What the World Bank means by poverty reduction, and why it matters

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Notes

Paul Cammack, Department of Government, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.

I would like to thank Daniela Cammack, Graham Harrison and an anonymous referee for their very helpful comments.

Richard Peet, Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank and WTO (Zed, 2003), pp. 200, 222–3. Peet wrote the book with seventeen of his graduate and undergraduate students, but identifies himself as the author of the chapter (Ch. 6) in which these comments appear.

Morten Bøås & Desmond McNeill, Multilateral Institutions: A Critical Introduction (Pluto, 2003), pp. 47 and 71–2.

Jonathan R. Pincus & Jeffrey A. Winters (eds), Reinventing the World Bank (Ithaca University Press, 2002), pp. 3, 222 and 226. For similar calls for reform, see Ngaire Woods, ‘The challenges of multilateralism and governance’, in: Christopher Gilbert & David Vines (eds), The World Bank: Structures and Policies (Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 143–4; and David Craig & Doug Porter, ‘Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers: A New Convergence’, World Development, Vol. 31, No. 1 (2003), p. 67.

Paul Cammack, ‘Making poverty work’, in: Colin Leys & Leo Panitch (eds), A World of Contradictions: Socialist Register 2002 (Merlin Press, 2001), pp. 193–211; ‘Attacking the Poor’, New Left Review, 2nd ser., No. 13 (2002), pp. 125 and 34; and ‘The Governance of Global Capitalism: A New Materialist Perspective’, Historical Materialism, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2003), pp. 37–61.

World Bank, World Development Report 1990: Poverty (Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 3.

Ibid., pp. 137 and 4.

World Bank, World Development Report 1991: The Challenge of Development (Oxford University Press 1991), p. 1.

Paul Cammack, ‘Neoliberalism, the World Bank, and the new politics of development’, in: Uma Kothari & Martin Minogue (eds), Development Theory and Practice: Critical Perspectives (Palgrave, 2002), pp. 166–7.

World Bank, World Development Report 1991, p. 9.

World Bank, World Development Report 1994: Infrastructure for Development (Oxford University Press, 1994), p. iii.

World Bank, Priorities and Strategies for Education: A World Bank Review (World Bank, 1995).

World Bank, Poverty Reduction Strategy Sourcebook, ch. 19, ‘Education’, available at http://poverty. worldbank.org/files/5798_chap19.pdf.

James D. Wolfensohn, ‘People and Development’, Annual Meetings Address, World Bank, 1 October 1996, in: IMF, Summary Proceedings of the Fifty‐First Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors (IMF, 1996), p. 26.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 28.

Ibid., p. 29.

Joseph Stiglitz, Globalisation and Its Discontents (Penguin, 2002), chs 4 and 5; and The Roaring Nineties: Seeds of Destruction (Allen Lane, 2003), ch. 9.

Joseph Stiglitz, ‘More Instruments and Broader Goals: Moving toward the Post Washington Consensus’, WIDER Annual Lecture, Helsinki, 7 January 1998, pp. 1, 5, 12, and 24.

Ibid., pp. 28–9.

Joseph Stiglitz, ‘Towards a New Paradigm for Development Strategies, Policies and Processes’, Prebisch Lecture, UNCTAD, Geneva, 19 October 1998, pp. 3–4, 7, 18.

Ibid., p. 21.

Ibid., p. 22.

Ibid., pp. 24–8.

Stiglitz, Globalisation and its Discontents, p. 242: ‘Successful countries also emphasized competition and enterprise creation over privatisation and the restructuring of existing enterprises’; and note 18, p. 267.

James D. Wolfensohn, ‘The Other Crisis’, Address to the Board of Governors, World Bank Group, 6 October 1998, pp. 5, 8, and 11–12.

Ibid., pp. 13–15.

Christopher Gilbert & David Vines, ‘The World Bank: an overview of some major issues’, in: Gilbert & Vines, The World Bank, p. 10.

The Economic Journal, ‘An effective “knowledge bank”: new priorities for the World Bank’, Media Briefing, November 1999, available at http://www.res.org.uk/society/mediabriefings/pdfs/1999/November/vines.pdf.

Karla Hoff & Joseph Stiglitz, ‘Modern economic theory and development’, in: Gerald Meier & Joseph Stiglitz (eds), Frontiers of Development Economics: The Future in Perspective (OUP/World Bank, 2001), pp. 419–20.

James D. Wolfensohn, ‘A proposal for a comprehensive development framework’, memo to the Board, Management and Staff of the World Bank Group, 21 January 1999.

The Poverty Reduction Strategy Plan (PRSP) is a global policy document, ostensibly produced by a debtor government in order to qualify for full HIPC status. This status then leads the World Bank and other creditors to write off debt to a ‘sustainable’ 150% of annual export revenue. The Country Development Framework is the Bank's detailed lending schedule, integrated into the PRSP and HIPC.

For a fuller analysis, see Paul Cammack, ‘The mother of all governments: the World Bank’s matrix for global governance', in: Steve Hughes & Rorden Wilkinson (eds), Global Governance: Critical Perspectives (Routledge, 2002), pp. 36–53.

Wolfensohn, ‘Proposal for a comprehensive development framework’, p. 28.

Cammack, ‘The mother of all governments’, pp. 47–9. Stiglitz (Globalisation and Its Discontents, p. 234) notes that ‘[t]here is mounting unhappiness in developing countries with new programs involving participatory poverty assessments, as those participating are told that important matters, such as the macroeconomic framework, are off limits’, but fails to acknowledge his stake in the logic in question.

World Bank, World Development Report 1997: The State in a Changing World (Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 1 and 3.

Ibid., pp. 111–29.

Shahid Yusuf & Joseph E. Stiglitz, ‘Development issues: settled and open’, in: Meier & Stiglitz, Frontiers of Development Economics, p. 238.

I draw here on Cammack, ‘Making poverty work’, pp. 198–201.

World Bank, World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty (Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 38–9.

Ibid., p. 39.

Ibid., pp. 39–40.

John Pender, ‘From “Structural Adjustment” to “Comprehensive Development Framework”: Conditionality Transformed?’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 3 (2001), p. 409.

Karen Brock, Rosemary McGee & Richard Ssewakiryanga, Poverty Knowledge and Policy Processes: A Case Study of Ugandan National Poverty Reduction Policy, Research Report 53, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 2002, pp. 7, 43, and 48; and Warren Nyamugasira & Rick Rowden, New Strategies, Old Loan Conditions: Do the New IMF and World Bank Loans Support Countries' Poverty Reduction Strategies?—The Case of Uganda, Uganda National NGO Forum/RESULTS Educational Fund, 2002.

See IMF/IDA, Uganda: Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper Annual Progress Report: Joint Staff Assessment, 26 August 2002, p. 7; and World Bank, Promoting Competitiveness and Stimulating Broad‐based Growth in Agriculture, Report No. 25115‐NI, Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development Unit, Latin America and the Caribbean Region, 2002, p. 19.

Peet, Unholy Trinity, p. 18.

Paul Cammack, ‘Making the Poor Work for Globalisation?’, New Political Economy, Vol. 6, No. 3 (2001), pp. 397–409.

Rosemary McGee, Josh Levene & Alexandra Hughes, Assessing Participation in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers: A Desk‐based Synthesis of Experience in Sub‐Saharan Africa, Research Report 52, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 2002, p. 19.

Hakikazi Catalyst, Tanzania Without Poverty: A Plain Language Guide to Tanzania's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (Hakikazi Catalyst, 2001), ch. 4, available at http://www.hakikazi.org/eng/chapter_3b.htm.

Cammack, ‘The Governance of Global Capitalism’.

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Notes on contributors

Paul Cammack

Paul Cammack, Department of Government, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.