Collective Learning at the Boundaries of Communities of Practice: Inclusive Policymaking at the World Bank

ABSTRACT

This article explains the emergence of inclusive practices at the World Bank as a collective learning process between communities of practice. Contributing to the literature on practices and cognitive evolution in International Relations, this theory of learning goes beyond socialisation or meaning negotiation in communities in focusing on the translation of knowledge at the boundaries of communities of practice. This article also contributes to scholarship on international organisations in theorising communities and social processes that transcend formal boundaries. In brief, it develops three processes of change through collective learning (boundary encounters, brokerage, and the use of epistemic boundary objects) to understand the emergence of inclusive policymaking practices at the World Bank. Finally, it empirically explores how the Uganda Poverty Eradication Action Plan in 1997 participated in this collective learning. This research is based on 21 first-hand interviews, twenty publicly available interviews and extensive archival work.

KEYWORDS:

• Practice turn
• boundaries
• communities of practice
• cognitive evolution
• World Bank
• development policymaking

Acknowledgements

For their careful comments on various drafts of this research, I would like to thank Emanuel Adler, Steven Bernstein, Jérémie Cornut, Jacqueline Best, Niklas Bremberg, Nina Græger, Matthew Hoffmann, Ted Hopf, Jean-Philippe Thérien, and Wendy Wong. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers and editors of Global Society for their invaluable comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Interview 8, 17 July 2017.

2 Interview 18, 10 November 2017.

3 Interview OHP Gloria Davis, 28–29 June 2004.

4 “Civil Society,” The World Bank, retrieved from http://www.worldbank.org/en/about/partners/civil-society#2

5 Interview 12, 15 August 2017; Interview 9, 19 July 2017.

6 Interview 7, 16 July 2017.

7 Interview 10, 21 July 2017; Interview OHP Yoshiaki Abe, 16–17 March 2005.

8 Learning can also happen when communities expand or contract, for example when an organization merges with another or is downsizes, For example, Neumann (2002) shows how diplomacy was altered by a change in its set of actors in the High North in the 1990s.

9 Interview 13, 6 November 2017.

10 Interview 6, 9 June 2017; Interview 10, 21 July 2017.

11 Interview 17, 9 November 2017.

12 Interview 19, 14 November 2017.

13 Interview 19, 14 November 2017.

14 Interview 9, 19 July 2017; Interview 12, 15 August 2017; Interview 14, 8 November 2017.

15 Interview 6, 8 November 2017

16 Interview 19, 14 November 2017.

17 Interview 12, 15 August 2017;

18 Interview 19, 14 November 2017.

19 Interview 9, 19 July 2017.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maïka Sondarjee

Maïka Sondarjee is an assistant professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies (University of Ottawa). She was previously a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Montreal, where she was working on women's emancipation in India. She obtained her PhD in political science from the University of Toronto in 2020.