The World Bank Takes Center Stage

Abstract

The debt crisis and the World Bank’s entry into policy-based structural adjustment lending boosted its global profile and influence in the 1980s, and the collapse of the Soviet bloc and new membership of more than a dozen governments in 1991 and 1992 made the Bank a truly global financial institution. At the same time, an array of issues and pressures for change are creating apparent opportunities for NGO influence at the World Bank. Dissatisfaction with government implementation of donor-funded projects, commitment to structural adjustment and to minimizing the reforms’ social and political costs, pressure from environmental advocates, desire for greater cost recovery in irrigation and social service programs, pressure on human rights issues — all these create an environment in which NGOs are an increasingly relevant actor for the Bank.