American Politics, the Presidency of the World Bank, and Development Policy
The World Bank's president has been an American by tradition. Yet little work has explored the consequences for this connection in influencing visions of development in the organization across time. This paper uses evidence from archives, cong...
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2013
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/03/17408303/american-politics-presidency-world-bank-development-policy http://hdl.handle.net/10986/13147 |
| Summary: | The World Bank's president has been
an American by tradition. Yet little work has explored the
consequences for this connection in influencing visions of
development in the organization across time. This paper uses
evidence from archives, congressional hearing records, and
memoirs and histories of World Bank presidents to
investigate United States-World Bank relations and
development policy during four presidencies--Eugene Meyer,
Eugene Black, Robert McNamara, and James Wolfensohn. The
author argues that at times the political arrangements had
the effect of pushing the Bank toward greater institutional
independence from the United States, particularly when
partisanship in American politics rose and new United States
presidential administrations came into office with the World
Bank president's term holding over from before. At
other times, United States-World Bank connections pulled the
Bank into foreign policy issues in the United States that
the Bank might not otherwise have addressed when advocates
pressed their case on Capitol Hill. |
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