Social knowledge and international policymaking at the World Bank

Abstract

The production of social knowledge in all international organizations is problematic because all are public bureaucracies. The World Bank provides a case study of the problems of managing in-house research in an international public bureaucracy. Not only are there managerial constraints on what the Bank is willing to publish, but the binding constraints on publication evolve. The evolution in managerial objectives at the Bank in recent years and the factors that have influenced shifts in its rhetoric and policy are examined. Are these adjustments merely rhetorical? Recent research on poverty reduction, governance and conditionality is discussed to gauge how far the Bank has moved.