank ◽  
International Monetary Fund ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
State Building ◽  
Developmental States ◽  
Structural Adjustment Programs ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World

This chapter describes Eduardo Wiesner as an International Monetary Fund and World Bank economist of the 1980s and 1990s. During those years, he acquired a notorious reputation for negotiating structural adjustment programs across Latin America, and he championed new forms of decentralization that took apart developmental states. Wiesner was no dissident outsider to developmental state-building; he was a product of it. Wiesner's career in Washington grew from his work in Colombia, and nothing makes that fact clearer than his decades of writing on state decentralization. During the 1990s, Wiesner distinguished himself as an authority on decentralization, and he and his colleagues at the World Bank presented it as an adjunct to structural adjustment.

scholarly journals Did the learning agenda of the world bank-administrated health results innovation trust fund shape politicised evidence on performance-based financing? A documentary analysis

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lara Gautier ◽  
Valéry Ridde
Keyword(s):  
World Bank ◽  
Trust Fund ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Documentary Analysis ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Performance Based Financing ◽  
Bank Staff ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
Use Of Knowledge

The World Bank, co-funded by Norway and the United Kingdom, created and managed an innovative financing mechanism, the Health Results Innovation Trust Fund (HRITF), to support performance-based financing (PBF) reforms in low- and middle-income countries. From its inception in late 2007, until the closing of fundraising in 2017, it has carried out a wide range of activities related to experimenting PBF. In conjunction with the World Bank, which positioned itself as a “learning organisation”, donors have pushed the HRITF towards developing a specific learning agenda for  documenting the policy impact of PBF. This learning agenda has been primarily based on impact evaluations of PBF pilot programmes. As a new body took over the HRITF’s portfolio (Global Financial Facility),a documentary analysis of this learning agenda is timely. Building from public policy concepts that have been applied to social and health policy, and knowledge translation literature, we examine the learning agenda implemented by the HRITF over these 10 years. Our data includes documentation and publications (N=35) on HRITF and from the HRITF online platform. Results indicate that on several  fronts, the HRITF shaped some form of politicised knowledge, notably in the ways country pilot grants were designed and evaluated. Some of its learning activities also provided opportunities for a transformative use of knowledge for World Bank staff as well as national implementers and policymakers. We also provide reflections about the HRITF’s preferred approaches to produce knowledgeand learn. 

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