Multilateral Development Banks, Governments, and Civil Society:

Chiaroscuros in a Triangular Relationship

Gabriel Casaburi, Mara Pa Riggirozzi,

Mara Fernanda Tuozzo, and Diana Tussie

Landmark events such as the end of the Cold War, the renaissance of market policies, and the

worldwide expansion of liberal political systems have contributed to civil society being gradually

accepted as a legitimate international actor. Although nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)

have implemented microlending and resettlement projects since the 1980s, the setting is different

today. So is the responsibility of the players. For one thing, NGOs are now given the

responsibility of identifying vulnerable groups and social needs in order to design effective

assistance programs; NGOs are also seen as vehicles for maximizing the effectiveness of

international funds. Most important, they have become the main challenge to the agendas of

international economic institutions.

It is in this context that the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank

(IDB) initiated step-by-step adjustments in their mission and mandate on the one hand, and

operational changes on the other. Both enlarged their agendas to incorporate interventions in

areas closely associated with public administration (that is, modernization of the state,

consolidation of democratic institutions, strengthening of local governments, protection of

human rights and the environment, and reform of social policies). Conditions applied to the loans

and their implementation in specific projects also became subject to public monitoring. The

cultural change within the institutions themselves demanded new skills to initiate consultations

with local civil society. These advances have not followed a linear progression. The new

approach still coexists with the persistence of traditional top-down practices. Furthermore,

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country case studies show that there is a major gap between the incorporation of new modalities

by the multilateral development banks (MDBs) and their implementation in programs and

projects at the national level, often as a result of borrowing governments resistance.

In this concluding essay, we bring together the various components of our project

together, in two main parts. In the first, we deal with the governance agenda as it is applied by

the multilateral development banks at the global and local levels and in relation to their own

institutional governance. In the second, we draw together the main conclusions and the major

trends stemming from the case studies.

The Evolving Agenda

Until the 1970s, the operations of the MDBs were strictly related to the narrow mandates

stipulated in their charters: the provision of long-term financing for infrastructure projects such

as roads, bridges, power plants, and sewerage. The MDBs were meant to take the place of

undeveloped domestic capital markets and eventually close the gap with the more advanced

industrial nations. By the late 1970s, but most notably in the 1980s, this strategy yielded far

lower results than expected. Questions emerged about the value of such efforts, in a context in

which macroeconomic mismanagement undermined contributions to growth. By the mid-1980s,

as priorities shifted from economic development to financial survival, a policy consensus

prevailed on the failure of key economic policies in many developing countries and on what

should be done. A new confidence in orthodox economics set the frame for the structural reform

agenda that called for a stronger role of market mechanisms to allocate resources. Trade

liberalization, privatization, deregulation, and the elimination of price-distorting subsidies were

then considered essential to restore, first, financial solvency and, then, the conditions for

sustainable long-term economic growth in developing countries. The MDBs continued their

2
traditional infrastructure-related loans but wrapped up with policy-based loans. Conditionality

funds were contingent on the commitment to market liberalization.1 In the context of the debt

crisis and the shallow international financial markets of the late 1980s, the leverage of the MDBs

to put forward their reform agenda was significant. These external pressures, coupled with

domestic factors, succeeded in making governments in Latin America embrace the reform

agenda in the early 1990s.

Sweeping reforms were slow to show the expected positive effects on growth, stability,

and employment in most reforming countries. Moreover, the social costs related to the structural

adjustment of the 1980s became more and more evident; social and political consensus to

support the reforms became harder to obtain. A double pressure mounted against the MDBs. On

one hand, domestic social and political actors in countries undertaking the reforms resented the

external pressure to push them through. On the other hand, the international communitymostly

through NGOs in Washingtonbegan to lobby strongly to revise the structural reform creed and

bring more issues to the consideration of the MDBs strategies, including the environment, the

social impact of reforms, and the political legitimacy of the governments embracing reform

agendas.2

The MDBs have responded to these twin challenges in a way that creatively opened new

spheres of action to them. A new consensus emerged alleging that these reforms could be

politically feasible and sustainable in the long term only if specific conditions were met. Among

the conditions are legitimacy of governments, adequate regulatory frameworks, active

participation by those most directly affected, a capable and transparent civil service, and a

decentralized system of policy implementation that generates accountability at all levels.3

Together, these new conditions became increasingly packaged under the catch-all term

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governance. Increasingly, lending operations and overall financial support have expanded to take

into account how societies operate. New policy-based loansand, what is more important, the

new conditionality attached to themare meant to help improve the governance of borrowing

countries.

Governance: Wandering Around a Chameleon Concept

The concept of governance has become pervasive in social sciences over the past yearsso

much so, that a literature review would be an endeavor in and of itself and would go well beyond

the scope of this article. However, meanings adapt to context and purposes, just as chameleons

change according to their surroundings. Flexibility and ambiguity are part of its virtues and have

proved useful to deal with the complexities of the exercise of authority in fin de sicle societies.4

Convenience notwithstanding, there emerged a body of literature that attempts to

circumscribe the uses of the term and define more precisely its meaning, hence articles such as

Uses and Abuses of the Concept of Governance5 or The Proper Use of Governance in

International Relations.6 From this literature, we are able to identify a common ground among

the different uses of the term. It refers to situations in which several actors play different roles to

achieve a given goal in a context where power is exercised with or without the endowment of a

formal authority. The idea conceived in the context of domestic politics suited the realm of

international relations theory very well.

The more recent questioning of the effective capacities of traditional state structures to

fulfill their obligations and achieve their goals enabled a smooth transition of the use of the term

governance from the domestic to the global arena. The increasing recognition of the importance

of nonstate actorsfirms, business associations, NGOs, advocacy groupsto deal effectively

with complex public policy issues made the term perfectly suited as an explanatory tool. In this

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more general use, governance involves building consensus, or obtaining the consent or

acquiescence necessary to carry out a program, in an arena where many different interests are in

play.7 Thus, governance can be applied to different units of analysis: an industry, an issue area,

an international regime, or a country (as international development institutions do when they

refer to improving the governance in borrowers). This concept has an additional advantage: it

addresses issues of distribution of power and definitions of roles that allow the masking of

political conflicts and facilitates the presentation of ideas in a nonideological fashion.8 This

feature has contributed to its rapid acceptance. Curiously, the concept has no Spanish equivalent.

The Latin American political tradition tends to consider the state as the epicenter of all struggles.

The concept allows an analysis of MDBs as significant political actors invested with huge

influence, although not always with formal authority, local or global. The exercise of their

influence is always through indirectbut nonetheless forcefulways, as conditions attached to

their lending operations or as strategic proposals on a broad array of public policies. MDBs

participate as key players in the governance structure of many different policy arenas, both in the

global economy and in borrowing countries. Moreover, as large bureaucratic organizations with

a loose definition as to whom they are accountable, their own institutional governance structure

has increasingly come under the scrutiny of scholars, public officials in donor and borrowing

countries, and, most insistently, international NGOs. A look into the inner dynamic of

international organizations and the anatomy of influence is hardly new.9 What is new is the

extent to which this inner dynamic is affected by international civil society organizations and the

way in which these organizations contribute to shaping agendas, projects, and processes.

The Governance Agenda as Applied by the World Bank and the IDB

Despite the complexities, these multilateral institutions have wholeheartedly incorporated the

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concept of governance into their thinking and even into their lending programs. Good

governance has become desirable in and of itself, for the benefit of the subjects that are

governed. Even though both multilateral organizations have embraced many good governance

goals, their approaches have differed. The IDB does not use the term; instead it takes

governments as a starting point from which to build an agenda of modernization of the state that

includes decentralization, redefinition of responsibilities, and institutional streamlining. It

encourages civil society participation to provide checks and balances, thus reinforcing the

process of providing checks and balances. The portfolio of MDB loans directed to the legislative

and judicial branches is on the increase. Together the package is intended to balance the

traditional exclusive reliance of MDBs on the executive.

In the case of the World Bank, good governance does not seem to fit very well in the

mandate of the intergovernmental organization, supposedly expected to be a technical

apolitical body designed to contribute to the economic development of its members, not to

design or redesign their political and social systems. The World Bank seemed to have found a

way to get around this contradiction. It uses a definition of governance that turns it into a

problem-solving tool to make projects more effective or to help borrowing countries use scarce

resources better to move along the development path. Thus, according to the World Bank,

governance is the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a countrys

economic and social resources for development.10 In this way, governance becomes

governance for development,11 a set of conditions that facilitates economic development,

consistent with the original mandates of the World Bank and, in principle, stripped of political

significance. It is about efficiency and effectiveness of public policies. This narrow definition,

however, opens a wide array of new areas in which the World Bank has become entitled to

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involvement. The goals of achieving better governance require action in the following

dimensions:

Political and bureaucratic accountability. The citizens of a country should have some

way of letting political leaders and policymakers in a country know how they evaluate

their performance. Short of defending democratic governments or multiparty systems,

this component of governance questions the ability of unpopular governments to

implement effective policies in the long run. Policies seen to contribute to this end, and

thus eligible for lending are decentralizing administration, creating ombudsman offices,

upgrading public sector information systems, and improving (or creating) the tasks of the

comptroller-general.

The rule of law. Investment prospects can be improved by virtue of a rational legal order

that is predictable and free of political interference. The system should provide the

framework to define property rights, contracts, and liabilities, based on written norms, not

subject to the capricious interpretations of civil servants. Activities to be supported are

revision of regulatory frameworks, legal training and technical assistance to members of

the judiciary, and improvement of the information systems of the judicial system.

Freedom of association and participation. The effectiveness and sustainability of any

public project is enhanced when those who will be affected by it can participate in the

design and implementation of the process. The World Bank envisages participation of

grassroots community organizations as being closer to the affected social groups than

governmental bodies. A wider role for civil society organized by local organizations

should help programs overcome the lack of legitimacy and representation of many

governments in developing countries and should ease the pressures at the same time from

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 international NGOs. Actions to be taken by the World Bank include the incorporation of

different voices from civil society during design stages and the implementation of

projectsmainly socialdirectly through NGOs.

This agenda is reflected in lending programs that lean heavily toward reforming social

policies (including education) and decentralizing and devolving authority to provincial and local

government. Increasingly included is reform of the judiciary to facilitate access and increase

efficiency, including the creation of financial courts. All in all, the problems of governanceand

not only in developing countrieshave a technical side related to lack of knowledge, skills, and

material resources of different actors. However, key aspects related to bad governance cannot

be delinked from political implications. Technical assistance to a mediocre judiciary may bring

some help, but if it is not independent from political manipulation, it will deliver only minor

improvements. The political power that controls the judiciary will have little incentive to lose its

prerogatives. It can only be expected to change under political pressure, driving the government

to strike a negotiated bargain. The MDBs role in the first areatechnical assistanceis easy to

imagine, whereas its role in the second scenariopolitical bargaininglooks rather awkward.

As Susan Strange noted, Markets cannot play a dominant role in the way in which a political

economy functions unless allowed to do so by whoever wields power and possesses authority.12

In sum, the exercise of power and authority lies at the heart of governance, however narrowly

defined.

Although MDBs intend to play within the limits of the so-called technical understanding

of governance, they also expect to achieve results coherent with a wider definition of

governance: better governments that are more transparent, more honest, and more representative

of the popular will. In this wider sense, we can analyze the roles of the MDBs in the last decade

8
at three different levels: global, local (borrowing countries), and their own institutional

governance. In the following sections, we discuss the complexities at each of these levels.

The Participation of MDBs in Global Governance

Lacking a central authority to impose decisions on all participants, the management of

international economic affairs suffers from the same problems of all other global issues. With the

waning of the East-West confrontation, global economic issues came to the fore as part of the

challenges to be solved by the new world order. The global economy itself has been transformed

with the institutional and technological evolution that has given capital markets a renewed

predominance. Less developed countries as a group, and some countries in particular, have

become relevant actors. This arises not so much out of their political activism (as in the 1950s

and 1960s) but as a result of the fast growth of their relative economic weight, whether as global

traders or as borrowers in the world financial system. These changes require a redistribution of

decisionmaking power among a larger number of state actors. Furthermore, a new set of nonstate

players emerged demanding a place under the same sun. Multilateral economic organizations

have grown in number of members, coverage, and complexity; multinational corporations have

become key channels through which an increasingly large portion of the global exchange of

capital, technology, goods, and services is conducted; and international NGOs have raised their

voices as advocates of interest groups so far never represented at a global level by any of the

traditional actors.13 Together with rising aspirations of different actors, technology and financial

deregulation have turned the global economy more volatile and unruly. The governance of the

system has become more and more complex, and the whole formal and informal institutional

structure under which the world economy has been managed over past decades is under stress.

Although MDBs are still privileged actors in the politics of adjustment and global economic

9
governance, their stronghold over capital markets has declined. At the same time, they are under

constant fire because of their increased visibility and the new demands from global civil

society.14 The increasing centrality of MDBs is supported by other auxiliary factors.

Traditional battlegrounds, such as the UN Conference on Trade and Development,

became increasingly irrelevant, as did developing country groupings, such as the Nonaligned

Movement or the Group of 77. The conflict has been replaced by a global consensus on a

technical vision of the problems of underdevelopment, more linked to inadequate national

policies than to biases in the international economic order against developing countries.

Simultaneously, the core issues of the liberal internationalist agenda15 are now more rooted

than ever before in Latin America. Indeed, even though in the late 1990s the World Bank seemed

ready to revise part of the Washington Consensus creed, and most of Europe has turned to social-

democratic governments, in Latin America promarket reforms continue apace. Even the center-

left governments elected in the Southern Cone are not expected to move away much from the

orthodox reform path.

It is in this context that MDBs manage to capture a central role, almost monopolistic, in

the mainstream discourse on development issues and the ensuing policy recommendations. This

gives MDBs an unparalleled capacity to influence the main thrust of economic and social

policies in a myriad of developing nations that shapes the way these countries participate in the

consolidation of the new global economy.16 Moreover, it could be argued that the MDBs are

increasingly undertaking a newly born capacity as guardians of a global commons promoting

new environmental issues and seeking to become the voice of the worlds poor.

As the influence of MDBs in borrowing countries grew, so did their visibility; and as

their agenda extended, they have come under pressure to shed their traditional monastic secrecy

10
in favor of a more open style. Most notably, international advocacy groups have mounted

pressure to adopt more transparent operating practices and lending modalities to make MDBs

more accountable. Some of these demands had usually been part of the traditional left-wing

criticism of the Bretton Woods order. In this postCold War era, they find a different echo within

both the MDBs and donor countries. With the fears of communism behind, the apprehensions

regarding popular participation, democratic representation, and minorities rights abated. MDBs

now seem more willing to listen to these demands, discuss them openly, and even implement

significant changes. The international scenario has contributed to changing the way MDBs

conduct their own internal affairs and lending operations in borrowing countries. Their role as

single-issue institutions has inevitably been modified.

This transformation, however, was greeted differently at each bank. The IDB operates as

a regional facilitator or broker. It participates in regional deliberations to build consensus on

required reforms. In contrast, the World Bank is sheltered by an aura of apolitical interventions

that allows it to steer its doctrine. It applies loan conditions that would be unacceptable were they

not justified on nonpolitical grounds.

Local Governance and MDB Lending Practices in the 1990s

Coupled with exogenous criticisms, other endogenous factors also pushed in the same direction;

internal evaluations showed rather starkly the unsatisfactory success of projects over past

decades. Widespread problems of governance were perceived to interfere with the success of

projects or to undermine the ultimate aims of economic policies. Thus, MDBs operational

mechanisms introduced in the 1990s have aimed at reshaping the interaction among stakeholders

in the decisionmaking process.17 A key aspect in these changes has been their willingness to

acceptand sometimes promotethe participation of nonstate actors at different stages of their

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lending projects. In their opening to new social actors, MDBs have focused primarily on

representatives of civil society.

Superimposed on these external influences, governance structures in developing countries

in and of themselves are slowly undergoing a transformation as new patterns of interaction are

emerging between new and old-time actors. The MDBs embedded tradition of restricted and

opaque relations with central governments seems to be increasingly contested by an incipiently

mobilized civil society that, fragile or strong, has made an appearance on the stage. In addition,

large-scale privatization and deregulation have also made room for an invigorated private sector

seen to participate actively in public policy issues that used to be the exclusive realm of central

government. Such proliferation of actors creates a scene where the resolution of problems and

the implementation of programs fit perfectly the complexities analyzed by the literature on local

governance. MDBs programs, by affecting more and more areas outside the traditional and

narrowly defined infrastructure-related loans and, in some cases, by inviting new stakeholders to

become involved in projects, have become increasingly entangled in the governance structures of

their clients. This scenario is a road riddled with obstacles where weak civil societies leave a

vacuum for the MDBs to step in with an agenda that tends to be biased or mistargeted. The risk

is that the MDB agenda may be seen to be a cultural implant, disconnected from country realities

and needs, scarcely contributing to the desired goal. In this respect, the World Bankbeing

more distant and autonomous from member governments is more susceptible to falling into

this predicament and also to reflecting a narrow predominantly anglo-saxon view.18

Perhaps the most important contribution of MDBs has been their operational practices

that have led to changes in governance practices at country level or at least at project level. By

increasing stakeholder participation in projects, MDBs have generated high expectations. And

12
these actions hold the greatest potential for introducing meaningful changes in the role the

institutions play in borrowing countries. The point certainly deserves a separate analysis to

dissect the myths and realities of the new participatory paradigm that MDBs claim to pursue.

Although at the level of ideas the discourse relies on concepts of popular participation and

empowerment, practices seem more related to the drive of the private sector to obtain customer

satisfaction. We analyze this tension next.

Popular Participation or Customer Satisfaction?

A key point of the governance agenda addresses the issue of the participation of those who will

be affected by projects. Underlying this new concern of the MDBs are two issues: how much of

their loans actually reaches the supposed beneficiaries and, more important, to what extent the

supply of programs and projects meets the real demands of the different social groups affected

by them. The first concern involves issues related to the effectiveness of the loans, the so-called

delivery mechanisms. The second is much broader and more significant because it implicitly

questions the representativeness of the governments with which the MDBs have until now been

negotiating their lending operations. Whereas the first is basically a technical issue, the second is

fundamentally a political one.

The new strategyconsistent with these concernsis to design programs that are

demand driven. This means that beneficiariesin other words, demandshould drive the design

of programs and take part in implementation to make sure that they receive what they need,

much in the same line as the business tenet to make firms more client-oriented. In the context of

multilateral lending, however, this issue goes further and deeper than just improving customer

satisfaction; it entails redefining who the clients of the MDBs are. So far, the provision of

financial support had involved working almost always with central governments, which have a

13
dual role as clients and shareholders. National governments have been the borrowers and the

legal entity contracting the obligation to repay.

By attempting to incorporate and even circumvent governments through the promotion of

civil society participation, the MDBs are opening new spaces for actors that may or may not be

to the liking of the incumbent government. Defining the clients, or even prioritizing them, may

become problematic when various constituencies exist who may not share the same goals and

interests. How would the MDBs handle an eventual conflict between two clients? As things

stand now, the MDBs may not bypass the governments in their relations with institutions of civil

society because the latter cannot assume liabilities, and the official borrowers continue to be the

national governments. This dilemma has already arisen in the discussion about the opening of the

World Bank Country Assistance Strategy (CAS). Among our case studies, the issue emerged in

various ways in each country. In Mexico, the government opposed opening the CAS and, when

faced with an information leak, the government issued a complaint based on the principle of

confidentiality in the Bank-government relationship. In Brazil, it was the combined action of

certain NGOs and a few members of Congress that forced the government to make the CAS

public. In Argentina, the CAS was made public to discussion only once it was approved, and

then only to a small group of NGOs and academics. In sum, it is clear that there are also strong

political and strategic aspects hidden behind the apparently more narrow technical agenda of

increasing civil society participation to improve the effectiveness of loans and the efficiency of

the delivery mechanisms.

Asymmetric Expectations: Ownership or Empowerment

In the business of multilateral lending, it used to be the case that projects had to be identified (by

experts), prepared, appraised, and selected through comprehensive and systematic analysis.19

14
These methods included cost-benefit analysis, linear programming models, network scheduling,

and planning/programming budgeting systems. Underlying these methods was the assumption

that plans emanating from rational analysis had to be carried out through a hierarchical structure

of authority and a comprehensive system of rules and regulations. Exhaustive analysis would

lead to a concise definition of problems and generate alternatives from which optimal policy

choices could be made. Conflicts over goals and values were seen as adverse, unwanted

manifestations of politics in pursuit of selfish interests. Development planners and officials of

international lending institutions attempted through this strategy to promote social and economic

reforms in developing societies with relatively little knowledge of the conditions they were

seeking to transform and with little certainty that their theories, policies, and projects would

produce the desired effects.20

The new paradigm is straightforwardly value laden, and it has thus required changes not

only in the content of projects but also in the way projects are conceived. Design and

implementation of projects has become less hierarchical, and operations have moved from

overarching goals to targeted interventions. Since the mid-1990s, in both MDBs, loans and

projects have made efforts to include consultation with beneficiaries. New procedures are

gradually evolving to replace the traditional reliance on external experts, which assumed the

existence of authoritative and objective decisionmakers whose input could provide solutions to

economic and social problems. The character of consultation has evolved in the process and a

new procedure known as communicational planning is now in vogue. Communicational

planning involves continuous dialogue with beneficiaries during the design and implementation

of a specific project or program. In the words of the World Bank, consultation is considered as

an iterative process that can and should be repeated at every stage of the Banks project

15
cycle.21

Consultation is seen as a proxy for participation; in turn, participation is supposed to

allow beneficiaries to take an active and influential role in shaping decisions that will affect their

daily lives, safeguarding against policy reversals and offering loans and programs greater

legitimacy and, one hopes, sustainability. It is result oriented. Consultation is seen to facilitate

identification of the neediest sectors;

procurement of reliable information;

increased management skills of socially excluded sectors; and

cost reduction, insofar as it enhances the willingness of beneficiaries to invest more

time and labor in a project that belongs to them.22

Participation thus conceived is restricted to consultation by request. But tension is created

insofar as the scope of participation is restricted to projects, programs, and issues that both

MDBs and government agree are appropriate candidates for consultation. Not only are the

bounds of participation clearly marked beforehand but it is also participation by request on a

case-by-case basis.

Yet once the process is set in motion, expectations rise and differences about what

participation entails have begun to flourish among actors involved. Gradually, as the need to

connect projects at the microlevel with policies at the macrolevel has become increasingly

apparent, the expectations of civil society have gone beyond the MDBs piecemeal offer.

Participation by invitation to preselected instances is seen to be too narrow to channel the new

demands. NGOs and other civil society groups argue in favor of the need to coordinate projects

and programs with overall economic policies. For instance, sanitation programs in urban areas

cannot be isolated from housing projects, and both of them, at the same time, need to be linked

16
with the general development strategy. The lack of coordination and the tension between these

two levels has led civil society to demand a bigger say in the design of policies and development

strategies as well. In general, NGOs no longer see their role as restricted to more efficient

executors of programs and projects. Their demands have flourished, especially vis--vis the

World Bank, which has provided them with an enabling environment. The NGOs have included

the IDB only at the edge of their radar screen, and they have focused mainly on the World Bank,

which has made greater efforts to include their demands, albeit after immense pressure.

Thus the process of participation creates a growing gap between the expectations of

NGOs and the MDBs with regard to the scope of the concept of participation and ultimately its

aim. While MDBs and governments tend to see participation as an instrument of ownership

a remedial way to improve project resultsNGOs and other civil society groups see it as a step

to empowerment, or a way to compensate for the exclusionary bias of the policy process. With

the growing ascendancy of autonomous civil societies in the region, the confines of requested

participation opened by MDBs have become all too obvious. For NGOs and grassroots

organizations, the meaning of participation is linked to the capacity of social actors to redirect

and shape broad policies that affect them. Participation should promote empowerment and is

considered as a propelling force toward good governance practices and decision by consensus.

Participation should also strengthen civil society by empowering groups, communities, and

organizations to negotiate with institutions and bureaucracies, thereby influencing public policy

and providing a check on the power of government. The novelty of this dynamic is that civil

society proposals are exogenous to the government and political parties and somehow question

their established legitimacy to control the policy process.

Most projects and programs seem to face this tension between empowerment and

17
ownership. Although consultation takes place, it is not enough to quench the new demands that

have gradually arisen. The asymmetry of expectations (with streaks of confrontation) increases

as we move from micro- to macroareas. For instance, it is increasingly possible to find civil

society involvement in project design, but involvement in the selection of issues to be included in

country programming is still uncommon. In sum, civil society demands more involvement in

project/program and policy design than what MDBs and governments are genuinely willing to

incorporate. NGOs, claiming that they better represent grassroots movements and organizations,

aspire to play an agenda-setting role, often bypassing governments, elected or not. However clear

the MDBs operational strategy for achieving the goals of governance and participation may be,

politicization, tension, and even conflict may ensue in the new three-way relationship. NGOs

aspire to increasing influence over the decisionmaking processes. Why settle for just a piece of

the sky?

Institutional Governance:

The IDB and the World Bank in Comparative Perspective

The process differs in rhythm and modalities when comparing international organizations.

Evidence shows that the incorporation of new mechanisms and strategies for civil society

involvement stems from the institutional culture and political practices of the organizations. In

turn, the different governance structures and institutional cultures of each MDB influence the

pursuit of their governance agenda and their participatory paradigm, and the intensity and even

the commitment with which they are pursued. Although both the World Bank and the IDB now

share a concern for the design of projects in a new bottom-up fashion, there are differences in the

way objectives and strategies are framed. The World Bank, still marked by the long-time effort

of structural adjustment, has placed overall greater emphasis on the consolidation of the gains of

18
stabilization. In contrast, the IDBs greater attention to regional peculiarities, coupled with its

different skills base, is reflected in an agenda that makes much more of the great income

inequalities in the region. The IDBs main thrust is on the goal of equity-oriented growth. At the

IDB, the goals pursued do not come under the umbrella of governance; they come under the

umbrella of second generation of reforms and modernization of the state. Its focus is mainly on

institutional strengthening, including the ability of civil society to take up some of the tasks

previously undertaken by government.

The aspect of governance that matters first is the composition and functioning of the

board. The executive directors represent the member countries, and their individual voting power

is weighted by the size of their capital contribution. In this respect, the IDB stands apart because

the distribution is highly concentrated.23 The IDB is at once closer both to borrower governments

who hold a little over 50 percent of its capital and votes and to the United States, which enjoys

enormous dominance with a third of the total voting power. The governors of the IDB from both

the United States and the region display an intense sense of ownership and a distinct feeling of

entitlement over the lending program. The IDB, as put by Sidney Dell, is the servant of the

member governments, not their master.24 Although this relationship may be changing, the

essence remains untouched, change being slow and still quite marginal. Governments are an

integral part of the governance of the IDB.

In contrast, the World Banks voting and capital shares are relatively more atomized. The

United States remains the single largest shareholder at the World Bank, but with 17.43 percent of

the voting power, it holds a significantly smaller portion than at the IDB. Even though the World

Bank president is always a U.S. national nominated by the Treasury, the atomized distribution of

shareholding and voting power allows the Bank president and management to hold an arms

19
length relationship with all governments, including the United States. After taking office, the

World Banks president and, by extension, its management are independent from all

shareholdersmuch more so than are the president and management of the IDB.

Shareholding power also influences the agenda-setting process. In the case of the IDB,

the agenda is an item for negotiation with each periodical capital increase. Thus, regional

governments are allowed a greater role in setting the agenda that then unleashes lending

programs. For instance, the eighth replenishment, in 1994, provided a forum where members,

through a consensus-building process, discussed and agreed on the new investment priorities. In

contrast, the atomized shareholding of the World Bank, gives management greater leverage in

the shaping of the agenda. In this case, the agenda is less negotiated and more prone to include

global issues.

Different patterns of recruitment also influence the relationship style with borrowing

member governments. The IDBs president is always drawn from the Latin American ranks, and

he is seen as a collective ambassador of the governors of the Bank, of borrowing countries, and

of the major donor, the United States. He remains much more closely scrutinized by the board

than the president of the World Bank and must be careful not to upset political sensitivities.

Moreover, top management at the IDB is more frequently drawn from the regions former high-

level public officials than at the World Bank, where other kinds of channels based on merit,

education, and formal and informal old boys networks prevail. This allows the World Bank to

play an evangelizing role.25 Although these are, all in all, differences of degree rather than of

kind, the result is a different relationship vis--vis all governments, both borrowers and donors.

Careful respect of government priorities in a world in which popular representation is at

best imperfect restricts the IDBs room to maneuver when forced to define who it is responsible

20
to. First and foremost the IDB responds to governments and to government-set priorities.26 Thus,

its relative inclination to increase its openness to civil society is marked by this very clear line of

command. This is especially evident at the level of country programming, which is considered to

be solely a government-to-bank negotiation. Moreover, the result of the process still remains an

internal bank document: the so-called Country Programming Paper does not become derestricted

even after approval. By contrast, in most countries, the equivalent document from the World

Bank, the so-called Country Assistance Strategy, tends to be more readily accessible to the

public. Moreover, the World Bank is experimenting in a number of countries with the idea of

opening the exercise to participation at the same time as it conducts negotiations with the

government. The countries first selected in the region are Colombia, El Salvador, and Peru, all

three of them, it should be noted, characterized by the extreme fragility of state institutions.

As another indication of this trend, the World Banks president, James Wolfensohn, has

also launched a research process to assess the lessons of past structural adjustment, known as

Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative (SAPRI). Each country study requires

governmental approval and participation; still, the initiative in itself indicates the greater

autonomy of the World Banks president. It would be difficult to imagine IDBs President

Iglesias launching an independent general initiative of this sort requiring only case-by-case

consent at country level.

These character traits are also reflected in the constitution and shape of the inspection

panel at each MDB. The Inspection Panel at the World Bank is a three-member independent

panel, empowered to investigate on behalf of directly affected people regarding violations of

bank policies and procedures. Once a claim is submitted, the panel weighs evidence from

claimants and management and sends a recommendation to the board. If the board authorizes an

21
investigation, prior consent from the government involved is requested for the inspection to

proceed. In contrast, the inspection function is not permanent at the IDB, and much more power

is vested with the president. The office of the president receives claims, weighs evidence, and

submits recommendations to the board.27

However, the tighter mechanisms at the World Bank are no guarantee of tighter control

over projects when alternative mechanisms of finance are available. An illustrative case in point

was the much publicized attempt of President Wolfensohn in early 1997 to make the company

Endesa take measures to mitigate the effects of the Pangue Dam on the Bo Bo River in southern

Chile. When Wolfensohn threatened to declare the company in default, the company paid off its

debt obligations, seeking and obtaining alternative finance. The influence of the World Bank on

the project, and by extension of many NGOs, was thus curtailed.28

One could speculate that the World Banks inclination to incorporate civil society both

before and after country programming is an exercise that increases its already relatively high

autonomy from borrowing governments. The more demands are placed on its agenda, the more it

can play one against the other and the smaller will be the risk it runs of being tied to a single

stakeholder. The autonomy of the World Bank from borrower governments is indeed reflected in

greater opportunities for participation of civil society at the time of planning general strategies.

The real world reluctance remains to be tested, considering that the World Bank is only half of

the picture. In effect, in many if not most countries in the region, the IDB has become since 1995

the most important official provider of external support. If the World Banks strategy is open but

the IDBs remains a closed exercise, how relevant to the course of general economic and social

policy does the World Banks openness really become? Is it a half-empty exercise? Can the

World Bank on its own still make a difference?

22
 To take this point from a different angle, the World Bank has evidently been making

efforts to change its mode of conceiving country strategy before and is also predisposed to study

effects after. Today, at both the beginning and end of the process, procedures are clearly different

from those prevailing in the recent past and from what goes on at the IDB. At the IDB, these two

instancescountry programming and effects of country programmingstill remain out of the

bounds of the public domain and even out of the bounds of NGO concerns, which seem to be

overly concentrated on the global reach of the World Bank.

A clearly different approach to civil society strategies can be observed in the two MDBs.

Whereas the World Bank displays a market-centrist approach, the IDB focuses in a more state-

centric relationship. The World Bank assumes that increasing involvement of civil society and its

demands will, in time, improve the quality of governments. In contrast, at the IDB the

participation agenda is conceptually more closely linked to the state, placing the focus on the

linkages and interaction with governments. As a regional institution, the IDB is at pains to knit a

web of commitments with regional governments to allow and gradually strengthen the

participation of civil society. A priori, however, one would expect that these differences are

reduced, if not negligible, at a microlevel, where both institutions work within the same new

consensus on implementing development projects and sharing expertise, skills, and best

practices. Remaining differences at project level seem to stem from factors that are less

institutionalized and more haphazard, such as personalities, languages, and even national

idiosyncrasies.

Words and Deeds: The Evidence from the Case Studies

Field research in different Latin American countries focused on the patterns of relationship in the

triangle formed by MDBs, governments, and civil society. In the following section, we flesh out

23
some major trends stemming from the case studies, resisting the temptation to believe that the

eight points made below can cover the full complexity of the issues at stake.

1. The Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank exhibit different approaches to

promoting participation. Their differences have to do with the particular institutional culture

and the character of each organization.

The approach to civil society participation in the IDB and the World Bank reflects the specific

corporate culture and institutional features of each organization. The IDB has adopted a state-

centric approach to governments agreement. At the risk of severe oversimplification, the IDB is

less interested in leaning on a strong civil society to act as an effective check on government than

in channeling participation to predetermined and focalized instances. In contrast, the World Bank

takes a market-centric approach and aims at strengthening civil society to reduce the boundaries

of the state and to control the power of those who govern. This approach views the public sphere

in term of market mechanisms, where a strong civil society with heightened demands on

government will improve the quality of public administration. The IDBs agenda is molded by its

own governance whereby Latin American countries hold 50 percent of the voting power on the

executive board. This has allowed the IDB to generate less of an arms length relationship with

the borrowing governments of the region. Thus, the IDBs civil society approach works in

tandem with a commitment to the strengthening of the state.

2. In spite of their different approaches, the World Bank and the IDB exhibit strong similarities

when implementing projects. Civil society participation is promoted only in certain types of

projects.

Participation is almost exclusively limited to social assistance projects although there remains a

hard core of loans related to adjustment and specific sector reforms with little or no involvement

24
of civil society. Participation mechanisms are applied selectively. This means that, at best, it is

possible to identify only pockets of participation in social assistance programs.

The World Bank and the IDB each have a normative framework promoting civil society

participation, which is outlined in a series of operational recommendations. The commitment to

participatory practices is not binding. In fact, in the majority of the cases, the decision whether or

how to promote civil society participation remains at the discretion of loan officers. Ultimately,

the commitment to promote civil society participation is almost exclusively relegated to

instances of social assistance projects. Participation or consultation is compulsory in World Bank

lending only in three specific instances: high-risk environmental projects, projects affecting

indigenous peoples, and projects that lead to population resettlement. In such cases, the people

affected by the projects are entitled to raise complaints to the Inspection Panel in the event that

policies are not appropriately implemented. In all other programs, the inclusion of civil society is

considered a good practice and therefore reduced to a mere recommendation.

Participation, even with only these limitations, has led to tensions with the borrowing

governments. The lack of binding guidelines allows both MDBs to maintain an ambiguous and

selective stance avoiding confrontation with governments. In practice, the World Bank

introduces some ambiguity into its agitational rhetoric, whereas the IDB is operationally not as

weak toward civil society participation as it seems conceptually. This brings both MDBs closer

to the grassroots than is readily apparent, with different forms of participation taking place on

two tracks.

An MDBs/civil society track invites active participation in delivering social assistance

loans. Here, field offices in borrowing countries are key players. The World Bank relies on high-

profile liaison officers who maintain an active dialogue with the NGO community. The IDB has

25
convened an Advisory Council of the Civil Society in each field office to draw a map of civil

society organizations and sort out appropriate mechanisms of participation.

The MDBs/government track involves politically sensitive projects related to institutional

and sector adjustment reforms. Here, civil participation is shunned. Only some executive

agencies and loan officers take part in the negotiation of the terms and conditions of loans.

Paradigmatic examples of this track are the second-generation reforms that entail a redistribution

of power among players in the process. Herein lies the hard core of MDBs lending, where no

binding operational directives to invite participation are in practice. In essence, an invitation to

participate might even jeopardize required reforms.

3. Field research shows a much larger group of relevant social actors in the field than appears

on the MDBs radar screens. More specifically, in their construction of civil society, the MDBs

seem biased toward NGOs, without considering other, albeit weaker but still relevant, civil

society organizations, such as trade unions or cooperatives.

The image of civil society dear to MDBs is inspired by principles of self-regulation,

individualism, and voluntarism to the detriment of other forms of social organizations seldom

invited to participate. At the same time, invited NGOs seem increasingly attracted to the MDBs.

Because of this mutual attraction, there is an increasing trend to institutionalize these relations

via the creation of new government agencies in charge of implementing social assistance loans.

In Argentina, the Secretariat for Social Development has created a National Center of

Community Organizations to foster active links with NGOs. In Colombia, the 1991 constitution

established a framework for the participation of NGOs. In this context, the Colombian

Confederation of Nongovernmental Organizations has had an active role in MDBss projects. As

in the case of Argentina, trade unions and some civic organizations actively resisted the

26
structural adjustment measures. In Mexico, the government has generated strong links with

organizations closely linked to the state or the party apparatus. Rural organizations and

campesino movements from marginalized areas actively resist the adjustment policies of the

central administration.

In sum, the group of civil society organizations in Latin America able to raise demands is

considerably larger than the group of NGOs that either maintain an ongoing dialogue with or

receive funds from MDBs. This selective strategy was able to deflate the power of trade unions

and weaken their capacity to contest reform programs.

4. The commitment of MDBs to participatory mechanisms in social assistance loans is not

transferred with equal cogency to general lending strategies. The World Banks Country

Assistance Strategy and the IDBs Country Paper remain confidential documents discussed only

with the borrowing governments. Although the World Bank recently allowed participation in

selected countries, the experience was carried out half-heartedly and yielded rather limited

results.

Neither the IDB nor the World Bank disclose the hard numbers of adjustment contained in their

general lending strategies, although the World Bank has recently tested some innovations. In

Argentina, a debate was conducted after the fact on the CAS approved for the 19971999 period.

Amendments were thus foreclosed. Moreover, only the parts of the document that contained

reference to social assistance funding were up for debate. The macrosection was not made

available, and NGOs might have been led to believe the World Bank was a benefactor handing

out grants at no cost. In Colombia, Peru, and El Salvador, some civil society organizations were

invited to give inputs to the CAS process before approval by the board. Such openness must,

however, be put into context. Colombia and Peru are currently suffering severe internal conflicts;

27
civil society is politically disorganized, and a torn state is at odds responding to social demands.

In the case of Peru, the government gave its consent to consultation process, but it did not take

part in the experiment. In Colombia, several government agencies joined in the experience, but

invitations were significantly biased in favor of NGOs, with labor union movements and other

organizations altogether excluded. Whereas in Colombia the CAS was approved by the executive

directory and later published in Spanish, the contents of the final document in Peru were never

released. Thus, the possibility of comparing the draft and the end document never materialized.

At the other end is Mexico, where the government has severely limited possibilities for

participation. However, during the drafting of the CAS, civil society organizations managed to

get hold of some important information contained in the document and handed it over to the

press. As a consequence, many NGOs had the chance to air their views on specific points. The

incident led the government to raise an official complaint to the World Bank, thus demonstrating

the serious limitations that governments pose to the participation and disclosure policies.

In Brazil, a constitutional reform introduced in 1988 gave Congress the right to approve

international loans. The strengthening of Congress allowed civil society to switch their old

tactics of indirect action using the lever provided by North American NGOs. Such a form of

indirect participation was the expedient of human rights campaigns against the military

governments of the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1990s, however, the strengthening of civil society

organizations and the processes of democratic consolidation have opened new options in national

politics and rendered obsolete the sidestepping of government. The abandonment of indirect

tactics also coincided with the rise of networks dedicated to strengthening ties with political

parties and Congress. Political citizenship campaigns had as their focal points the institutions of

Congress and local government. In Brazil, for the first time ever, the strategies of legislators and

28
some NGOs converged to limit the collaboration between the executive and the MDBs. In

addition, the Brazilian case posed a new challenge insofar as civil society prioritized public

dissemination of the documents over participation. In fact, civil society and members of

Congress demanded that documents be translated into Portuguese and published.

Experiences with Country Assistance Strategies reveal that the intention of the World

Bank to promote genuinely participatory practices at a meaningful level of policy is rather

limited. The opening to participation seems to have been aimed at addressing the expectations of

relevant actors in Washington rather than of those who are actually affected by the

implementation of the reforms. The IDB has not fallen for such exercises. The Country Paper is

negotiated with the government and is not made available for public dissemination.

Paradoxically, the brunt of demands for greater participation is generally borne by the World

Bank. To sum up, case studies show that the actual relevance of the whole exercisethough

minimalhas more to do with the setting of precedents and the raising of expectations than with

the degree of participation achieved in a single event. It raises the floor level and has the

potential to remodel the building.

5. Governments in the region have left behind the confrontations with MDBs that marked the

1980s. Confrontation has been replaced by a new cycle of closer cooperation.

Since the early 1990s, MDBs have acquired the role of mere servants providing guidelines and

technical assistance to governments. They act as an ancilliary intelligentsia of governments.

Conditionality applied to the loans acts as a trigger for reform processes already in place.

Moreover, such conditions are frequently employed by governments as a spearhead to accelerate

the process and overcome internal opposition. The cases of reforms introduced in the health and

labor market sectors in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico illustrate this trend. Such work

29
in tandem can be observed even in highly sensitive areas the MDBs had never been involved

with. This has been the case in Colombia and Mexico, where widespread violence has justified

the financing of specific programs to promote peace and to prevent greater marginalization of

rural areas. In sum, lending programs during the 1990s have mostly coincided with the agendas

of the executive branch.

6. Case studies show that the main roadblocks to achieving greater levels of open participation

lie in governments. In fact, access to the extrabudgetary resources provided by MDBs may feed

into existing discretionary practices.

Governments have responded to the new participatory mechanisms of the MDBs on two tracks.

On the one hand, they are reluctant to allow access to information and participation in programs

centered on adjustment and reform. Insofar as a redistribution of power is at stake, the

implementation of sector reforms (health care, education, labor) is usually politically sensitive.

On the other hand, governments are prone to adopt the participatory initiatives of the MDBs in

social assistance projects. In many cases, these funds are used as clientelistic handouts to obtain

favors from the electorate. All in all, cases show excessive discretion in the extent to which

governments make use of funding and political calculation in the use of the mechanisms of

participation promoted by the IDB and the World Bank. The message, therefore, is that in the

demonizing of the MDBs a lot of displacement politics is taking place, and more care in the top-

down monitoring of the governments actions is necessary for global governance goals.

7. In spite of the MDBs declared reluctance to apply general prescriptions for health care

reforms, the experiences in Latin America have been exceptionally similar. Two features of such

reforms stand out: decentralization and the transfer of state-provided care to the private sector.

Decentralization can lead to a significant improvement in the quality of services and in the

30
management of public resources but requires competent local management skills, availability of

sufficient resources, and technical expertise. Few subnational administrations are qualified to

take over responsibilities from the federal government. In many instances, the fiscal funds

directed to the local administration rarely reach their destination. When received, these funds are

usually managed inefficiently or are insufficient to meet the obligations. As access to health care

cannot be ensured, inequality is at best perpetuated. Although many of these reforms are not

complete, the introduction of competition among providers and the increase in the role of private

health services providers so far have not been effective to make health care provision more

equitable.

8. The analysis of the loans supporting health care reform revealed the coexistence of two types

of practices: traditional practices that respond to a vertical hierarchy; and practices based on a

new consensus with respect to the principles of transparency, participation, and financial

accountability. Such coexistence leads to a growing gap between the rhetoric and the practice of

the MDBs and highlights the need to study the reasons why traditional practices are so difficult

to eradicate.

Negotiations between MDBs and governments have been highly ambivalent with regard to the

participation of civil society. In cases where municipalities and NGOs have taken an active role

in the negotiation processes (as in Brazil), this was because of congressional requirements rather

than because of the mechanisms promoted by MDBs in and of themselves. In all of the cases

studied, groups affected by the reforms were absent and even actively excluded from the

negotiation table. In Argentina and Mexico, resistance and collective action forced renegotiation.

An Open-Ended Walk

The new pledges of the MDBs may have a soft backbone. But they nonetheless have sown the

31
seeds of a transformation in the triangular relationship with government and civil society. The

process is fragmentary and ambivalent, but it has opened up new opportunities for civil society in

borrowing countries. The question of who ought to participate and when raises two important

issues.

First, the question of who is entitled to participate in the design of public policy points to

the central issue of interest representation. The new practices of the IDB and the World Bank

pose a major challenge to the traditional mechanisms embedded in representative democracies.

Once the secure terrain of electoral representation is abandoned, one is confronted with a

slippery slope where the rights and responsibilities of various social groups have to be redefined.

Who is more representative: an NGO with global reach opposed to the construction of a bridge

because of its environmental impact, or the inhabitants of an isolated town whose livelihood

might benefit from the construction of the bridge? Traditional democratic practices would give

priority to the majority and would formulate a range of approaches to addressing the interests of

minorities. The dilemma poses a challenge to the political systems of borrowing countries insofar

as it exposes their own democratic deficit. Although useful in crisis situations, the mechanisms

brokered by international organizations raise new problems of legitimacy.

Second, the question of when those entitled can participate further complicates the

picture. So far, participation has been restricted to the project implementation phases, with

precious few examples of civil society participation at higher levels of the decisionmaking

process. The risk posed by having participatory mechanisms that are embryonic without

adequate institutionalization is that such mechanisms may serve only to increase the legitimacy

of government policies without contributing much to createing conditions for the

democratization of the relationship between MDBs, governments, and civil society.

32
 All told, civil society participation in lending programs is here to stay. It will continue to

transform traditional power relations at the global and national levels. At the same time, the

MDBs have become key players in domestic politics beyond the field of macromanagement. The

nature of these changes goes beyond simple dilemmas of words versus deeds. Viewed with more

or less enthusiasm, they will adopt a different complexion in each country, but domestic and

international democratization will continue to fuel each other. As Alice quizzed the Cheshire cat

in her search through uncharted territory,

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?

That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat.

I dont much care where said Alice.

Then it doesnt matter which way you go, said the Cat.

so long as I get somewhere, Alice added as an explanation.

Oh, youre sure to do that, said the Cat, if you only walk long enough.29

Notes

Gabriel Casaburi is senior researcher fellow in the Program on International Economic

Institutions at FLACSO/Argentina and researcher at the Instituto de Estudios de la Realidad

Argentina and Latinoamericana (IERAL) in Buenos Aires. He has been a consultant for the

Inter-American Development Bank and ECLAC. Mara Pa Riggirozzi is a researcher in the

Program on International Economic Institutions at FLACSO/Argentina and a doctoral candidate

at the University of Miami, Florida. Mara Fernanda Tuozzo is a research officer in the Program

on International Economic Institutions at FLACSO/Argentina and a doctoral candidate at the

33
University of Warwick, England. Diana Tussie directs the Program on International Economic

Institutions at FLACSO in Buenos Aires. In 1996, she was selected as Distinguished Fulbright

Scholar in International Relations for the fiftieth anniversary of the creation of the Fulbright

Commission. The authors acknowledge financial support received from the Ford Foundation.

Miles Khaler and Helge Hveem provided helpful feedback.

1. Diana Tussie and Mara Fernanda Tuozzo, Argentinas Big Bang Reform: The

Interplay of MDBs and Domestic Actors, Working Paper No. 2 (Buenos Aires:

FLACSO/Argentina, 1997).

2. Paul Nelson, Transparencia, fiscalizacin y participacin: Los nuevos mandatos de

los bancos multilaterales de desarrollo, in Diana Tussie, ed., El BID, el Banco Mundial y la

sociedad civil: Nuevas formas de financiamiento internacional (Buenos Aires:

FLACSO/Argentina, 1997).

3. Sahid Burki and William Perry, Beyond the Washington Consensus: Institutions

Matter (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1998).

4. Commission on Global Governance, Our Global Neighborhood (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1995).

5. UNESCO, Governance, International Social Science Journal, no. 155 (March 1998):

105.

6. Ibid., p. 81.

7. Cynthia Hewitt de Alcntara, Uses and Abuses of the Concept of Governance,

34
International Social Science Journal, no.155 (March 1998): 105114.

8. Ibid.

9. Robert Cox and Harold Jacobson, The Anatomy of Influence: Decision Making in

International Organization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973).

10. K. Sarwar Lateef, Comment on Governance and Development by Edgardo

Boeningher, in World Bank, Proceedings of the World Bank Annual Conference on

Development Economics 1991(Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1992), p. 295.

11. Edgardo Boeningher, Governance and Development: Issues and Constraints, in

World Bank, Proceedings.

12. Susan Strange, States and Markets: An Introduction to International Political

Economy (London: Pinter, 1988), p. 23.

13. Leon Gordenker and Thomas G. Weiss, NGO Participation in the Global Policy

Process, Third World Quarterly 16, no. 3 (1995): 543555.

14. Richard Higgott and Simon Reich, From Globalisation to Glamourisation: The Rise

of the NGO in International Relations, paper presented at the annual meeting of the

International Studies Association, Washington, D.C., 1620 February 1999; Jan Aart Scholte,

The International Monetary Fund and Civil Society and Underdeveloped Dialogue, Report of

Research Findings, The Hague, Netherlands: Insitute of Social Studies, August 1998; Michael

Edwards, Global Citizen Actions (forthcoming 2000).

15. Craig Murphy, International Organization and Industrial Change: Global

Governance Since 1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 222.

35
 16. Ngaire Woods, Governance in International Organizations: The Case for the Reform

in the Bretton Woods Institutions, UNCTAD Paper for the Group of 24 (Geneva: UNCTAD,

1997).

17. The term stakeholders involves not only beneficiaries but also representatives of

borrowing governments (elected officials and local government officials), indirectly affected

groups such as NGOs and private sector organizations, and bank management staff.

18. Woods, Governance in International Organizations, p. 38.

19. Robert Picciotto and Rachel Weaving, The New Project Cycle, Finance and

Development 31, no. 4 (December 1994).

20. Daniel Rondinelli, Development Projects as Policy Experiments (London:

Routledge,1993).

21. World Bank, Participation Sourcebook (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1996), p.

10.

22. Norman Schwartz and Anne Deruyttere, Consulta comunitaria, desarrollo sostenible

y el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (Washington, D.C.: Inter-American Development

Bank, 1996).

23. Diana Tussie, The Inter-American Development Bank (Boulder: Lynne Rienner,

1995); Woods, Governance in International Organizations.

24. Sidney Dell, The Inter-American Development Bank: A Study in Development

Financing (New York: Praeger, 1971), p. 233.

25. Moises Naim, From Supplicants to Shareholders: Developing Countries and the

36
World Bank, paper presented at the conference sponsored by the Group of 24 on the occasion of

the fiftieth anniversary of the Bretton Woods conference, The International Monetary and

Financial System: Developing Country Perspectives, Cartagena, 1820 April 1994 (Geneva:

UNCTAD, 1995).

26. Political consensus among governments, for example, led the IDB to suspend

consideration of loans to Allendes Chile in the early 1970s and the Sandinista government in

Nicaragua in the 1980s. In the 1990s, with a new consensus on democratic rule after the fall of

President Aristide in Haiti, the IDB suspended all further country planning. When President

Fujimori suspended constitutional rule in Peru in April 1992, the board blocked all new loans to

the country, and management froze the signature of loans already approved by the board. The

block was lifted when elections were announced in September, and the Bank subsequently led an

international rescue package for Peru. See Tussie, The Inter-American Development Bank.

27. Nelson, Transparencia, fiscalizacin y participacin.

28. Marcel Claude, La Coorporacin financiera internacional y el financiamiento de la

represa pangue en el Bio-Bio: La excepcin a la regla? Working Paper No. 4 (Buenos Aires:

FLACSO, 1999).

29 Lewis Carroll, Alices Adventures in Wonderland, in Martin Gardner, ed., The

Annotated Alice (New York: Bramhall House, 1960), p. 88.

37