Voice, Capital, and Policy Reforms at the World Bank: Smoke and Mirrors or Real Change?

Speaker: Robert Wade, Professor of International Political Economy, London School of Economics and Political Science

At the World Bank Group, there are many changes underway -- governance reforms, a capital increase, and new thinking about the institution’s mandate.  In terms of mandate, some uphold the Bank’s traditional role of financing development operations at the country-level; others advocate a major role for the institution in providing public goods relating to the environment and climate change, public health, and international trade and financial infrastructure.  To what extent are the reforms symbolic? Or, fundamental?  What might the World Bank Group of the future look like?
 
About the presenter: Robert Wade won the Leontief Prize in Economics in 2008.  He is widely published, including his book, “Governing the Market,” which won the American Political Science Association’s Best Book in Political Economy Prize in 1992; a chapter on the World Bank’s environmental sustainability agenda in “The World Bank: Its First Half Century” (1997); “Beware what you wish for: Lessons for international political economy from the transformation of economics” in Review of International Political Economy (2009) and “Globalization, growth, poverty and inequality” in Global Political Economy, Oxford University Press (2007).
 
For more information and to RSVP please contact Nancy Alexander, Program Director Economic Governance, at alexander@boell.org