Devesh Kapur

An Imposing Study of a Bretton Woods Institution
This massive history of the World Bank's first fifty years of existence is governed by two main themes. The first is the seemingly intractable conflict between the Bank's avowed mission of promoting economic development in general and the Bank's need to keep its shareholders' interests in mind and to satisfy the capital markets. The interplay between the World Bank's project lending initiatives--loans to fund projects aimed at promoting social development--and the Bank's ambition to influence the course of economic policy in borrower countries constitutes the second theme.

The authors were granted access to many internal Bank documents, oral history archives, memoranda, and even private memoirs. Through these various lenses, the picture that emerges shows a Bank struggling with its various roles: financier, borrower, technical advisor, proponent of economic progress, and ultimately instrument of foreign policy.

While the book chronicles various events in the Bank's first fifty years and details the impact of various individuals on Bank policies, the authors do not hesitate to pass judgment on what they deem to be the Bank's failings. Kapur et al. also dwell at length on a tortured search for a sense of identity on the part of the Bank--a multilateral financial institution tasked to help rebuild countries devastated by the war, the Bank did not take lightly to the idea of it being 'transformed', albeit gradually, into a development agency. Readers may be appalled to learn that the very concept of poverty occupied but a small portion of the endeavors of the Bank during its initial years. Only after a sea change in economic thinking did the Bank reluctantly embrace poverty alleviation as a central tenet of its existence.… (mer)