bout de papier, Vol. 9, No. 3 (1992) — Summer 1992 // Été 1992, pp. 40–41
World Bank World Development Report
1991, New York: Oxford University Press,
June 1991 for IBRD, xii and 290 pp. $23.95.
In his Foreword to the 14th World Development Report (WDR), the outgoing World Bank President, Barber Conable, articulates the major themes of the latest version, on “The Challenge of Development” which emphasizes both history and the future:
One of the most valuable lessons relates to the interaction between the state and the market…The Report describes a market-friendly approach in which governments allow markets to function well…Restoring the confidence of the private sector is now a major challenge for several countries with a long history of macroeconomic instability…the Report stresses that, above all, the future of developing countries is in their own hands.
Yet despite purporting to learn from postwar successes and to revise previously overoptimistic scenarios, this Report, like all its predecessors, especially last year’s on “Poverty”, constitutes a restatement of neoclassical and -conservative dogma about domestic responsibility and market efficacy. Indeed, its rhetorical treatment of current discourses is palpable: from “reforming the public sector” to “rethinking the state”. The focus in its “political economy of development” is on adjustment, enterprise and reform, now extending beyond environment, gender, human resource development, and technology to hitherto forbidden terrains like democracy and the military.
Three contradictory assertions are particularly remarkable, embedded in its own role and rhetoric. First, that “thinking on development has undergone a sea change during the past forty years”; yet the Bank avoids claiming any responsibility for popularizing the prevailing “paradigm” of market-forces. Second, that integration into the global economy is a prerequisite, but dependence is not a cause of underdevelopment only policy “distortions”. And third, that the “model” of the newly-industrializing countries (NICs) should be emulated without any recognition that such successes may prejudice the prospects of “late-comers”. In brief, the Bank appears to be quite unselfconscious in its assertion that “a consensus is gradually forming in favor of a ’market-friendly’ approach to development”: an imposed or voluntary policy hegemony!
Amazingly, then, despite its admission that global development has been most uneven over the last 40 years — “the real income gap between the industrial countries and some developing countries, notably those in East Asia, has narrowed dramatically since World War II. But the gap between [them] and the developing countries of other regions has widened”! The Bank seems to deny any responsibility for either local or global difficulties. Moreover, despite ample evidence that “the world economy in transition” poses immense dilemmas for almost all economic actors — “in some ways the international economy will be unfavourable to development in the coming decade” — it insists that national states are the primary determinants of development prospects.
Aside from reflections on divergent experiences in the world economy, the Report treats lessons in the causes, consequences and sequences of reform, again without any admission that its structural adjustment conditionalities are primary factors! Indeed, the discussion about participation and institutions appears to be voluntaristic when such terms are in reality imposed. Furthermore, even lessons derived from the successes of the minority of NICs deny that the prospects for the majority of late-comers are thereby affected: the fallacy of history.
The ideological purity of this year’s Report was maintained by the Bank’s release just a month earlier of a revealing analysis of the other side of the adjustment syndrome: Global Economic Prospects & the Developing Countries. This candidly admits the current decade may be no better for most polities and peoples than the last, “lost” one:
The 1980s saw a sharp divergence in economic performance across developing regions…the chances of significantly reducing these disparities are remote in the 1990s. The unlikelihood of convergence intensifies the risk that the number of absolute poor in the world will rise greatly.
Notwithstanding all Report 1991’s rhetoric and repetition, it not only indicates the scope of contemporary orthodoxy, it also treats some delicate yet salient issues, such as AIDS, capital flight, corruption, military costs, NGOs, and population. Regrettably, like its 13 predecessors, it lacks an index, but it does contain 45 tables of data in its appendices along with 41 of its distinctive boxes, 35 figures and 30 in-text tables. Its bibliography of the latest orthodoxy further reveals its commitment to the prevailing paradigm as eminent liberal (eg. Paul Mosley and John Toye) and radical (eg. Manfred Bienefeld and Andrea Cornia) contributions are overlooked.
In short, whether the Bank admits it or not, this is indeed the authoritative Report by contrast to more sceptical, radical annuals from other inter-state agencies like UNDP and UNICEF, and Hunger 1990 and State of the World 1991 from non-governmental organizations. The Bank’s espousal of post- Keynesian theology even makes The World in 1991 from The Economist appear rather cautions and catholic by contrast. And this, despite the fact that WDR 1991 admits that a decade ago, as its adjustment project was beginning to be effected, it was “generally too hopeful about growth in the 1980s”!
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 9, No. 3 (1992) — Summer 1992 // Été 1992, pp. 40–41. Read the rest of this issue →
