Politics as Anti-Politics: The World Bank’s Neopopulist Agenda1

Building on the case of the Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRS), this working paper provides an analysis of the World Bank’s new aid allocation mechanisms in relation to representative politics. As such, this paper provides an analysis of why parliaments have overwhelmingly been bypassed in the PRS process and more interestingly, how they have come to be replaced de facto by certain depoliticised segments of civil society. It is argued that PRS are mechanisms by which the Bank attempts to construct a new mode of authority by attempting to capture, coopt and mobilise civil society elements behind the market agenda. Such process represents a form of neopopulism that bypasses existing political arrangements and substitutes new forms of social contract with newly depoliticised stakeholders. The paper concludes by analysing the possible impact of such changes on issues of rights, citizenship and political contestation