The construction of the World Bank as a political, intellectual, and financial actor in international capitalist development (1940-81)

Abstract

With over 75 years of history, the World Bank has shown a notable capacity to grow in an incremental manner, adapting itself to the conditions and pressures of international economic policy. This article analyzes the construction of the World Bank as a political, intellectual, and financial actor in international capitalist development, discussing the forms by which this construction occurred, the principal means used, the contradictions it faced, and the pressures and interests it responded to. Despite its technical façade, the Bank always acted, albeit in different forms, in the interface of the political, economic, and intellectual fields, due to its singular condition as lender, policy formulator, and inducer of ideas and prescriptions about what should be done in questions of capitalist development. In this complex but upward trajectory, the Bank assumed a central place among the other development agencies born after World War II. The text is based on primary documentation and a vast bibliography. The central argument is that the World Bank only consolidated itself as a development agency during the McNamara administration (1968-81).