Neoliberalism with a Feminist Face: Crafting a new Hegemony at the World Bank

Neoliberalism has been discredited as a result of proliferating crises (financial, ecological, care) and mounting inequality. This paper examines the growing research on gender at the World Bank as a site for the construction of a new hegemonic consensus around neoliberalism. Drawing on a computer-assisted inductive analysis of thirty-four Bank publications on gender since 2001, the paper documents Bank efforts to establish a positive relationship between gender equality and growth; shows the expansion of the Bank’s definition of equality as equal opportunity; illustrates how the focus on institutions has enabled engagement with core feminist concerns, such as equality in the family; and traces how incorporating notions of women’s empowerment and agency has made possible a focus on domestic violence. The paper concludes by emphasizing the ambiguous effects of the Bank’s new neoliberalism, which continues to use the market as the arbiter of social values while providing openings for feminist agendas.     

论世界银行与环境保护

随着可持续发展战略的提出,世界银行越来越强调将环境保护寓于其消除贫困、发展经济的宗旨之中,形成了一套独具特色的环境保护政策,给我国提供了有益的启示。本文从世界银行的环境保护机构、环境保护政策及我国的对策等方面予以论述。     

包容性增长研究述评

传统的经济增长理论不考虑其对减贫和不平等的影响,然而,近年来减贫速度的下降和不平等的增长促使人们重新认识经济增长。作为利贫增长的替代,包容性增长成为世界银行和许多国家的发展战略,本文从定义、度量、诊断、机制和理论基础等方面详细介绍了包容性增长的产生、发展以及将来的研究方向。     

三江并流世界自然遗产保护中的怒江峡谷脱贫问题探讨

怒江峡谷是我国最为贫困的地区之一,也是生态地质环境极为脆弱的地区。当地居民传统的生产生活方式以及近期为谋求生存与发展引发的无序开发已对三江并流世界自然遗产高黎贡山片区构成了严重威胁。受多种条件限制,怒江峡谷通过发展传统产业脱贫的空间不大。结合该区实际,本文提出了“遗产旅游＋适度利用水能资源＋生态移民”的发展模式,以缓解人地关系矛盾,构建遗产地和谐社会。     

包容性增长研究述评

传统的经济增长理论不考虑其对减贫和不平等的影响,然而,近年来减贫速度的下降和不平等的增长促使人们重新认识经济增长。作为利贫增长的替代,包容性增长成为世界银行和许多国家的发展战略,本文从定义、度量、诊断、机制和理论基础等方面详细介绍了包容性增长的产生、发展以及将来的研究方向。     

旅游减贫具有空间溢出效应吗?

针对现有文献缺乏旅游减贫多维效果及空间效应研究,本文基于多维贫困视角,运用2008—2017年中国30个省份的面板数据,构建了包含经济、教育、医疗、生活与环境五个维度的贫困减缓评价指标体系,并在地理距离矩阵和经济距离矩阵共同构成的综合嵌套矩阵的基础上,分别运用空间自相关检验、空间杜宾模型探究了各维度贫困减缓的空间分布特征及旅游发展对各维度贫困减缓的空间效应。主要结论有:(1)十年间,中国乡村旅游业发展水平呈现显著空间正向相关性,纳入空间效应的空间杜宾模型较好地揭示出区域间乡村旅游发展存在显著的空间溢出效应。(2)十年间,各维度的减贫效果亦呈现显著空间正向相关性,表明各维度减贫效果存在着空间集聚特征。(3)十年间,旅游发展对经济、生活、环境等维度的贫困均具有显著减缓作用,更重要的发现是旅游发展在这三个减贫维度上具有正向空间溢出效应。旅游发展对教育、医疗两个维度上贫困减缓的直接和间接效应均未通过显著性检验。(4)从空间异质性视角分析,旅游发展对经济减贫维度的空间溢出效应呈现出东部区域→中部区域→西部区域逐步递减规律;旅游发展对生活减贫维度和环境减贫维度的空间溢出效应均呈现出由东部区域→中部区域→西部区域逐渐增大特征。最后,论文就旅游减贫提出了相关政策建议。     

Economic beliefs and institutional politics: Human capital theory and the changing views of the World Bank about education (1950–1985)

One of the main characteristics of economic policy-making in the postwar period was the rise of international agencies and their influence in setting the agenda in various policy aspects. Education was one of the areas that became very important to the activity of international agencies. This article analyses the changing views about education of the World Bank, from the late forties to the mid-eighties, and the way its priorities and approach to education were moulded by the dissemination of human capital theory. The analysis will emphasise the difficulties faced to the diffusion of this approach in a context largely favourable and dominated by manpower planning and different policy views about education, providing an interesting example about the complexities of the dissemination of economic ideas within international organisations.     

Return of industrial policy?

For the sake of freedom, economic growth and poverty reduction the state in market economies should limit itself to regulating markets and (sometimes) correcting ‘market failures’. This neoliberal conception has been the near-consensus for the past two to three decades in the West and in western-led international organizations such as the World Bank. But as of recently, the consensus has been challenged by circumstances with which it cannot contend. This article spells out key ideas behind the consensus – in particular, its rejection of industrial policy. It then argues that the US government has long practised – to good effect – a hitherto little noticed type of industrial policy focused neither on the individual firm nor on the geographic region but on networks of firms, and that a (small) change in the American normative climate has occurred post 2008 in favour of a government steering role in markets. Moreover, some middle-income countries, with manufacturing sectors shrinking in the face of East Asian competition, have recently shown renewed interest in industrial policy. Finally, parts of the World Bank have recently begun to operationalize industrial policy, under the banner of ‘building competitive industries’ (industrial policy by another name), as has not been the case since the mid 1980s. The combination of these several forces may herald the emergence of new global norms in favour of a more ‘developmental’ role of the state.     

Getting the Resilience Right: Climate Change and Development Policy in the ‘African Age’

ABSTRACT

Founded on a call to place climate change adaptation and climate risk management at the heart of contemporary development practice, the World Bank’s Africa Climate Business Plan presents an ambitious agenda for coordinating $19bn of loans, grants and investment over the coming decade. The centrepiece of this recasting of development thinking is the notion of resilience, which ties together the various activities proposed under the Plan. Resilience must respectively be strengthened, empowered and enabled in order for African countries to withstand climate change impacts. In this paper we subject this new climate-resilient development discourse to critical scrutiny. Using the theoretical lens of post-politics, we caution how the ill-defined category of resilience is deployed to reinforce a profoundly depoliticising agenda in which climate change is posited as an external threat to an otherwise seamless narrative of African advancement. In so doing, we illustrate how the Bank obscures the contested histories of African development and uses the discourse of climate-resilient development to perpetuate its neoliberal agenda within the continent.     

The World Bank and the persistence of poverty in poor countries

William Easterly has written a book about why extensive development assistance over the course of decades failed to alleviate poverty in poor countries. As an economist at the World Bank, Easterly observed how resources and advice provided by the Bank failed to improve the lives of the poor in poor countries. Easterly considers different explanations for the development failures. He places the blame for persistence of poverty in poor countries on governments and political elites, who use their poor as hostages to personally benefit from aid resources and debt relief.     

国家扶贫开发重点县投入绩效的实证分析

新世纪以来,随着农村贫困发生率的大幅度下降和脱贫速度的减缓,中国扶贫资金的使用效率问题备受关注.采用国家统计局数据,通过回归模型对扶贫开发重点县主要扶贫投入的绩效进行了实证分析,发现:(1)外资扶贫资金的使用效率优于国内扶贫资金;(2)中央政府的扶贫资金中,财政扶贫资金的使用效率优于以工代赈资金,以工代赈资金优于贴息扶贫贷款.基于此研究结论,提出了相应的政策建议.     

How best to link poverty reduction and debt sustainability in IMF–World Bank models?

This paper attempts to provide an economic model in the context of developing countries to address the policy strategies related to poverty reduction. With a view to deal with the shortcomings of the existing approaches as regards poverty reduction, this paper develops a model on the basis of the policy framework of the IMF and the World Bank to show how demand growth can be a crucial mechanism in determining the potential rate of growth, and then to suggest ways in which poverty—conceptualised officially in absolute terms with a subjective cut‐off point (e.g. US $1/$2 a day), and a new objective measure in terms of consumption deprivation—can be linked with the key policy variables contained in the adjustment programmes. A strategy of investment in infrastructure and in human development, and improving access to credit markets, particularly in rural areas to encourage or ‘crowd in’ private investment is a precondition for growth and poverty alleviation. Debt relief can only provide a temporary, not a sustainable, solution to the problem of reducing poverty.     

The World Bank and Emerging Powers: Beyond the Multipolarity–Multilateralism Conundrum

The discrepancy between the increasingly multipolar world economy of the recent decades and the stubbornly limited representativeness of the organisations mandated with its governance causes much strain in global politics. Some scholars suggest that this chronic mismatch will undermine existing multilateral bodies, while others expect the present architecture to persist. This article contends that the outcomes of this challenge are institution-specific. In settings where significant operational realignments are possible within existing mandates and governance structures, the multipolarity–multilateralism conundrum could be partly mitigated. The argument is based on a thematic analysis of all IBRD-IDA loan commitments between 2002 and 2015 in the World Bank’s seven all-time top borrowers: Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico and Turkey (collectively, the Big Seven). The key finding is that while these emerging countries remain the Bank’s biggest clients, the terms of their engagement have shifted precisely along the lines where they had already differed from the rest of the Bank’s clientele: away from politically onerous governance and institutional reforms, and towards developing physical and market infrastructure while attaining social sustainability. This implicit realignment is facilitated by the Bank’s diverse policy repertoire, which allows considerable inter-regional and intra-regional variation in lending patterns to accommodate member preferences.     

World Bank trade loans and export performance of recipient countries

Since 1980 several developing countries have received World Bank structural loans, aimed at opening their economy to international trade. By estimating a gravity equation on a panel of 180 countries, observed from 1962 to 2010, we investigate whether the Bank’s programs have affected the export performance of beneficiaries in the subsequent years. According to our results, trade loans have been ineffective in the shorter run while, in the longer, they appear to have hindered the export performance of recipient countries. The Bank’s new trade policy approach, however, seems to have some potential for inverting the negative influence that we have detected.     

产业帮扶对农户脱贫及减贫效果稳定性的影响——来自贵州毕节烟草种植计划调减的经验证据

文章使用2016-2017年贵州省毕节市286个烟农调研数据,以烟草种植计划调减为例,分析区域产业帮扶对不同贫困类型烟农脱贫及减贫效果稳定性的影响。结果表明:烟农的烟叶种植面积增加能够显著降低烟农贫困发生,烟叶种植面积每增加1亩,烟农陷入收入贫困的风险将减少23.7%,烟叶资源更多地被非贫困烟农俘获,暂时性贫困烟农和持久性贫困烟农种植面积相对较少;烟叶种植面积减少会显著降低选择性贫困和持久性贫困烟农的户均纯收入,尤其是持久性贫困烟农,可能带来的致贫、返贫问题。因此,需要有效甄别不同贫困类型烟农,有选择、有预期地逐步执行缩减计划,并继续挖掘烟叶基础设施的增收能力和拓展产业帮扶措施,松绑贫困户对烟叶种植的依赖。研究表明,我国在落实精准扶贫和产业帮扶措施时,需因人施策和多措并举,规避产业帮扶措施调整对农户脱贫效果的不利影响。     

农村金融与公共物品和服务:什么对小农户最重要

在发展中国家,对小农户最重要的是有一个稳定和有利的经济环境,这使他们能够将农业固有的不确定性转化为可以衡量的风险,减少和分散这些风险,降低经济活动的交易成本,进而通过提高获利能力来扩大其经营。政府持续地投资并提供公共物品及服务,对创造这样一种环境是至关重要的。因此,农村金融的重要性是显而易见的,因为它帮助小农户战胜贫苦的有效性很大程度上取决于小农户的经营是否是在这样的环境下进行。在中国农业经济和非农业经济快速转型的过程中,小农户大大地受益于政府持续地投资并提供公共物品及服务,以及增进的刺激。然而,尽管有这些重大成就,中国仍然存在着数百万的农村贫困人口,特别是在中西部地区。因此,中国政府面临的挑战是,要以一种穷人易于获得的方式,以及使他们更好地融入获利性的供应链,把他们与不断扩大的国内外市场联系在一起,持续投资并提供公共物品及服务。