Empowered borrowers? tracking the World Bank’s Program-for-Results

Abstract

The World Bank has developed a new lending instrument, called Program-for-Results (P4R). This instrument is notable because it emphasises borrower programmes and contexts, ostensibly shifting from universally applied Washington Consensus models. Why did the Bank develop P4R? First, theoretical grounds for a new Bank policy are outlined. Second, the context, formalisation and usage of P4R are analysed. Third, P4R’s possible futures are described, along with their implications for development lending theory and practice. Despite its embryonic status, scholars and practitioners will be able to learn about power in development lending by following the fate of P4R.

Keywords:

• World Bank
• Program-for-Results
• development finance
• international organisations
• international political economy

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Louis Pauly, Matthew Hoffman and anonymous reviewers for supportive and helpful comments on earlier drafts.

Notes

1. Stone, Controlling Institutions; and Mearsheimer, “The False Promise of International Institutions,” 13.

2. Lyne et al., “Controlling Coalitions”; Lyne et al., “Who Delegates?”; Martin, “Interests, Power, and Multilateralism,” 768; and Keohane, After Hegemony.

3. Gilpin, Global Political Economy, 99; Ikenberry, “Institutions”; and Cox, “Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations,” 170–173.

4. Vestergaard and Wade, “Protecting Power”; Fleck and Kilby, “World Bank Independence”; and Andersen et al., “US Politics.”

5. Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan; Brooks and Wohlforth, World out of Balance, 205; Hurrell, On Global Order, chap. 11; and Cox, “Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations.”

6. Wade, “US Hegemony and the World Bank.”

7. Lyne et al., “Who Delegates?” 44–46.

8. Humphrey, “The Politics of Loan Pricing.” This is derived from the Bank’s relationship to capital markets.

9. Humphrey and Michaelowa, “Shopping for Development.” This is derived from the ‘bureaucratic hassle’ characteristic of a given bank.

10. Bayer et al., “Choosing International Organizations.” This refers to the funds required for and importance of the project.

11. Helleiner, Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods.

12. Hawkins and Jacoby, “How Agents Matter.”

13. Woods, The Globalizers; Barnett and Finnemore, Rules for the World; and Chwieroth, “Organizational Change.”

14. Barnett and Finnemore, Rules for the World.

15. Chwieroth, “Controlling Capital.”

16. Weaver, “The World’s Bank,” 503–509.

17. Sharma, “Bureaucratic Imperatives”; Chwieroth, “Organizational Change”; and Woods, The Globalizers.

18. Finnemore, “Norms,” 333.

19. Hoffman, “What’s Global?,” 113.

20. Bernstein, “Ideas,” 493.

21. Ruggie, “What Makes the World Hang Together?,” 870.

22. Ruggie, “What Makes the World Hang Together?,”873–878. See Ruggie, “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change,” note 54, for inclusion of the Bank in the liberal order.

23. Risse, “Let’s Argue!”; Best, Governing Failure; Park and Vetterlein, Owning Development; and Finnemore and Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics.”

24. World Bank, “A New Instrument,” 1; and World Bank, “Program-for-Results: Two-year Review,” 3.

25. Nunnenkamp et al., “Donor Coordination”; OECD, “How Fragmented is Aid?”; and OECD, Aid Effectiveness Progress Report.

26. Walz and Ramachandran, Brave New World; Woods, “Whose Aid?”; and Manning, “Will ‘Emerging Donors’ Change?”

27. Shafik, “The Future of Development Finance,” 7–16; and Humphrey, Developmental Revolution?

28. Fuchs et al., “Why Donors of Foreign Aid do not Cooperate”; Annen and Moers, Donor Competition; Canavire-Bacarreza et al., “Why Aid is Unpredictable”; Bulir and Hamann, Volatility of Development Aid; Kilby, “What Determines?”; Frot and Santiso, “Herding in Aid Allocation”; and Rahman and Sawada, Can Donor Coordination Solve Proliferation?

29. Knack and Rahman, Donor Fragmentation; and Knack et al., Interactions among Donors’ Aid Allocations.

30. World Bank, Global Development Finance, 1–5.

31. Rahman and Sawada, Can Donor Coordination Solve Proliferation?

32. Bank histories are widely available, but for works along these lines, see note 17 above.

33. Best, Governing Failure.

34. Dreher and Gassebner, “Do IMF and World Bank Programs Induce Government Crises?”

35. Montinola, “When does Conditionality Work?”

36. Woods, “Whose Aid?,” 1217.

37. Best, Governing Failure.

38. World Bank, “Program-for-Results Summary,” Table A1. See also World Bank, “A New Instrument,” iii, 1–9.

39. Naim, “Rogue Aid.”

40. Runde, “Ensuring the World Bank’s Relevance,” final paragraph.

41. World Bank, “A New Instrument,” iii, 3–7, quote from page 7.

42. Levy and Fukuyama, Development Strategies, 42.

43. World Bank, “Program-for-Results Summary,” Section 2.

44. World Bank, “A New Instrument,” 2–3.

45. Gelb and Hashmi, The Anatomy of Program-for-Results, 3–5; US Treasury, “US Position”; and World Bank, “A New Instrument,” vi.

46. World Bank, “Program-for-Results Summary,” Section 6.

47. US Treasury, “US Position”; and Gelb and Hashmi, The Anatomy of Program-for-Results, 3–5. For such concerns remaining since P4R rollout, see Runde, “Ensuring the World Bank’s Relevance”; and the proposed topics for the forthcoming IEG report on P4R in World Bank, “Program-for-Results (PforR): IEG Process Evaluation.”

48. Among many examples of their importance, see World Bank, “A New Instrument,” 9–11.

49. Gelb and Hashmi, The Anatomy of Program-for-Results, 3–4.

50. On P4R assessment directions for Bank staff, see World Bank, “Program-for-Results Financing.” For comparison, see the standardised 52 above and compare the standardised presence of the ‘Safeguard Policies that might apply’ sections of IL and DPL PIDs with the varied “Initial Screening” sections of P4R PIDs.

51. World Bank, “A New Instrument,” 4, 35, 54; and World Bank, “Program-for-Results: Two-year Review,” 8.

52. World Bank, Tanzania, 6; and World Bank, Egypt, 10. See also Bank comments on the role of partnerships in Ethiopia and Morocco in World Bank, “Program-for Results: Two-year Review,” 8.

53. World Bank, “Program-for-Results: Two-year Review,” 7, Box 2; and Gelb and Hashmi, The Anatomy of Program-for-Results, 3.

54. World Bank, “Program-for-Results: Two-year Review,” 42.

55. World Bank, “Program-for-Results: Two-year Review,” 12–15.

56. Ibid.

57. World Bank, “Program-for-Results: Two-year Review,” 8, Table 2.

58. Paul Cadario, phone interview with author, August 21, 2015.

59. Egypt has two approved P4Rs. Palestine has one P4R in the Bank’s pipeline at the time of this writing. For discussion of the ‘hostilities…instability and fragility’ against which the P4R is being proposed, see World Bank, West Bank and Gaza, 1.

60. Paul Cadario, interview.

61. World Bank, “Program-for-Results: Two-year Review,” 12, Annex 2.

62. World Bank, “Program-for-Results: Two-year Review,” 57–58.

63. Gelb and Hashmi, The Anatomy of Program-for-Results.

64. For purposes of space tabling DLIs for comparison across sectors with multiple P4Rs (such as health or public administration) has been omitted. Such work is available from the author. It is worth noting that each PAD’s ‘Annex 3’ section is dedicated to extensive discussion of DLIs, and comparing PADs in sectors with only two P4Rs still reveals variance in DLIs.

65. Documents received from anonymous interviewee via email, August 25, 2015.

66. World Bank, “Program-for-Results: Two-year Review,” 21.

67. Ibid.

68. World Bank, “Program-for-Results: Two-year Review,” 19–22. See also note 65 above, as the cited material includes all DLI verification planning, measures and entities.

69. Anonymous, email interview with author, August 25, 2015.

70. World Bank, “Program-for-Results: Two-year Review,” 20.

71. Ibid., 42.

72. Ibid., 43–44.

73. Ibid., 24–25.

74. Paul Cadario, interview.

75. World Bank, “Program-for-Results: Two-year Review,” 15.

76. See notes 51 and 52 above.

77. Documents received from anonymous interviewee.

78. World Bank, “Program-for-Results Financing,” v.

79. Anonymous, interview.

80. Paul Cadario, interview.

81. World Bank, Ethiopia: Health Millennium Development Goals, 6.

82. World Bank, Ethiopia: Enhancing Shared Prosperity.

83. Sandbrook, Reinventing the Left, chaps. 1–3; Harrison, The World Bank and Africa; and Cox, “Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations.”

84. For a sceptical view, see Best, Governing Failure.

85. Lardone, “The New Public Management Norm,” 208.

86. Pauly, “Managing Financial Emergencies,” 362.

87. See Ibid; and Helleiner and Pagliari, “The End of an Era.”