Ask the experts? The World Bank and international development lending in the twenty-first century

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William Easterly (2006) The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. New York: Penguin Press, US$27,95 (hardcover), ISBN 1594200378.

David Ellerman (2005) Helping People Help Themselves: From the World Bank to an Alternative Philosophy of Development Assistance. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, US$25,95 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0-472-03142-9.

Notes

1. This comes from Mari Kuraishi, another former World Bank staff member who created a company to put this idea into practice; it also points to a wider network of disillusioned Bank staff.

2. This fits into Amartya Sen's idea that development is freedom (Sen, 2001).

3. Time-limited lending has been trialed by the World Bank with adverse consequences, see Rossi (2004).

4. Gutner (2005) also argued that the Bank is a principal in relations to its agents (borrowers), but this use of the P–A model was rejected by Nielson and Tierney (2005) on the basis of borrowers' sovereignty.

5. Increasingly developing state voices are commenting on the activities of the Bretton Woods institutions, see Buira (2003, 2005) and G24 research papers through the G24 webpage, <www.g24.org > and UNCTAD at <www.unctad.org >.

6. The United Nations Financing for Development, The Monterrey Consensus, point 63, part I, p. 20, <http://www.un.org/esa/ffd/monterrey/MonterreyConsensus.pdf >.

7. See the G20's (2005, 2006, 2007) communiqués on reforming the leadership selection process, <www.G20.org >. he quota increase improves the most egregious inequalities for China, South Korea, Mexico and Turkey.

8. Similarly, the G8 is an institution that will have to reconfigure to incorporate emerging powers such as China in order to be effective.