The Elgar Companion to the World Bank

Description

As a matter of principle, arguably any efforts that may highlight shortcomings vis-à-vis benefits of any institution may be welcomed rather than having one-sided representations of any given position pursuing uncertain shadow agendas. In a somewhat arbitrary fashion, the story and arguments on both sides may summarized as follows.When it comes to the World Bank, for instance, not surprisingly it seems to be an international institution that seems to satisfy no one, particularly in the developing world, wherein there seems to be a Wuhan-Virus-like epidemic of political corruption that does not want anybody to interfere with their ongoing feast of goodies. By the same token, not surprisingly, some promoters of aid in the developed world, who are the payers of aid via the World Bank to developing countries thereof, do not seem incredibly bent on continuing an unrestricted flow of resources which may end up in a private Swiss account for private benefit. It seems a contradictory situation, a dilemma that not surprisingly appears to be generating strong clashing opinions between the haves and the “have-nots”. This may be unlikely to be resolved by demanding increasingly more while delivering little, if nothing at all, and it may not be solved by simultaneously blaming the “imperialists” for all their own ills. Therewith the known sophistries in the North-South acrimonious debate of having, on one side, some wanting development without accountability whereas, on the other side, having others demand accountability and tangible results for the funding provided.This precarious situation seems to have worsened as the perceived rift between developed countries has blown some simmering disagreements on how to go about doing developmental aid in the past. It is here wherein a book like this would have come to play a useful role if it had been a balanced representation of the aforesaid issues. Unfortunately, this book seems to undermine such a debate and betray the inherent developmental goals that developed economies would “ideally” promote for developing countries (e.g., it may be well to remember that the World Bank is not a perfect organization, and it has a large amounts of shortcomings). Yet, from a EU perspective, the book summons all kinds of friendly critics on behalf of developing countries to conjure all kinds of deficiencies of the World Bank (not even bothering to disclose that this institution is run by developing country “experts”). The book conjures the analytical smoke screen of multidisciplinary multiculturalism, in elegant Procrustrean lefty fashion, to launch as potent an attack as possible, to promote their objectively biased views of the matter therein discussed. In their view, it seems that if they would had their way, they would get rid of it and institute in its place another organization, like the immaculately corrupt AIIB, BRICS, or the European Bank of Reconstruction. The book’s approach may remind of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (2021)’s A Fairer World is Possible - Proposed Model for a United Nations Reform (Turkuvaz Medya Grubu). In other words, the “Global South”, just like Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s proposal for UN reform, appears to wish having everybody to submit, just like Islamist seem to do, to their demands without doing giving anything for anything. As an arbitrary benchmark of comparison, just ask a child to give up his candy without providing him anything in return: the child will not take up neither the challenge nor much less any such deal. How does, then, this elegant retinue of “Southern” friendly experts might have missed what not even a child would have missed is a mystery worth considering. But it seems that the EU’s lefties see no problem in deferentially promoting biased views in exchange for friendly supporters…