This is a troubled time for development policy, and for the institutions that define it. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization have been subjected to an unprecedented barrage of criticism. Since the disastrous 1999 WTO meeting in Seattle, the conspicuous failures of development policy—structural adjustment, the Asian financial crisis, and the unraveling of the post-Soviet economies—have become a matter of public debate. Critics of development have directed much of their fire at the assumptions of neoliberal economics, which prescribes fiscal austerity, monetary stability, trade liberalization, and a minimalist role for government. But it is less often recognized that development economics is in the midst of its own debate, which in tandem with the voices of outside critics may portend interesting changes in the practice of institutions such as the World Bank. Through such debates, and the innovative programs they may engender, anthropologists may find new intellectual and practical connections with the field of international development.
