Italy and the World Bank: The European Foundations of Development Lending, 1947–51

Foreign financial assistance for economic development and the discipline of development economics have traditionally been associated with US Cold War policy toward the Third World. This article, however, suggests that these practices were also shaped by the experiences of foreign aid for European reconstruction after the Second World War. The article traces loan negotiations between the World Bank and the Italian government, and argues that this process played a substantial role in shaping not only the World Bank's lending policies, but also the way its staff understood the institution's mission. The article emphasises Europe's significance as a site in the early history of development, suggesting new ways of understanding the evolution of development ideas, practices, and institutions after 1951.     

World Bank Loan to China Touches Off Differences

Therearesixmajorpoverty-strickencoun-tiesinQinghaiProvincePlateau.Fierceinnaturalcondi-tionsandlargeinpopulation,thesecountiesfeaturelowannualper-householdincomewhichis200-500yuan.Confrontingthesituation,theQinghaiprovincialgovern-mAntdecidedtomove58,000peopleintheseareatoDulanCountyintheHaixiMon-golianandTibetanEthnicGroupAutonomousPrefectureintheChaidamBasin,whichisknownforitsrichlyendowedwater,landandsunlightresources.InFebruaryl997,thisbecameaWorldBankprojectsubjecttospe-cialsuppor…     

Can the World Bank Enforce its Own Conditions?

In the 1980s, the World Bank stepped up policy‐based lending, making loans conditional on government policy and institutional reforms in the borrower country. In 2002, policy‐based lending (or adjustment loans) accounted for 64 per cent of total commitments. Some critics have argued that conditionality has failed because borrowers do not comply with conditions, and that borrowers do not comply because donors do not enforce the conditions, due to their own institutional incentives to lend. Accordingly, they argue that conditionality should be abandoned in favour of selectivity, a strategy in which donors would lend to governments that already have good policies and institutions in place. This article reviews the evidence that has been offered for this ‘enforcement critique’ and finds that it is not sufficient to support the argument. Although the critique is often asserted, and although there is ample evidence of lending pressures, no studies have attempted to determine whether borrower non‐compliance is a serious problem, or whether Bank failures to enforce are the principal reason for the failure of borrowers to meet conditions; nor have any studies been carried out to show whether lending pressures are the main reason for the Bank's failure to enforce.     

Tibet Experiences Cultural Development

TheTibetanraceboastsabrilliantculturenourishedbyTibetanBuddhism.Culturadevelonment,however,tookplaceatasnailpacebeforethepeacefulliberationofTibetin1951.Howisittoday?Factsspeakloudandclear.MASSCULTURALACTIVITIES.Therearesixmulti-functionalculturalartpalac…     

Report Reveals Latest Development

The year 2001 saw theconvocation of theFourth National Confer-ence on Work in Tibet.From August to October 2001,we conducted an extensiveinvestigation and study in theurban and rural areas Wewere especially impressed bythe urban expansion in Lhasa,Xigaze and Nyingchi Even     

My Paradigm or Yours? Alternative Development,Post-Development,Reflexive Development

Alternative development has been concerned with alternative practices of development—participatory and people-centred—and with redefining the goals of development. Mainstream development has gradually been moving away from the preoccupation with economic growth toward a people-centred definition of development, for instance in human development. This raises the question in what way alternative development remains distinguishable from mainstream development—as a roving criticism, a development style, a profile of alternative positions regarding development agency, methodology, epistemology? Increasingly the claim is that alternative development represents an alternative paradigm. This is a problematic idea for four reasons: because whether paradigms apply to social science is questionable; because in development the concern is with policy frameworks rather than explanatory frameworks; because there are different views on whether a paradigm break with conventional development is desirable; and finally because the actual divergence in approaches to development is in some respects narrowing. There is a meaningful alternative development profile or package but there is no alternative development paradigm—nor should there be. Mainstream development is not what it used to be and it may be argued that the key question is rather whether growth and production are considered within or outside the people-centred development approach and whether this can rhyme with the structural adjustment programmes followed by the international financial institutions. Post-development may be interpreted as a neo-traditionalist reaction against modernity. More enabling as a perspective is reflexive development, in which a critique of science is viewed as part of development politics.     

Development of Optical Fiber Communication

TheTibetAutonomousRegionhasmademuchgroundinthedevelopmentanduseofopticalfibercommunicationline.August28,1995:TheLhasa-XigazeandLhasaShannanopticalfibercommunicationlinesopened.Afterfivemonthsoftrialservice,theywereputintoofficialoperation.TheLhasa-Xigazeopticalfibercommunicationline,thefirstofitskindinTibet,extends340km.ItcrossestheGangdeseMountain(whichisnotoriousasthe"forbiddenareaforlife")withanelevationaveraging4,000meters.Itwaslaidin38daysandnights.1996:TheXigaze-Gyangze(viaBainan…     

Tibetan Families vs Social Development

TheSocio-EconomicResearchIunstituteoftheChinaTibetologyCentercompiledandnublishedFOrtv-YearChangesinnbetanFamiliesinJuly1996onthebasisofageneralsurveyof100householdsinTibet.BETIERLIFEoldTibetfeaturedtemporalandreligiousadministrationoverafeudalserfdom.Mon…     

The Development of Tibetan Culture

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Science and Technology at the World Bank, 1968–83

The World Bank was an important supporter of science and technology during the period 1968–83. President Robert McNamara’s poverty oriented strategy created challenges that led to technological research, technology assessment and technological innovation in agriculture, forestry, civil works construction, sanitation, and many other fields of development. The Bank also pioneered in financing governmental mechanisms to stimulate industrial innovation. On the other hand, its support to science and technology was limited by lack of an overall policy and systematic support from top management, as well as by cumbersome procedures designed for large infrastructural projects. Even so, its financial independence, its strong leadership, its experienced and non‐political technical staff, and its ability to scale up successful innovations through its project lending, made it an important promoter of appropriate technology in the developing world.     

Tidbits of Socio-Econonmic Development in Tibet

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Scientific Development of The Three-River Valley

ArecentchancebroughtthisauthorandGyaibo,directoroftheThree-RiverDevelopmentOfficeofTibet.togetherinBeijing.Hecametothecapitaltoreportontheprogressoftheproject,andIwascarryingoutfieldworkasaTibetanjour-nalist.TheThree-RiverProjectreferstothedevelopmentofth…     

Did Recent Voice Reforms Improve Good Governance within the World Bank?

Using the concept of good governance, this article assesses how voting rules in the World Bank Group's primary loan facility determine members’ ability to influence the formation of winning coalitions in the Executive Board. In weighted voting systems, the percentage of votes held by an actor does not adequately measure the ability of that actor to affect outcomes because voting weights do not account for either the possible number of coalitions that may form or the number of votes needed to pass a resolution. In short, weighted voting systems cannot be straightforwardly analysed with reference to voting weights but instead require the determination of relative voting power. Using multiple measures of a priori voting power, data are presented before and after recent voice reforms. Results indicate that the United States, as expected, holds the largest share of voting power. Also, as expected, most borrowing members have little voting power. Unexpectedly, in several voting groups a single member is able to ensure its election to the Board. Hence, other members of these voting groups have no formal influence on the Board. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications of voting power analysis for the concept of good governance within the World Bank.     

Grabbing Land for Equitable Development? Reengineering Land Dispossession through Securitising Land Development Rights in Chongqing

This article examines the securitisation of land development rights under the dipiao scheme in Chongqing, China. It argues that this instrument is based on the dispossession and exploitation of rural households but these unequal relations have been concealed and naturalised through the complex geographies and temporalities of dispossessory arrangements, financing mechanisms and discursive tactics. By overcoming political barriers to land commodification and dispossession in this way, the Chongqing government has expanded the frontier of commodifiable land and sustained a land‐based, urban‐centric and debt‐financed accumulation. Instead of narrowing the urban–rural divide, this instrument reproduces and solidifies it. On this basis, the article argues that conceptual and political innovations for inclusive and equitable development needs to shift the attention from land to people.     

Tibet Policies Enrich Region‘s Development

During an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel published on March 26,the 14th Dalai Lama attacked the Chinese government as“dividing Tibet by letting other provinces govern parts of Tibet“.He also claimed that Tibet was“suffering cultural homicide“.     

Mercosur: A Failing Development Project?

Latin America is a developing region. Although it is different from other such regions it shares with them ‘the challenge of change’, particularly as a result of globalization. Its response has been to embrace democracy, neoliberal restructuring and ‘new (open) regionalism’. The ‘Common Market of the South’—Mercosur—was an important regional initiative involving Argentina and Brazil, and included in its various aims was the acceleration of ‘economic development with social justice’. This article explores to what extent development aims have been achieved and whether Mercosur is little more than a loose confederation of states unable to build institutional structures that could help development. To what extent is this the result of traditions that have entrenched elites and prevented a more egalitarian approach? Has the law generally failed its citizens? Or does it have a place in development? The article begins by briefly considering the concept of ‘development’ and seeks to place Latin America within the ‘developmental framework’ and questions whether there is a distinct Latin American development tradition. Within that tradition, and in the context of the ‘inter‐American system’ and globalization, the development of Mercosur is assessed both in terms of institution building and legal traditions. Finally, some preliminary conclusions are drawn about Mercosur's future and the extent to which institutional and other constraints have contributed to Mercosur falling short of its devleopmental potential.     

Thinking about the World Bank’s “accordion” geography of financial globalization

Two “flagship” World Bank reports, entitled The Long March—A Reform Agenda for Latin America and the Caribbean In The Next Decade (1997) and the World Development Report, 1999–2000 (2000), are the subject of this paper. Both publications attempt to come to terms with the policy and practice of structural adjustment in the context of a new geography of global finance. This paper argues that the geographical imagination employed in both World Bank reports is the product of a dominant statist geographical imagination that struggles to explain contemporary developments in the geography of money. The paper starts with a brief discussion of the Mexican peso and debt crisis, and the World Bank’s practice of structural adjustment. Through an interrogation of both World Bank papers, thought is then given to the purchase of territorialized state-based mappings of the global economy. The paper wraps up with a brief conclusion concerning the explanatory salience of scale.

Internationally mobile capital is here to stay. Growing trade links, new communication technologies, and increasingly sophisticated financial products are making national borders more porous to financial flows. The challenge facing policymakers in developing countries is how to navigate through this financially integrating world (World Development Report 1999-2000, 2000: 85).

[W]hereas the horizons of the world of money and finance are global and deterritorialized, the political imagination seems wedded to territorialism and the borders of the nation state (Leyshon &Thrift, 1997: 290).